Reviews with content warning for Religious bigotry - The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

Ooo! A book got 5 whole stars! Usually, that means it did something extraordinary, and it did exactly that! I have never been so sure I wanted to buy a book in my life!

Beyond that, I suppose I should talk about the book. This book is utterly fascinating for a variety of reasons. For one, it's grounded in history but it's not bleak for the characters of color. Slavery is mentioned, as it somewhat has to be for a book set in the 18th century, it's not weighing heavily on the narrative. A second thing is that

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20sidedbi's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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a_bloom's review

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

The writing is absolutely PHENOMENAL and so freaky funny. It's also heart reaching, but you can always kinda see it coming. It's technically a long book but something you could get through in a couple of days.

<Spoiler>It also talks about a lot of interesting topics that were seen as taboo (although some of them aren't brought to a whole lot of detail considering the whole book is told from the perspective of a traumatized white teen boy who's an Earls son... But he slowly starts to learn, grow, and mature as he keeps ALMOST DYING.

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kaii's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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melodiereads's review against another edition

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adventurous tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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nickoliver's review

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adventurous funny slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Upon reading this book for the third time, three years after the last time, I was a lot more critical. Thad had mainly to do with two things: One, I really heavily dislike Mackenzi Lee nowadays (she constantly does problematic and offensive things, halfheartedly apologises for them, and then never learns from her mistakes) and want to not own her books anymore, yet couldn't bring myself to get rid of them before writing a proper review about them first.
And two, I had since heard from a lot of people that they didn’t like the way Percy being Black was being portrayed, so I wanted to keep an eye on that. (Honestly, now that I’m finished with it, I’m appalled that I could read this book twice without ever realising how bad it was).

Needless to say, there was a lot that pissed me off in this book.

However, let me start with the things I did like about it even on my third read.

I still found the characters to be very funny. While especially Monty was extremely infuriating for the most part (more on that later), I did think his quips were hilarious. Some of the back and forths between characters - be it between Monty and Felicity, Monty and Percy, or with any of the people they met on the Tour - made me crack up. When it came to humour, Lee could be pretty skilled at times.

Secondly, the book was fast-paced and very entertaining, especially after a particular scene at Versailles. It was a fun adventure! Lee did sometimes skip a bit too much for my liking - I would’ve liked to see more hardships they faced while traveling than just the whole “people are racist to Percy and sexist to Felicity and we couldn't wash ourselves a lot” part of it -, but for the most part, it was great. I’m pretty sure that when I first read the book back in 2017, that was partly the reason I could read the book in one sitting (well, that and the fact that I’d just been really in the mood for the book and had anticipated it for a while).

I also liked the characters themselves, or rather, how fleshed-out they all were. Even the ones that only showed up at parts of the story felt like people and not cardboard cutouts. Sure, some of them quite obviously just served a role - like the villain who acted overly dramatic at times to show just how villainous he was, or the pirate who wasn't really a bad guy at all but instead became a father figure -, and the way Percy was portrayed was a bit too heavy on “I’m a chronically ill Black dude who has to teach his best friend/crush about the fact that racism exists, and that several times with no success”. But for the most part, I never found anyone to be lacking a personality. Or a soul. And someone like Helena also added a bit of nuance and three-dimensionality, because it was easy to understand where she was coming from with her actions while simultaneously also understanding the criticism of what she did.

Lastly, I honestly adored the way Monty’s trauma was portrayed and handled. He had an extremely abusive father, both in the physical and the emotional way. He got brutally and violently beaten a lot and got told repeatedly that he was an abomination and useless and a disgrace. As expected, those weren’t things that he just shook off once they left England. He had severe trauma that came up several times during their trip, sometimes also in more subtle ways that weren't supposed to teach a lesson. For example, he would flinch when someone raised a hand in his vicinity, even if they didn’t mean to hit him with it. And due to the emotional abuse, he had extremely low self-worth and didn’t think he deserved anything or anyone. I really liked the way that was shown in the book - and not just shown, but the way other characters helped him try to overcome his trauma. Especially the scenes that involved Scipio made me tear up a little sometimes.

However, now we’re gonna go to the bad aspects of the story. Let’s start with the obvious: Monty’s utter lack of understanding for Percy’s dealings with racism and refusal to see it.

There were so many situations where Percy was being discriminated against in front of Monty, and the way Lee handled it was so bad all the time. There was that one time in Versailles when rich people were being racist to Percy and he didn’t defend himself, and Monty’s takeaway from it was basically “I would totally tell them where to shove it, so the fact that Percy isn’t doing that makes it his fault!” Even after both Percy and Felicity explained to him in quite simple terms that that would not have ended well for Percy, he refused to listen. And you know, I could have understood this if it had happened once and throughout the book, Monty would’ve acknowledged his white privilege. But not only did he never do that, he and Percy never really dealt with that? There were countless discussions where Monty didn’t understand what Percy’s problem was, but not one conversation where Monty acknowledged his ignorance.

