The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee
Genre: YA historical fiction
Representation: Aro ace protagonist, POC side characters, wlw and mlm side characters
First reading: September 2019, ebook, 4.5 stars
Second reading: December 2020, audiobook, 4.5 stars
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Drug abuse, mutilation of a dead animal's body, non-consensual kissing, sexism, racism, aphobia, mention of homophobia, mention of child abuse. Also a foot injury was mentioned, which really upset me as well for some reason.

Plot:
The plot is quite good, although a few elements seemed out of nowhere.

Spoiler

Like the dragons, which seemed really out of place in a historical fiction book like this. I didn't think it was supposed to be fantasy.

Characters:
Felicity Montague: I loved her, although the internalized sexism wasn't good, but I really like that it was handled at all. But besides that, she's aro and ace, just like me, and back in September 2019, when I first read this , she was the first ace or aro character I'd ever read about before, so she really meant a lot to me. She also gets a very nice character arc, if not as dramatic as Monty's in the first book.

Sim: Unpopular opinion: I hated her. Because of

Spoiler

she forced a kiss of Felicity. She. Forced. A. Kiss. On. Felicity. That scene was so triggering to read. And why was that scene even included, isn't the author aware of corrective rape against asexual people? It was overall a very harmful scene. She also made a lot of aphobic comments and was just horrible in general. And some people actually ship Sim and Felicity? Excuse me, on what universe would that make sense? That's really offensive because Felicity is aro, and maybe some of us want representation instead of romances everywhere. Besides, I think it would be a very toxic relationship anyway because Sim kissed Felicity right after Felicity talked about how she didn't like kissing, ect. As if she could "change Felicity's mind". Anyway, sorry about the rant.

Johanna Hoffman I really loved her! I loved her relationship with he dog, Max, and how she's strong andfeminine at the same time. Overall I thought she was a great character.

Setting: Besides the thing that felt out of place that I mentioned in Plot, I don't really have much else to say about the setting.

Writing:I thought that the writing style was very nice, not as flamboyantly humorous as the first book's, but still never boring.

Extra thoughts: I considered giving this four stars because I found a lot of triggering content, even though it isn't really all that bad or anything, it happened to be things that affected me, which reduced my enjoyment of the book, but I decided to add an extra half-star because it used to be one if my favorite books, and because it does have aro ace representation.

Would I recommend it: Yes, of course, as long as you have read The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue and you're okay with the triggering content.