Months after I read and loved Guide, I was cleaning my bookshelves and found an ARC of This Monstrous Thing in the interminable stacks of YA ARCS I Never Got To, and I realized: I’ve had Mackenzi’s debut novel moldering on my shelves for years, and here I was thinking Guide was her first foray into blowing my mind!
Fun fact about me: I am always reading something that needs to be read RIGHT THIS MINUTE, BETH, FINISH THIS. And the day I stumbled upon This Monstrous Thing (again) was no exception. But I dropped what I was reading and picked it up. Because Mackenzi is just that good.
Monstrous is a YA steampunk Frankenstein re-telling in Victorian Geneva. Don’t tell Nikki about the steampunk, because the book is great. Clockwork gears melding with human flesh and a lot of similar themes to Guide, it’s a beautiful and haunting adaptation of everyone’s favorite gothic novel.
And thankfully, Mackenzi isn’t done writing great books.
The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, the sequel to Gentlemen’s Guide, is on its way to our bookshelves this October, and it is starring Monty’s sister, Felicity!
Felicity Montague is through with pretending she prefers society parties to books about bone setting—or that she’s not smarter than most people she knows, or that she cares about anything more than her dream of becoming a doctor.
A year after an accidentally whirlwind tour of Europe, which she spent evading highwaymen and pirates with her brother Monty, Felicity has returned to England with two goals in mind—avoid the marriage proposal of Callum Doyle, 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 small window of hope opens. Doctor Alexander Platt, an eccentric physician that Felicity idolizes, is looking for research assistants, and Felicity is sure that someone as forward thinking as her hero would be willing to take her on. However, Platt is in Germany, preparing to wed Felicity’s estranged childhood friend Johanna. Not only is Felicity reluctant to opening old wounds, she also has no money 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 will lead her from the German countryside to the promenades of Zurich to secrets lurking beneath the Atlantic.
If Gentlemen’s Guide was a rolicking romp through the continent with regency era rogues, Lady’s Guide looks like its more erudite and sober companion that gets caught up in more than it bargained for. Felicity was easily one of the best parts of Gentlemen’s Guide, so I am totally ready to see her take on her own continental adventure.
Mackenzi’s books have given us some of the best LGBTQ representations in the young adult genre, and Lady will be no exception. Careful readers correctly deduced that Felicity is on the aromantic/ace spectrum, and that will be explored in her novel. I mean, OF COURSE it will; the book is her story.
And if you love Monty and Percy, and need more from them than the last chapters of their novel, fear not. They make cameos in Lady but ALSO will be getting their own novella before Lady’s release in October!!! THIS IS THE BEST NEWS I’VE SEEN SO FAR IN 2018!
So, if you haven’t read Guide or This Monstrous Thing yet, get on it. Some of the best YA to date, and you’ll be just in time to enjoy Lady’s Guide when it gets here this fall!
