The Marriage Method

Mimi Matthews is one of my favorite authors, and I’ll always read anything she publishes. After enjoying Rules for Ruin, the first in her Crinoline Academy series, I was excited for the second installment: The Marriage Method is out now, and equally as enjoyable!

Nell Trewlove was an orphan at the secluded Benevolent Academy for the Betterment of Young Ladies before becoming a teacher there five years ago. But a journalist, Miles Quincey, is intent on learning the Academy’s secrets and writing an article about them. Nell travels to his office to dissuade him from writing anything… but an awkward situation involving Miles’s newly adopted cat results in him needing to marry Nell. This isn’t what either expected, but it does allow them to investigate some strange and dangerous events that involves people they each know. This marriage of convenience may allow them to solve some crimes, but will they also learn to love each other, too?

What I Liked:

• Miles is a cat lover! His weakness is cats; he’s a “champion of truth, and justice, and cats.” This guy has adopted five stray cats and counting. He’s never met a feline he didn’t want to feed, house, and love. As a cat lover myself, this was an instantly endearing quality in Miles!
• Nell can protect herself! She may have never ventured beyond the Academy grounds, but Nell is highly skilled in the art of conversation and in all manner of self-protection—with a sneaky weapon or with her bare fists. Miles compares her to a tigress, and it’s an apt descriptor. Nell might be stunningly beautiful, but there’s a lot more to her than her looks.
• Identity and belonging. Like Effie in the previous book, Nell is an orphan who has long wondered who her mother was. She gets some answers here, but it comes with some big feelings to process, too. I liked seeing this aspect of a mother-daughter relationship and how Miles supported Nell through the healing process.
• A complicated mystery! This novel follows Nell and Miles as they investigate their respective mysteries, which just so happen to overlap in several ways. Nell is looking for a girl who went missing on her way to the academy; was she abducted? Miles is looking into who murdered his gossip columnist, and why. Together, Nell and Miles will stop at nothing to uncover the truth, seek justice, and save who they can.
• Seeing characters from other books. Of course, we get to see Effie and Gabriel from Rules for Ruin. We also get a hint of Mr. Malik from The Siren of Sussex, and mentions of others who have appeared in the author’s many books. It’s a treat for fans who’ve kept up with her stories!

Final Thoughts

I absolutely loved The Marriage Method! Nell and Miles are such a perfect couple: sweet and tender with each other, yet fierce in their pursuit of justice and the truth (and cats, of course!). Marrying a stranger doesn’t sound ideal, but they end up being so well suited to each other. I’m excited to continue the Crinoline Academy series; I suspect Gemma Sparrow is up next, maybe with Inspector Garrick? Mimi Matthews is an auto-buy author for me, and I can’t wait for whatever comes next.

Special thanks to the publicists at Penguin Random House, Berkley, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy The Marriage Method here – it’s available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

The Marriage Method by Mimi Matthews
Series	The Crinoline Academy (#2)
Audience	Adult
Genre	Historical Romance
Setting	England
Number of Pages	416
Format I Read	Ebook (NetGalley ARC)
Original Publication Date	November 25, 2025
Publisher	Berkley

Official Summary

The Academy always comes first . . . which makes marriage to its most formidable adversary an exceedingly inconvenient arrangement.

Well removed from London’s more curious eyes, the Benevolent Academy for the Betterment of Young Ladies strives toward one clandestine goal: to distract, disrupt, and discredit men in power who would seek to harm the advancement of women—by appropriate means, of course.

When intrepid newspaper editor Miles Quincey starts to question the school’s intentions, the Academy appoints Penelope “Nell” Trewlove, one of their brightest graduates, to put this nuisance to rest. An easy enough mission, she supposes. Or it would be, if Miles wasn’t so fascinating—too fascinating to resist—and if Nell’s visit to London didn’t perfectly coincide with the murder of one of Miles’s reporters.

When the inexorable claws of fate trap Nell and Miles in a compromising situation, they agree to an arrangement that will save their reputations while enabling them to investigate the story that led to a man’s death, as well as the surprising chemistry between them . . .

Excerpt from The Marriage Method

Gloved hands folded neatly in her lap, she waited for Mr. Quincey’s questions. But he didn’t give voice to them. Not immediately. He only looked at her with a pensive frown, as though something about her person prevented him from pursuing his logical course.

