The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel has so much voice, the kind that’s funny and unapologetic. I really do want to hug this book, which is problematic since I listened to the audiobook.

The MC is a charming rake who gets himself into mess after mess, and I adore the fact that one of the side characters is his sister. That’s so rare in YA these days…to have a really relevant character be a sibling, and for that sibling to go along on the adventure. It added a nice dynamic.

These teenagers were appropriately teenagery, and I loved how the dated time period still felt so fresh and easy to exist within. These are the kind of characters who steal away little pieces of your heart, and you don’t even mind.

Pages: 513

(PS: This story has pirates, really inept pirates, but they’re relevant to the storyline.) 

You Deserve a Drink by Mamrie Hart

You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery by Mamrie Hart

Mamrie Hart describes herself as “a drinking star with a YouTube problem,” and this does indeed appear to be true. Hart is the founder of the YouTube series You Deserve a Drink, and she has compiled her best drinking stories into a novel. The book is set up to be a drinking game and a cocktail recipe starts off each chapter. Every time she references an old TV show, mentions a food product that can be found at 7-Eleven, or refers to a reproductive organ by a slang term, the reader is meant to take a swig. With stories ranging from a spring break spent at a gay nudist resort to celebrating Day of the Dead in Mexico with her friend Maegan, where a group of swingers mistake them for a lesbian couple, boozy misadventures abound. As Grace Helbig notes in the forward, “None of what you’re about to read is exaggerated, fabricated, or G-rated.”

288 pages.