10 hours 47 minutes | Harper Audio | Historical/Fantasy | 06/27/2017
In The Gentleman’s Guide To Vice and Virtue an all around scoundrel is about to embark on a dangerous high stakes road trip to self discovery. It’s hard out there for a YA historical to top the YA bestseller list (I mean except for Ruta Sepetys and just reading the synopsis of her books makes me sad) and I think what helps this book stand out is it’s outstanding originality,
The book is primarily told in a semi-anarchistic self deprecating tone that emanates from our narrator, Henry “Monty” Montague. Monty is about to embark on his Grand Tour, where he plans to spend the year drinking and partying, all while trying to keep the fact that he is madly in love with his best friend a secret.
When a bit of mischief turns into an international conspiracy, his tour takes a detour filled with intrigue, mystism and …pirates ? I get what this book is doing and I think it does it very well. It’s a self aware historical black comedy the likes of which should be an Amazon Original like yesterday.
Monty is an unlikable character in a way that only male characters can be. He has a big personality and narrator Christian Coulsn had his work cut out for him with this role.The only character who didn’t sit well with me was the younger sister Felicity. I get that she is the “Hermione” of the group but she was just so good at everything just because she’d read about it. I see the next book in the series is about her and I’m looking forward to reading it to get a different perspective.
I’m all in for more YA that breaks genre boundaries, I mean a humorous historical YA with fantasy elements and nuanced diversity is something we could always use a little more of.
1/2 of the blogging duo at Books and Sensibility, I have been blogging about and reviewing books since 2011. I read any and every genre, here on the blog I mostly review Fantasy, Adult Fiction, and Young Adult with a focus on audiobooks.