Author: Mackenzi Lee
Narrator: Christian Coulson
Audiobook Length: 14 hours 38 minutes
Return to the enchanting world of the Montague siblings in the finale to the New York Times best-selling and Stonewall Honor-winning series, featuring a teenage Adrian Montague as he desperately seeks the now adult Monty and Felicity – the older siblings he never knew he had.
Adrian Montague has a bright future. The sole heir to his father’s estate, he is an up and coming political writer and engaged to an activist who challenges and inspires him. But most young Lords aren’t battling the debilitating anxiety Adrian secretly lives with, or the growing fear that it might consume him and all he hopes to accomplish. In the wake of his mother’s unexpected death, Adrian is also concerned people will find out that he has the mental illness she struggled with for years.
When a newly found keepsake of hers – a piece of a broken spyglass – comes into Adrian’s possession, he’s thrust into the past and finds himself face-to-face with an older brother he never knew he had. Henry “Monty” Montague has been living quietly in London for years, and his sudden appearance sends Adrian on a quest to unravel family secrets that only the spyglass can answer.
In pursuit of answers about the relic, the brothers chart a course to locate their sister Felicity. But as they travel between the pirate courts of Rabat, Portuguese islands, the canals of Amsterdam, and into unknown Artic waters, the Montague siblings are thrown into one final adventure as they face a ghostly legend that threatens their whole family.
The Nobleman’s Guide to Secrecy and Shipwrecks is the third tale in the Montague Siblings trilogy. This novel was interesting as it reads slightly different than the first two in the trilogy. It follows the youngest Montague sibling, Adrian, who is investigating a mysterious spyglass associated with the Flying Dutchman left behind by his mother after she committed suicide. This leads him to learning about the two siblings, the other two Montagues, Felicity and Monty, that he did not know he had. Adrian was introduced in novel one as a baby, so it was nice to see him getting his own adventure nineteen years later.
As Adrian is not prominent in the first two novels, it took a bit longer to gain a connection to him; however, it did not take long for him to grow on me as a character. His anxiety is written with a lot of care and emotion. There is a lot of heart in the writing, which can be a bit much for some readers as there is a lot of detail. Some may find it triggering and others may not prefer that style, but I enjoyed this inclusion on the page. The story does a great job of following Adrian on his emotional journey of trying to deal with mental illness in a world that does not fully understand it. On top of this, he has his adventure to find the mystery behind the spyglass plus reconnecting with his two siblings.
Even though a large amount of time has passed, Felicity and Monty were still the same. On one hand, they still acted like the teenagers from their novels, which did not match the timeline. On the other hand, it made a fair amount of sense as neither of them seemed the type to mature a lot no matter their age. Even after finishing, I cannot figure out if I enjoyed this part of the story or not, but I chose to ignore it, in a way, when looking back on the story (others may not read it the same way). Overall, this was a nice ending to the trilogy. While it does not have quite the same feel as the first, it does feel cohesive with the other two novels. I enjoyed the author’s style in the trilogy and look forward to reading more in the future.
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