Date of Publication: June 27, 2017
Genre and Themes: LGBTQ, Historical Romance, Racism, Adventures, Humor
Format: 513 pages, Hardcover
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
ISBN: 0062382802 (ISBN13: 9780062382801)
Characters: Henry “Monty” Montague, Percy Newton, Felicity Montague
This is another one of my backlogged reviews. The last few weeks have obviously been hella busy for me because of the holidays and some work deadlines but I wanted to write a review for this awesome book before welcoming 2018 that is hopefully full of adventures and positivity.
Let me tell you first what I told myself after finishing this – “That’s it?! That is the end of it? I fucking wanted more!” I mean, seriously – I enjoyed it so much that I didn’t feel like letting go of it right away. It felt like it ended so abruptly for my liking.
The most recent book I’ve read that kind of resembled it in some way – in terms of traveling Europe and all its glory – is Josh Lanyon’s Jefferson Blythe, Esquire which happened to be the most Young Adult’ish of all of Lanyon’s books if you are not familiar with her works.
So there – Henry, his sister Felicity and his bestfriend Percy are on a Grand Tour of the Continent after which, Henry is expected to enter the world of adulthood. As per the usual plot lines, things didn’t go as planned. The trio managed to steal a panacea (courtesy of Henry), be captured by amateur pirates and basically create chaos in their wake.
The story revolves around these three characters, which are all-lead material. I should think that they are indeed the main characters in this book, though the story was told entirely from Henry’s perspectives. Each of them are totally different from each other, very vibrantly characterized and just so full of personality.
I absolutely adore Henry. I loved his candor and you can really see the way he mature overtime in the story. Percy on the other hand is totally adorable! Gaaahhh, I loved their chemistry from the get-go! I’ve been dying to get to the chapter when they will finally realized that they’ve been pining for each other for like forever and when it happened – ugh, I just can’t!
Felicity’s a real bad-ass character! I loved her! I’ve read that there will be a sequel and it will be from Felicity’s POV so that should really be exciting! I cannot wait to see more of her bad-assery!
This book is another triumph for the LGBTQ+ literary world and I hope that there’ll be more books like this that talks about many struggles within our community as well as other issues like feminism, racism and mental illness. This is definitely a must-read!
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
About the Author
Mackenzi Lee holds a BA in history and an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Simmons College. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the historical fantasy novels THIS MONSTROUS THING and THE GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO VICE AND VIRTUE (HarperCollins), as well as the forthcoming THE LADY’S GUIDE TO PETTICOATS AND PIRACY and SEMPER AUGUSTUS (coming in 2019 from Flatiron/Macmillan). She is also the author of BYGONE BADASS BROADS (Abrams, 2018), a collection of short biographies of amazing women from history you probably don’t know about but definitely should, based on her popular twitter series of the same name.
She currently calls Boston home, where she manages an independent bookstore, drinks too much Diet Coke, and pets every dog she meets.
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