It’s Monday and I don’t have a full review for you today. However, I do have several mini-reviews of books I’ve listened to in the last few weeks! You can read some previous selections of my Monday Mini-Reviews here, if you’re interested in more of these.
The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy – Mackenzi Lee
I had high hopes for this sequel to The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, which I thoroughly enjoyed when I read it last year.
This book was more about Felicity unlearning her own internalized misogyny than anything else, and while that’s valuable, I wanted more from it. I would have enjoyed this story more from Johanna or Sim’s perspectives. However, I loved the domestic pictures we got of Percy and Monty.
The only main secondary characters who were injured were the people of color, which had me gritting my teeth every time. I loved The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, but I only lukewarmly liked The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy. I expected more from it, and I was disappointed.
Palace of Illusions – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
I’ve loved several of Divakaruni’s other books and her beautiful writing. Palace of Illusions was no exception. Panchali was an interesting narrator, voiced by Sneha Mathan, and the writing was stunning.
It was very focused on the gender binary on a story level and on an incidental level, which bothered me. Panchali was changing the world, but it was through “women’s power.” Everything was “women are the only ones who do this” and “men have this power,” and while the reality of the caste system makes some of that a reality for Panchali, it was excessive for me. That’s what kept me from giving this a heart eye rating. However, I would not recommend this to trans and nonbinary readers.
