The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy (Montague Siblings #2) by Mackenzi Lee
5/5 stars *****
Courtesy: HarperCollins Publishers
Premise- (5/5) I was soooooo excited for The Lady’s Guide for a lot of reasons. First off, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue was ten kinds of fun and enjoyable reading. Secondly, because Felicity was asexual! Thirdly, Lee’s writing was laugh-out-loud funny, meticulously researched, and a pleasure to read. So I was super hype to read about Felicity’s adventures.
Characters- (5/5) I loved the expansion on Felicity’s character and the return of Percy, Monty, and Scipio’s crew, in addition to the new characters we got in this novel. One trait that Felicity and Monty both share in their respective narrations is that they both have a really strong self-awareness of when they do something wrong, which makes them very interesting. Felicity’s ambitions, her struggle, and her self-realization were all sympathetic and will still ring with familiarity to many of us in the twentieth century. Her identity as asexual (though again, that word was not used as it would have been anachronistic) felt very genuine and definitely resonated with me. I also really enjoyed her friend Johanna and their relationship, as well as Sim’s introduction and character. All three of those ladies had ambitions and dreams that their world frowned on, from medicine to botany to a pirate empire, and I loved how those skillsets and ambitions intertwined. Like with The Gentleman’s Guide, I think Lee creates very nuanced characters, with complicated intentions and complex personalities. I thought Dr. Platt was an excellent character too. He made a lot of sense as a person and managed to be both villainous and sympathetic, which can be hard to do.
Plot- (4.5/5) The plot felt marginally less wild than The Gentleman’s Guide to me, but was just as enjoyable. Again, Lee blended a little bit of fantasy in her historical fiction, but again it [mostly] worked. (I was a little more thrown by this one for reasons I can’t fully explain without spoiling the book, but let’s just say my suspension of disbelief was not quite as complete, which is why there’s a half-star deduction.) Still super fun to read about Felicity and her friends galavanting around Europe with pirates. Nice and quick-paced with action that kept me turning the pages eagerly.
World- (4.5/5) Once again, Lee brought her world to life with just the right amount of detail. Some things were obviously tweaked to fit the novel, but I was as convinced and engaged in this world as I was in the first book.
Writing- (5/5) Lee delivered again with a blend of humor and gravity. She delved into tricky issues like colonialism, queer relationships, ambitious women, and racism that the character would have really had to deal with. The Lady’s Guide is easy to read, but doesn’t shy away from some of the darker realities our characters would have faced. I felt this was done with grace, though again, I am not a person of color, nor Muslim, nor sapphic, which are some of the identities explored in this novel.
Overall- (4.8/5) I had high hopes for this book and I was not disappointed! Learning more about Felicity and following her across the continent was heaps of historical fun. Lee brought another batch of complicated, intriguing characters into an exciting plot and drew me in completely. I’m a little sad this is only a duology, because I would love to read more about Monty, Felicity, and their friends. I had an enormously good time reading this book and would absolutely recommend for anyone who likes girl power, girls in STEM, historical fiction, or was at all interested.
Trigger Warnings: discussion and presence of slavery, colonialism, blood and gore, historical sexism and racism, kidnapping