The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

In "The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue" Mackenzi Lee tells the story of Monty, Percy, and Felicity as they embark on a grand tour that gets more disastrous at every turn. At the end of the summer Monty will take over as lord, learning the duties of his father, Percy will be going off to school, and Felicity will be starting finishing school. But they have this one last summer and they aren't going to waste a second of it. Full of intrigue, romance, and adventure, Lee takes us on this journey with her amazing characters until the lines between their story and our reality start to blur.

I absolutely adored this book. The characters are diverse, the story goes in many unexpected directions, and it's a queer story with no gratuitous death. What more could you want? Other than a flawless melding of the supernatural into the otherwise realistic world of the story (at least realistic to someone who knows very little about the period *shrug*) and wonderful relationships between the characters.

I really am so obsessed with this book, but I particularly loved the sibling relationship between Monty and Felicity. At the beginning of the story it is clear that while living together their whole lives, they hardly know each other at all. And as they continue on their journey they get to know each other and build a real relationship. They had made so many assumptions about one another, but they start to see those errors, learn the truth, and start to genuinely care for each other. As the youngest sibling of my family, I recognized the odd feeling of realizing you hardly know anything about this person that has slept in the same house as you your whole life. There is, for lack of a better word, a danger to assuming that you understand a person and where they are coming from when you don't know for sure. I can think of so many instances in my life that would have been easier if I had just talked to my siblings about it instead of assuming that they wouldn't understand. And it was beautiful to see Monty and Felicity have those realizations on the page.

I recommend this book wholeheartedly. I couldn't read it when I had somewhere to be because if I started it was almost impossible to put down. So please read this amazing book and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! And if you like this one don't forget to the check out the sequel, "The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy" and companion novella "The Gentleman's Guide to Getting Lucky", and the end of the trilogy, "The Nobleman's Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks", which comes out August 2020. Mackenzi Lee is a fantastic author who is telling amazing stories, she deserves all of our support.

XO, Ellen