The Lady's Guide to Petticoates and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

  Felicity Montague wants to be a doctor more than anything in the world. Medicine is her one true love. Alas, Felicity is a woman in 1700s (I'm not completely sure of the time period) England and Scotland. It is a time when many men don't think medicine, outside of herbal practices and midwifery, is a suitable job for a woman. Felicity tries to plead her case to numerous doctors and hospitals. She's read all the medical texts could get her hands on. She has reattached a man's finger and mended broken men in the field of battle. Despite her passion and obvious intellect, none of the doctors or hospitals will take her on as a student.

Felicity hopes that she has finally found a way in. Johanna, a childhood friend is engaged to marry Dr. Platt, Felicity's idol. Felicity decides to crash the wedding and plead her case to Platt. Unfortunately, Platt is a let down. Not just because he, like so many of the other men in the story, can't conceive of a woman being a doctor, but because he has nefarious motives of his own in marrying Johanna. Felicity pushes forward and finds her tribe of sorts in the form of two other smart, ambitious women, Johanna and Sim. Together the three of them go on a wild adventure that takes them to Germany and the Barbary Coast.

The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy is the second in the Montague Siblings series. I enjoyed the first book, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue but this one was even better. It was full of adventure, sometimes involving petticoats and dragons! It was messy and gross they way I imagine life actually was during this time period. (The streets are literally filed with mud and decomposing animal parts. Very few baths seem to have been taken during this time period.) There is never an easy path for Felicity, at least not any that she wants, and I appreciated that because that's real. No man comes and saves her and says, yes, I'll let you be a doctor. There's also a bit of interesting comments about race. At one point Felicity finds herself in the minority - she's the only one (or very few) white woman in a group of Africans and she feels very alone. Felicity  realizes how Sim (who hails from the Barbary Coast) must feel most of the time. Another time Felicity catches herself when they meet another African woman and Felicity assumes that the woman and Sim must be related simply because they are both African.

I enjoyed the reading the author's notes almost as much as I enjoyed the story itself. Mackenzi Lee's story isn't just wishful thinking. Turns out there were women who pioneered in medicine, naturalism, and piracy. Some of these women were inspirations for the characters in the story. I'm excited for the next book in the series, though I can't imagine it will match up to this one.