The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee was one of my most anticipated releases this year. It's the sequel to one of my favorite books ever, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue. I loved, loved, loved the first book about the Montague siblings, and it was so wonderful to be back in their world again.

Ever since I read The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue last year, I’ve been fangirling about this amazing, unique and completely addictive read. It is one of my favorite books of all time, and the sassy, hilarious Monty and the sweet, darling Percy is one of my favorite OTPs ever as well.

So, it’s no exaggeration saying that this sequel was one of my most anticipated releases this year and that I was dying to get back to the wonderful world of the Montague siblings once again.

This time, the story is told from Monty’s sister Felicity’s side, and focuses on her ambition to study medicine and her problems to be taken seriously as an intelligent woman and be admitted to a medical school. Just like in the first book though, adventure comes knocking and the story takes us from Edinburgh to London to Stuttgart and Zurich… and to dragon hunting in the Atlantic… I liked the headstrong Felicity already in the first book and can certainly relate to her and how she’s not able to do what she really wants, as opposed to what society dictates she must do. So I was happy to get a chance to get to know her even better in this book, but I must confess that I really missed Monty’s POV. A lot of what made the first book so amazing and hilarious, was that it was told in Monty’s engaging, sassy voice. When the story is told from Felicity’s POV this time, it loses that unique way of telling the story and, sadly, makes it much less fun.

The story was also much slower this time. Especially the first part of the book, which dragged a lot, until the more adventurous part kicked in. It felt unnecessary that this book was over 500 pages, it would have been better without a hundred of them or so. Where The Gentleman’s Guide felt like a wild roller-coaster ride, this story at times felt too serious and straight forward. I get that some of that is due to the fact that the story is told by Felicity, who is a much more serious person than Monty, but it was still disappointing that the magic and the unique tone and humor from the first book was missing in this one.

But, overall, it is still a really good book! There are wonderful story twists, amazing characters and adventures. And strong women, friendship, love and pirates. And dragons! I loved that part of the book, it added some of the magic from the first one again. The best parts of the book where the ones that Monty and Percy were in. My heart melted every time and I had this goofy smile all over my face! So even though this book did not fully meet my expectations set by the previous book in the Montague series, I still really enjoyed it and certainly recommend it!

Find out more about the books and the author here: Mackenzi Lee