I am hopefully closing in on reaching my 2024 Goodreads Goal of Reading 30 books this year. Lately, I have been acutely aware that if I don’t hurry, I might not reach 30 before the ball drops at the end of December. Around the 20th of November, I was at 26 books. I had plan for myself on mostly how to finish up the year. Then I needed a book to listen to while I was preparing for Thanksgiving, so through reading some recommendations online, I found this young adult, historical fiction, gem called The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee.
Luckily, the audiobook was available for me to borrow on the Libby app from my local library and I was able to get a paper copy of it for borrow by dropping into the library in-person.
At 528 pages, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, wasn’t getting me closer to my reading goal quickly, but that hardly mattered. I enjoyed the audiobook reader Christian Coulson and his British accent. He was brought to life the carefree attitude of the main character named Monty, a 18th century, young lord-in-training. When I sat on the couch to read the paper copy of the book, I found it was hard to walk away when I needed to move on with another part of my day.
What a delight, that’s all I can say! Teen Vogue calls this book “the teen queer historical novel that you didn’t know was missing from your life“.
I couldn’t agree more.
Here is a little review:
Henry Montague, known as Monty, is a young lord-in-training in 1700’s England, about to leave his home with his sister, Felicity, and best friend, Percy, for his grand tour of the continent. Along the way he steals a priceless artifact, gets robbed by highwaymen, put in jail, kidnapped by pirates and falls in love. It is a tale of fun, history, regency settings, travel, and adventure.
The main characters: Monty, Felicity, and Percy are iconoclastic characters in that they are each at odds with life that is prescribed for them in 18th century England. When The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue was published in 2017, it became a New York Times bestseller. In subsequent years, the author, Mackenzi Lee went on to write a novella sequel called The Gentleman’s Guide to Getting Lucky and two companion novels about Monty’s Montague siblings.
If I could state one things that I learned from reading this book it would be that young adult (YA) books feel like they have gotten better since the days when I ordered them for the YA collection at a library fifteen years ago. I used to read a lot of YA book reviews for fiction books that seemed so heavy in topic. This title was lighter and more charming, very charming, in fact. It still touched heavy subjects like sexuality, racism, and physical and emotional abuse but it didn’t make you hate reading it.
As I said, I had my end of the year reading prospects pretty much mapped out, but now, with so many sequels and Montague siblings books to read, I might be rethinking my strategy.
