The Gentleman's Guide To Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee Full Book Review

Spoiler Free Review:

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
My rating: ❤❤❤❤❤

Readers will be swept off their feet by this adventurous, historical, humorous romance that is The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee. Henry Montague dreads nothing more than his impending duty as a British Lord. He is much more content to live out the 18th Century getting hammered and into trouble with his best friend Percy. He can barely contain his excitement to be leaving for his grand tour with Percy, imagining it to be lounging around, having fun, and hopefully discovering if his undying love for Percy is unrequited or not. When Henry's father ruins this by sending someone to watch over them, the trip looks like its going to be extremely boring, until Henry steals something he shouldn't have and sets himself, his sister, and Percy on the adventure of a lifetime. I adored this book! I love it when books are set in historical times, but the characters act more modern. In some ways this book reminds me of My Lady Jane which I also loved! The plot of this book was not at all what I was expecting. I thought this was going to be an LGBT romance novel set in historical times, not an adventure story with excellent character development. While the characters are definitely made a little more extreme to be entertaining, they are still very realistic and have interesting emotional development I would recommend this book for romance, adventure, and history lovers and people who love great plot, but don't want to read a whole series.
Want to read something similar to this book? Try My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows. You can find my review on the spoiler free reviews page. Or pick up Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller.

Recommended Mindset for Reading    

This is a great book to binge read because it isn't super long and its a standalone novel. Its the kind of book you can get yourself out of a reading slump with because it wraps up pretty nicely so you won't be going crazy wondering what happened. This book is definitely for a certain kind of reader so if you just want an adventure story and don't like romance then this isn't the book for you because a lot of the plot is character development which is mainly based off romance. Also this book deals with LGBT themes so if that isn't your thing you may not like it, but for the rest of us its great because good LGBT romance novels are few and far between! Overall this is a great book for a lazy day when you want to be transported to a different time!

Full Review: 

Initial Reaction

As soon as I really started this book I was very surprised because I was expecting something very different from what I ended up reading. When I was reading this I was actually stuck at home after leaving a very fun Bat Mitzvah party early due to an inconvenient migraine. I wanted to relax and just read a nice book so I picked this up and boy was I sucked into it! I mean I just sat on my couch for like three and a half hours and just read this sucker. I almost forgot to eat dinner which is impressive because I love to eat food! As soon as the book started I loved Monty as a character because he was just so extravagant, and hilarious, and so totaly clueless. I can tell you this, I am very glad I saw this book in my goodreads newsletter otherwise I would have totaly missed out on an amazing read!

Character Analysis 

Obviously Monty is my favorite character because he just cracked me up so many times and he is you know the main character. I think one important thing about Monty that didn't come across in the book very well is how complicated his flaws are. In the book they make it seem as though Monty comes to the conclusion that all his problems stem from selfishness. This is not true and I don't think its what the author intended to write. Monty is selfish, but he is also completely afraid of everything most of all accepting his own self worth. My issue with how the author portrayed this is that we only see how much damage has been inflicted by Monty's father in regards to Monty as a person not just him being bisexual at close to the end. Monty's father told him he was worthless human being not just because he was bisexual, but because of his personality, which is what had the most amount of impact on Monty's feelings about himself. The author could have done a better job of explaining that, though in the end the point was made. A lot of people and reviewers have been compairing Monty and this book to Simon versus the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli. Simon and Monty are completely different mainly in the fact that Simon is one of the most frustrating characters I have ever read ( Besides America from The Selection by Kiera Cass, and Will Grayson from Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green) Simon is having trouble coming out as Gay. Monty is having trouble dealing with his abusive father and accepting his future as a British Lord. See, very different characters.(Sorry for the ranting I just don't like very different characters being called similar). Anyways, back to Monty's character development. I love how at the end Monty finally realizes his self worth and with it realizes that if he wants a better future he needs to make it for himself.
Percy is a great character in this book and even though he has very little character development, the milestones he reaches are so large that it feels as though he he also has a POV(which is not easy to do!) Something that I don't think a lot of readers will realize is how big having epilepsy was in the 1700s. People had been known to kill their own children fearing that the devil had possessed them. Also, epilepsy can a lot of the time be accompanied by autism, which was also something that had not been diagnosed in the 1700's. Anyone with epilepsy would have been shunned and usually sent away to sanitariums or insane asylums, where they would basically sit and wait to die. So yeah, they were majorly judged, which is why I thought the author handled this perfectly with Percy as telling us he has epilepsy half way through the book. Also I loved how she explained at the end what epilepsy was which I will talk about more later. Percy not only has to deal with having epilepsy, but also with having dark skin and the intense racism of that time period. This makes him prone to hiding his feelings which is why it would take him so long to share his feelings for Monty and to stand up for himself. Percy was just such a well done character so fantastic job to the author on that part!
Felicity was kind of a weird character for me to understand. She is so accepting on so many things such as being a feminist and not being racist, but her inability to accept Monty as being bisexual and still believing it is a sin was kind of a weird choice for the author to make. Felicity does not show herself as a religious character and obviously does not like following the rules so having her be so not progressive on one thing is very odd. I can understand why the author might want to do this, Felicity can only be so progressive before she becomes an unrealistic character and stops fitting the time period, but if the author is going to have us believing that they have found a cure all that works by eating the human heart then I would think she would be lenient on this part. I do of course like how she took it upon herself to be educated and has an interest in medicine. But she was my least favorite character because it felt like there was no emotional development for her.
The minor characters in this book were really weird. I felt like some of them the author chose to give a bunch of random emotional growth to and others she started to work with and then just abandoned. Definitely not one of the best aspects of the book but seeing as that its a not particularly long standalone, there is only so much you can do. (I have to keep reminding myself that not everyone can be Cassandra Clare!)