This wasn’t even just when it came to Percy, but also to Scipio. Despite people explaining to him why Scipio didn’t like it that Monty had to pretend

to be leading the ship

, he still expected praise and thanks and didn’t understand what was so bad about having to pretend to be his inferior. I think his flat-out refusal was just supposed to be read as him being spoiled and privileged and therefore a bit difficult to be around, but instead, he came across as someone who was confronted with racism but just ignored it because it didn’t affect him, personally.

Like I said, if Monty had grown out of that throughout the story - if by being with Percy and Felicity and constantly being surrounded by racists and sexists, he would have realised his own ignorance and started to change and stand up for what’s right -, I could’ve been okay with one or two scenes like that. Like the Versailles scene, for example. It could’ve shown Monty’s character development. But quite genuinely, Monty’s view of racism at the end of the book was pretty much still the same as it was at the beginning. Did he undergo character development? Absolutely. But only when it came to his own self-worth and maaayybe the way he treated Percy due to his chronic illness. Not in one bit when it came to his own ignorance of issues that didn’t worsen his own life. Quite frankly, it was very hard to root for a romance like that, because Percy deserved someone way better than Monty.

Since I’m already talking about Monty, let me keep going, because the boy gave me some trouble.

Aside from his ignorance, he was also extremely self-centred. Again, I think that was done on purpose, so I’m not sure how much of his personality I can actually criticise without wondering if the point flew over my head. But so many times he and Percy talked, the conversation always ended up being about him, even if it started out being about Percy. It’s not that I couldn’t stand Monty at all - like I mentioned, he was pretty funny and charming -, but it was exhausting at times to have everything revolve around him. He often didn’t really listen to the others or steamrolled over their emotions or opinions just because he didn’t feel like paying attention or because he didn’t agree with what they wanted to do. For example, he was absolutely flabbergasted when Percy told him he didn’t even want

the panacea

and got mad at him, despite the fact that Percy had mentioned before that he didn’t want to

take a life

and never seemed as enthusiastic about

the panacea

as he did. It’s like he only paid attention to what he wanted and just assumed everyone wanted the same. It's why he constantly expected praise for situations that either stemmed from necessity (see the above scene with Scipio) or where the other characters quite obviously did not feel the same way. And if he was aware that that wasn’t the case, he just ignored it.

To be honest, I didn’t quite understand what Percy got out of their relationship. Why did he want to be with a guy who ignored his needs, wanted him to be cured of his illness purely because he didn’t want to have to deal with it, and pretended to not see the racism permeating the air around him? Again, this made wanting these two boys to be together just harder.

Speaking of Percy’s chronic illness, I didn’t really like the way Lee handled that, either. I had a big interest in the storyline revolving around it, because I’m an epileptic myself and have very rarely seen it portrayed in books. Admittedly, my epilepsy isn’t very limiting to me - I’m on meds, sure, but I haven’t had a seizure in over a decade. And no one has accused me of being possessed by a demon, either. So it’s not like the way epilepsy affected Percy’s life was in any way similar to my life, but I was curious to see how it was going to be portrayed. The answer was … conflicting.

On the one hand, it was very frustrating. After learning about it, Monty spent most of the book trying to cure Percy instead of trying to learn about it or ask Percy what he wanted. For the most part, we just saw the way it affected Monty’s life instead of Percy’s. There were a couple conversations where he opened up about it, but it was mainly just Monty obsessing over having Percy be healthy again so he didn't have to lose him and so he didn’t have to deal with a chronically ill best friend/crush.

On the other hand, it didn’t feel exactly ableist? Of course there was ableism in the story, and Monty’s actions were frustrating, but, spoiler alert, Percy didn’t end up being epilepsy-free. And Monty didn’t end the story with some kind of vow to find a cure for him. And, even more importantly, at no point in the book did Percy desperately wish for a cure. He knew life was harder with epilepsy, but he didn’t think he was unloveable with it or that his life was over just because he had seizures. I just think Lee wasn’t very good at talking about it nuanced - kind of like with the racism issue, except maybe a bit better. She had good intentions, but maybe she should have included more discussions that actually included Percy himself. Or shown him be okay with having epilepsy instead of merely mentioning it.

The last thing I didn’t like about the book was a bit of a random thing. For some reason, it really bothered me that Lee used the American spelling. And I get it! She’s American! Of course that’s how she writes! But at the same time, the story is about a bunch of English teens, so it always kind of threw me off to have American spelling. It somehow made it seem less genuine and authentic? And it’s not like having a British spelling would’ve been so challenging, either. So it was just a bit of a weird choice for me.

Overall, I feel very conflicted about this book. I’d absolutely adored it when I first read it, so I do have some good memories attached to it. And even upon rereading it a second time, I did find some aspects that I still really liked! But the abysmal way Lee dealt with racism and at times ableism made me angry, and it especially made it hard to want the romance to happen, because you can’t help but think that Percy deserved someone better than that. Also, Monty was an extremely challenging character - even more challenging than I think he should’ve been. I gave the book 5 stars when I first read it, but I’m gonna lower that to 3.5 stars due to the issues I had with it.

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