“Forgive me,” he said at length. “Mrs. Royce failed to mention that you were lately bereaved. Had I known of your loss, I would never have pressed you to—”

“I am not bereaved,” Nell said.

“No?” He swept a glance from her black-veiled hat to her lusterless black mourning dress with its tight-fitting bodice and wide, untrimmed skirts. “You can doubtless understand my confusion.”

Nell would have thought it plain enough. “I travelled alone from the Academy. I preferred to do so unmolested.” She paused, adding, “Widows are generally accorded a degree of respect not offered to unaccompanied young ladies.”

Mr. Quincey didn’t bat an eye at her explanation. She suspected he was a man who wasn’t easily surprised. “In other words, it’s a disguise.”

Nell’s expression tightened. Leave it to a man to reduce a woman’s desire to protect herself to a childish pantomime. “It’s a practical necessity,” she said.

“I see. And do all teachers at Miss Corvus’s Academy for the Betterment of Young Ladies employ such arts? Or is it only you who…” His words died away as she pushed back her veil. 

Ah. Perhaps he was capable of being surprised after all.

Nell met his gaze, a hint of a challenge in her own. She wasn’t vain. Neither was she guilty of false modesty. She knew herself, both her weaknesses and her strengths. “Feminine ingenuity isn’t limited to the staff room at the Academy,” she informed him. “Though, I assure you, it’s in no short supply there.”

Mr. Quincey collected himself in a blink—so quickly Nell wondered if she’d imagined the look of masculine alertness that had flared in his eyes on first seeing her face. Clearing his throat, he very slowly and very methodically returned his pen to the brass holder on his desk. “Something else Mrs. Royce failed to mention.”

“What might that be?”

“How young you are.”

Nell stiffened at his tone of disappointment. She wasn’t used to anyone implying that she was lacking in wisdom or experience. Quite the reverse. In times of crisis, people generally looked to her for guidance. During Miss Corvus’s recent illness, Nell had all but been running the school. “Is my age of importance to your inquiries?” 

“Only as it pertains to your tenure,” he said. “You can’t have been in your position long.”

“I have been employed as a teacher for five years, sir.”

He sat back in his chair, frowning at her again with an attitude of impatience. One would think she had wasted his precious time. “Mrs. Royce led me to believe you had been present at the Academy’s founding, nearly twenty years ago. It’s why I consented to meet with you instead of pursuing an interview with Miss Corvus herself. I had anticipated your providing certain information about the institution’s origins.”

Nell at once grasped the cause of his irritation. He’d wrongly presumed she would be a much older woman. One who had spent the whole of the past eighteen years teaching at the charity school. “Mrs. Royce did not mislead you.”.

“Not only Mrs. Royce,” he replied. “You, as well, Miss Trewlove. Your letters gave me to understand that you had decades of experience at Miss Corvus’s Academy.”

“I do,” she said. “Or nearly that long. I was one of its earliest students.”

Understanding registered on his face. He stared at her with renewed attention. “You were an orphan?”

Nell’s chin ticked up a notch. “That’s correct.” 

There was no shame in it. Not as far as she was concerned. It was just as she often told her girls. One wasn’t accountable for the circumstances of one’s birth, only for the choices they made and the actions they took. It was that which defined a person, not pedigree.

“As are all the students at the Academy?” Mr. Quincey asked. 

“To a one,” she said. “They come to us from all over the county. I flatter myself that we do our best for them.”

“Your best being…?”

She lifted one shoulder in an artfully casual shrug. “We feed them, house them, and provide them with an education that will best help them meet their potential.”

Mr. Quincey narrowed in on the word with single-minded precision. “Their potential for what, exactly? 

Nell’s mouth curved in a slow smile. She comprehended the unspoken crux of his question. He believed the Academy was a home for dangerous revolutionaries. Budding feminists and crusaders for equality, willing to go to any ends to achieve their goals, even if that meant destroying the occasional man who got in their way. 

He wasn’t wrong.

Excerpted from The Marriage Method by Mimi Matthews. Copyright © 2025 by Mimi Matthews. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/727469/the-marriage-method-by-mimi-matthews/