The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Book Review

So I just finished reading The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee! I first heard about this book through Booktube and was told that it was hilariously funny. 

Anyway, this book is about Henry “Monty” Montague, the son of a rich earl in Cheshire, England, whose wild and scandalous sense of fun and adventure remains uncurbed by his father, boarding school, or societal rules. When he gets kicked out of Eton, one of the best boarding schools in England, Monty is granted one year to go on a Grand Tour of the Continent with his best friend and long time love interest, Percy, and his younger, studious sister, Felicity, before being forced to return home and learn how to run the family estate. Monty expects the year to be full of reckless, unhindered fun and a chance to finally reveal his feelings to Percy, but when he does something unimaginably stupid in Paris, he and his entourage are sent into an insane goose chase all over Europe which sends everything he ever knew into question. 

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT 

I picked it up because I was craving some 18th-19th century European vibes similar to the Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare. TGGTVAV was a perfect candidate because Monty, Felicity, and Percy gave me some serious Will-Tessa-Jem vibes, especially down to the privileged bad boy main character with a dark past and his sickly, musically talented, biracial best friend and their badass, intelligent female sidekick theme.

I loved how this book detailed the treatment of homosexuals, African Americans, and females in the 18th century, especially since it reflects problems still prominent in modern society. All parties are represented so well through Monty, Felicity, and Percy. I think recognizing societal errors in attitudes towards people who are different is very important, and literature is a perfect place to do so. It felt so wrong when Monty describes their inability to find lodging along their Tour just because Percy was biracial or Felicity was a woman. 

I also really loved the addition of Felicity’s character in this book. She just added so much wit and cleverness to the plot, and I truly have so much respect for her. I could also see Monty’s view and respect for his sister grow as he discovers her secret study of medicine and her daring and reckless side that was uncharacteristic for ladies of that era. Felicity also proved to be a lot tougher than Monty in many areas and helped open his eyes to a perspective that Monty, as a privileged white male in that era, had never considered or cared about before. You go, girl! 

And Percy, where do I even start talking about Percy? He was such a strong but mellow character in this book, and so incredibly funny! Not only that, but he also reminds me so much of one of my favorite characters in YA literature, Jem Carstairs. Percy formed such wonderful relationships with all the characters around him, and he and Felicity are seriously #heistpartnergoals. It was especially heartwarming to see a connection to his past through his love for his fiddle as well. I also admired Mackenzi Lee’s strategy of having Percy play such a big part in Monty’s character development. As the book is in fact narrated by Monty, Percy (and Felicity, for that matter) acted as a good outlet to prevent the book, aka Monty, from being too centered around, well, Monty. 

And that brings us to our final star: Monty. I have to admit (and don’t start throwing rotten tomatoes at me) that I honestly disliked Monty for the beginning chunk of the book. He wasn’t as funny as many people appear to have said he was, and to me, he was just plain self centered and ignorant of his privilege and his friends’ lack thereof. I do feel bad for him in the sense that he can’t express who he truly is to his family without violent repercussions, but that was mostly it. Monty also seemed to talk bigger than he could act. For example, in Venice, towards the end of the book, Monty says, “The world could have been a blank canvas and I still would have been exactly this livid with happiness, just to be with him (Percy).” But later, when Percy asks Monty to run away, (“We’d have each other. Isn’t that enough?”) Monty responds, “No.” When I read that, I was so confused, like, dude, are you double crossing yourself? Monty’s love for Percy also seemed a bit to forward and blind in the beginning, like it was born out of pure shallow lust. I do see their relationship grow reasonably over the course of the book, but I’m glad that the book kept them as just friends until they got their problems organized. They both had a lot of character development to work through, and I’m glad that there was time for that. And here is where we get to the part where I start warming up to Monty. After finishing the book, I reflected quite a bit on this character, and I realized that Monty represented the most realistic case of character development in the book. He wasn’t a perfect character, and his character development was a bit slow, but to hate him for that would have been extremely hypocritical of me, as people change slowly in real life all the time. Rather, I appreciated the way Mackenzi Lee organized the plot so that Monty would encounter situations that forced him to see new details in the world, for example, their encounter with the pirates and Monty’s attempt to stand up for Scipio, and the talk that Felicity and Monty had in the Robleses house. I found this new type of character development very interesting and a bit difficult to see at first, but it was an important mirror to real life, and I feel that is the purpose of books.

This book was a perfect mix of YA European historical fiction and dark magic, two of my favorite things. I loved how the author wrote the book as a vessel to convey so many important and educational topics, such as racial equality, epilepsy, and European Tour history. The element of alchemy added a dark twist to the book and also spun many morals about life, death, and being ‘deserving’ of something. The author’s note at the end was honestly one of the best parts of the book. In addition to this, the imagery was beautiful. I could almost imagine that I was standing on that sandy beach in Santorini, right on the edge of the Aegan Sea. 

Over all, this book was a satisfying, adventurous read, and I think it was truly a guide not only for gentlemen, but for anyone that has to deal with issues in friendships, family, ethnicity, and illness. 

Hey, here’s a good quote! 

“We are not broken things, neither of us. We are cracked pottery mended with lacquer and flakes of gold, whole as we are, complete unto each other. Complete and worthy and so very loved.” (pg. 497)

photo by @nerd_on_books/Instagram