Book Review: The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

A year after an accidentally whirlwind grand tour with her brother Monty, Felicity Montague has returned to England with two goals in mind—avoid the marriage proposal of a lovestruck suitor from Edinburgh and enroll in medical school. However, her intellect and passion will never be enough in the eyes of the administrators, who see men as the sole guardians of science.

But then a window of opportunity opens—a doctor she idolizes is marrying an old friend of hers in Germany. Felicity believes if she could meet this man he could change her future, but she has no money of her own to make the trip. Luckily, a mysterious young woman is willing to pay Felicity’s way, so long as she’s allowed to travel with Felicity disguised as her maid.

In spite of her suspicions, Felicity agrees, but once the girl’s true motives are revealed, Felicity becomes part of a perilous quest that leads them from the German countryside to the promenades of Zurich to secrets lurking beneath the Atlantic.

A fellow ace friend gave me this book for my birthday. I was jazzed as it'd been on my to-read list ever since I heard about it through one of bookstagram's ace books lists. I haven't read the first one, which I think is about Monty (the brother) getting together with his boyfriend. You don't really need to have read it to get the sequel, but it does occasionally reference the trio's misadventures in the previous book. I can't stand reading series books out of order, but since this was a gift, I didn't want to wait too long. 

To say Felicity dreams of being a doctor would be an understatement. She eats, sleeps, and breathes medicine. She is actually in Edinburgh because at the time (the 1700s, date unspecified), it was the medical science capital of the world (Europe). Obviously she is refused at every medical school due to sexism, but she won't give up. She decides to crash the wedding of her doctor hero on the tenuous grounds that she was best friends with the bride, Johanna, when they were children (tenuous because she wasn't invited and they had a friend breakup a few years ago). She hopes she can talk her way into being tutored by him or being his assistant. The mysterious woman who pretends to be her servant is Sim, a badass Algerian piratess who kickstarts the dangerous and scientific adventure that she, Felicity and Johanna go on. 

I mostly liked Felicity, and would categorize her as aroace because she had no interest in romance, either with men or women. (I'm sensing a theme.) She did kind of feel like the classic Modern Feminist Heroine in an unmodern setting (you know, the type who refuses to wear corsets or marry without love but in a really modern way), and it amused me to read in the afterword that the author had specifically been trying to avoid this trope. Sorry, sister. I ended up liking Johanna way more than I thought I would, since she's kind of Felicity's girly opposite. I liked the girls teaming up and how Felicity gets to flex her medical skills.

THIS IS THE PART OF THE REVIEW WHERE I TALK ABOUT SPOILERS

Felicity's "there is only one right way to be an intelligent/scholarly/scientific woman" shtick annoyed me. She looked down on Johanna because she was into girly stuff like dresses and parties and boys, and that's what led to their friendship breakdown. It's rather "I'm not like other girls". I kept waiting for someone to point out to Felicity that no matter how plainly, practically and unfashionably she dressed, men would never take her seriously, but no one ever did. When she meets up with Johanna and realizes how well she still knows her and the importance their friendship had to her, that really tugged my heartstrings and made me miss my ex-best friend. I'm glad the girls become friends again.

A massively hearty F U to the doctor guy for all the shit he put the girls through. He sucks. He does get a comeuppance but not so much what he deserves.

Oh, the scientific mystery? It's sea dragons. SEA DRAGONS!! They have iridescent blue scales that make you high when you ingest them. Naturally they are being hunted to extinction. I wish they were real. We do have sea dragons, but they are like this and not like this.

I would walk the plank for Sim. She's so into Felicity, although of course Felicity is not, and flirts with her, calling her a rare wildflower men would walk the whole earth to find (swoon). DUMP FELICITY MARRY ME

END SPOILERS I GUESS, EXCEPT OF COURSE FOR THE TRIGGER WARNINGS

Overall I really liked this book and want to read the others (although Monty sounds kind of annoying). *~Friendship and science!~* 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: November 3
From: bday gift from a friend
Status: keeping tentatively

Cover notes: I like this cover. The illustrated doodles are fun. However, Felicity's hair seems to be pinned up (the book is very clear about her always having her hair back in a braid), and, most damning of all, she seems to be wearing an Edwardian dress! (It could be an atypical Victorian dress bodice, I guess, but there's no skirt volume. Either way that's way too late.) Sigh.

Trigger warnings: physical abuse of child and teens, abusive parent, teenage girl coerced into marrying adult man, man threatens to shoot dog to force girl to marry him, teenage girls imprisoned/tied up by adult men, underage alcoholism, underage alcohol abuse, homophobia mentions, substance addiction, addict is villain who does bad things, drugs (snuff), animal cruelty, animal/fish death (fishing/hunting), medical gore, blood, period-typical sexism, poison, character nearly dies from being poisoned, parental abandonment of child, illness mentions, homelessness mentions