Historical Aspects

Obviously a big part of this story is that it is set in the 1700s. I happened to love this because I also love history. You can really tell with this book how much research the author put in to make sure the book was historically accurate. One of my favorite things actually about the book is the end when the author included a couple of pages explaining certain aspects of the book in reference to the time period. I think that was a great idea and really enriched the experience for the reader. Of course I wish the history had been more detailed, but I wish that with most historical books, kind of like how I wish every good book was 800 pages long. I didn't really learn anything from this book except for the small tidbit about how different lords will have their money in banks around Europe, specific to their country. I did really like how much of an emphasis was put on alchemy because during that time period it was a huge thing, especially trying to find a cure all. I'm not sure quite how historically accurate all the alchemy was, but I do know that no cure all has been discovered. (Obviously, otherwise we wouldn't be trying to find the cure for everything and we would all live for a very long time and we would many other problems such as over population on our hands) I can tell you this, I think I like this almost modernized historical fiction even better than regular historical fiction!

Racism

Racism was definitely a prominent theme in this book even though the characters don't discuss it very frequently. I did find it interesting how the author decided to make Monty clueless about racism without making him believe that being lighter skinned made you better. I feel like racism could have been addressed better seeing as that one of the major characters was dealing with it, but I can sense that the author didn't want it to be the biggest issue in the story.

LGBT

Seeing as that Monty is bisexual and Percy is in love with Monty,(The author never states Percy's sexual orientation so I don't want to make assumptions) there is a major theme of coming to terms with your sexuality. In the 1700s and for a while after that it was illegal to be Gay in England. This is obviously horrible and extremely stupid, but it is something that had to be dealt with if you were anything but straight. In the end of the book the author explains that many people in this time period had romantic friends who were very touchy, feely, and of the same gender, but not sexually involved, but that we don't know how many of these people were secretly involved in order to prevent going to jail. Monty and Percy basically have to live their lives out like this as they would never be able to be freely involved. I love how the author chose to, when at first asked if he would run away with Percy, have Monty say no. This allowed for really great character development and to share with the reader how hard a future with no help from your family or friends really is. Sadly even today the issues that Monty and Percy face with being LGBT are seen because many people still feel that it is a sin to love anyone other than the opposite gender. I believe that everyone she be who are they are and should be able to love whoever they want to love. Hopefully one day our world will be able to accept this, but until then I'm glad we have books that represent all different kinds of love.

Conclusion/Final Thoughts 

This book wrapped up very well and didn't really leave me needing a squeal, though I know that another book is going to be written about Felicity. It ended leaving me feeling pretty good and not at all in a book slump which is great. Overall this book was a really great read and I'm really happy I came across it!