The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

Monty Montague is heading across Europe on his Grand Tour, and he intends to make it count — one last year of gambling, debauchery, and freedom before his tyrannical father reins him in for good. Traveling with his best friend Percy and his sharp-tongued sister Felicity, Monty's plans for uncomplicated pleasure are immediately complicated by the one thing he can't drink or charm his way past: he's hopelessly, secretly in love with Percy. What begins as a romp through 18th-century Europe quietly becomes something more urgent — a story about what it costs to suppress who you are, and what you stand to lose if you keep doing it.

Mackenzi Lee writes Monty with a voice that's hard to put down: witty and self-deprecating on the surface, genuinely wounded underneath. The prose has the pacing of an adventure novel but the emotional precision of literary fiction, which is an unusual combination that pays off over 500 pages. Lee earns her queer historical romance by grounding it in period-accurate stakes — the danger feels real, not decorative. Readers who came for the banter will stay for the heart.