Title: The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy
Author: Mackenzi Lee
Genre: YA Fiction, Romance, LGBTQ+
Page Count: 464
Published by: Katherine Tegen Books
Date Published: October 2, 2018
You can find it here: Bookshop.org
Synopsis
Following Felicity Montague, the brainy and determined younger sister of the suave & dashing Monty (A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue), we pick up fairly quickly after events of book one of the Montague Siblings trilogy.
Felicity’s ultimate heart’s desire is to become a doctor. She has the brains, she has read the books, she has the passion and determination … but, of course, she is a woman and therefore not permitted to fulfill her dream. Her best hope is to marry a wealthy man and live a comfortable life. And when the kind baker she currently works for proposes marriage, Felicity madly escapes to London in the hopes of securing a student position at the hospital.
When her dreams are once again dashed at the hands of the white men who hold all power, Felicity embarks on a last dash mad scheme to board a ship with an unknown lady pirate, crash the wedding of an estranged friend and hopefully secure a student position with her friends fiancé, the renowned Dr. Alexander Platt. What could go wrong?
Discussion
I highly anticipated this novel from Mackenzi Lee, having adored A Gentleman’s Guide, with all its snarky humour and fabulous romance, and it didn’t disappoint.
Felicity is a fabulous character – she is full of brains, brawn, and headstrong determination but can also be humorously naive, impatient, and most definitely rash. Her plight as a woman to be seen and heard in the same spheres as men is the backbone of this novel and entirely too relatable today, some 300 years later. Drawing on real life inspiration and plight of the women of science in the 1700s, Mackenzi Lee gives us the feminist, pirating, humorous romp of a novel we’ve been needing.
This is a supremely fun, entertaining, surprisingly emotionally detailed read with representation from both asexual and bisexual characters. While there were some elements that stretched the suspension of belief a bit too far for me, without giving spoilers, it is still a wonderfully crafted, sarcastically funny and refreshing adventure.
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