The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

I have been eagerly awaiting this sequel to The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, and it did not disappoint! In The Lady's Guide we continue the story of the Montague siblings, with the book opening on Felicity showing up at her brother's flat in London while she figures out how to get into medical school. I love the sibling relationship between these two, and Felicity's friendship with Monty's partner Percy. The three of them just make an amazing little group, so supportive and understanding of each other.

Felicity strongly hinted at being asexual in The Gentleman's Guide, and through the course of this book, that is cemented. Even when she comes to care for someone, sex just...isn't her thing. Romance isn't really either, making her both asexual and aromantic. It's fantastic representation for an identity we don't see very often in books. Or, perhaps, an identity we don't see explicitly mentioned in fiction. Many books don't have romantic plots and just don't investigate that aspect of their characters, but to investigate that aspect of a character and say NO, they are NOT interested in that is unique.

Similar to The Gentleman's Guide, this is an adventure story. Unexpectedly, we veered into magical realism in this book, with the existence of some fantastical creatures I wasn't expecting to see. Nothing about The Gentleman's Guide had implied that the world they inhabited was not exactly ours, but The Lady's Guide does deviate. So that was a big surprise, and I'm not sure I like it. It felt a little forced. I think the “secret” that someone was protecting could have been written as something real instead of a fantastic creature.

That minor quibble aside, I really loved this book, just like I did the first. These two are GREAT books, and the characters are outstanding.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

In my review for [b:The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue 29283884 The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue (Montague Siblings, #1) Mackenzi Lee https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1492601464l/29283884.SY75.jpg 49527118], I mentioned that its style lent itself to the younger side of the Young Adult category. I would say the same about The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, but that is in no way a demerit. I think that if I had this book when I was 13....honestly, my life might have been much different.Like its predecessor, Lady's Guide has a winding nature to it. Felicity Montague, determined to be accepted to medical school and become a great surgeon, finds herself traveling on a whim to her childhood friend's wedding in Germany, in the faint hope that she may convince her groom, the groundbreaking doctor, Alexander Platt, to employ her. What she discovers though is that Platt and the supposed happy union between him and her estranged friend, Johanna, is not what it seems, and she and Johanna find themselves on a hell of an adventure. And there are indeed plenty of petticoats and piracy.I don't remember the prose being this good in Gentleman's Guide, but this book is really beautifully written. In GG, you had Monty's romance with Percy, but here its Felicity's romance with, well, life. This is a story about a girl learning how to live on her own terms - a fairly complicated task for anyone, let alone a young woman in the 18th century. She's not the most likeable person at first. She's obsessed with her own individuality in a way that teenage girls have a tendency to be - thinking she's the only one who feels and thinks the way she does, and that she's better than others who she views as having more superficial desires. She grew a lot in the first book, but as she sets out on her own here, she is shown again and again there are many different ways for women to be - beautiful, brainy, savage, or all three.Speaking of women - this book loves women. Felicity herself is likely asexual or demisexual, finding little desire to be physically involved with anyone, or desire for romance. But she adores the women at her side - Johanna and Sim, the pirate princess Felicity manages to unwittingly steal the heart of. Seriously, the way the prose indulgently describes Johanna's figure, or the way the page just fucking sizzles whenever Sim flirts with Felicity, I was surprised that Felicity was not actually interested in that kind of thing. But I thought this was an incredible exploration of relationships, friendships and even desire, without it necessarily being about sex. Honestly, it's a little mindblowing. Also, there's dragons. I love how Mackenzi Lee sneaks up on you with that stuff. Genre, who? There is action and excitement, but I think that played second to the great character dynamics. Platt makes a great, messy and complicated villain, and Johanna, Sim and Felicity utterly complete each other. To me, everything about this book just fits together so snug and tight. I don't think there was a single sentence that disappointed me.I know there's some distaste for Mackenzi Lee of late. It's the kind of thing that if you're not paying close attention to book Twitter, you would completely miss it, and now its rather difficult to find first hand evidence of what went down. But I can't claim to know who Mackenzi Lee is as a person, I only believe that she accomplished something truly great in this book. If my angry, moody, sexually confused middle school self had been able to read this, been to see girls exploring relationships with each other, wooing each other, fighting for each other, and building lives for each other, I might have been able to see myself doing the same much, much sooner. I hope that this book finds its way into the hands of many girls like me.