Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger Book Review



 Title: Etiquette and Espionage (Finishing Academy #1)
Author: Gail Carriger 
Book Rating:  ♥♥♥
ARC

It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to Finishing School.

Sophronia Temminnick at 14 is a great trial more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners -- and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Her poor mother, desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady, enrolls the lively tomboy in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.
But young ladies learn to finish...everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage -- in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year's education.

This book was my introduction to the steampunk genre, one which I'd never really paid much attention to. Having never read a book by Gail Carriger previously, I was unsure as what to expect when this book was described to me as a mixture of ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Gallagher Girls’ series (which I love) so I was really excited about getting to read Etiquette and Espionage. Now I have to tell you that they were wrong.

This is because Etiquette and Espionage cannot be described as being like another as it is a very individual book. Carriger wrote in an engaging yet unique style which took me a couple of pages to get used to. I love how she brought such different ideas together like the Victorian era, with werewolves and espionage made it at first an unexpected and then an easy to love read. 
I enjoyed Sophronia’s refusal to be a proper young lady, as was expected in the Victorian era because she would have rather taken apart mechanicals than spent hours learning to curtsy. Throughout the book Sophrania is on an adventure and I wish I could have joined her at the Finishing Academy as she went along her lessons (which are so much more exciting than mine!)
            I would recommend this book for anyone who is looking for something different to read after being constantly surround by various books, which end up having the same plot.



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