[Audiobook review] Etiquette & Espionage by Gale Carriger

Etiquette & Espionage
Finishing School Book 1
Gale Carriger
February 5th, 2013
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Amazon/Book Depository/B&N

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.

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners--and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine's, young ladies learn to finish...everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but the 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.

Set in the same world as the Parasol Protectorate, this YA series debut is filled with all the saucy adventure and droll humor Gail's legions of fans have come to adore.

I love Gail Carriger's soul protectorate series, so when she came out with a YA novel set in the same world I was excited. I was not disappointed because Etiquette & Espionage read like her adult novels just with younger cast members. The humor and mystery that I have grown to love was all over this book.

Sophronia can't stay out of trouble, her mother is fed up, and she decides to send her to finishing school. Sophronia soon learns this school is no ordinary finishing school, but a school for young ladies to finish and become skillful in the arts of espionage.

I found parts of this book hillarious, especially when one of the teachers is teaching the young ladies the art of faintingor where to stash a hankerchief. "Ladies must never wipe their faces. Only dab my dears, only dab." Moria Quirk does a wonderful job narrating. She really captures some of the ridiculousness and makes the story that much more funnier. Etiquette & Espionage is a fun romp filled with mystery in a quirky steampunk world. The best way to describe the story is think Nancy Drew meets a steampunk finishing school. I give Etiquette & Espionage the audiobook four laser pistols and look forward to finding out if Sophronia will get herself out of trouble next time.