A review by elerireads
The Nobleman's Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks by Mackenzi Lee

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

So this portrayal of anxiety made me so anxious I struggled to keep reading it in places, which I suppose means it was very good. I know it can be quite frustrating dealing with the irrational ways a person with anxiety might behave, and I felt this did a pretty good job of showing what's going on in their heads in those moments. [Although I do always find with attempts to write about anxiety and intrusive thoughts that there's an ... over verbalisation? That's probably not the right way to put it but basically anxious thoughts are written out in italics as complete sentences, which is obviously a reasonable representation in some cases but often I think it's taking the easy way out of having to attempt to express the inarticulate mess of half-formed panicky thoughts and feelings that clump together into a big ball of dread. It's not really a fair criticism to level at this book in particular, especially as it's acknowledged at the end that this was based on personal experience and not necessarily intended to be representative, but all the same it does fit into a pattern that's somewhat lacking imagination.] Adrian was a really good main character for this. His life is good by pretty much all "objective" metrics; he's a rich white man, he's physically healthy and able, he's engaged to a woman he loves, he's talented and he's driven by a sense of purpose. And yet, he's scared pretty much every waking second of his life. Although he's managing to function pretty much like everyone else, it takes him so much more effort than it does for most other people, and that's not visible to them at all. Mackenzie Lee deserves a lot of credit for this.

I enjoyed the story and although I don't normally enjoy this kind of borderline fantasy where everything is mostly realistic but there are a few supernatural elements, I quite liked the way the Flying Dutchman was handled. It's sort of real and not real at the same time and it worked well.

I was quite unimpressed with how unpleasant and cruel Monty was at the start - it was completely uncalled for and I thought he was supposed to have mellowed out into a much better person by this point. However, it did allow for a nice story arc of sibling bonding and learning to see past differences to understand that fundamentally they're very similar. I would have liked the mother to feature more heavily as an actual person, given that it's a quest driven by grief for her and she's really the common factor linking the siblings. It's a first person narrative from th PoV of a character supposedly deeply grieving the recent loss of his mother and yet I feel I know nothing about her besides the fact she was also an anxious wreck, and feel no connection to her as a real person.
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