"My Contrary Mary," by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, & Jodi Meadows (Mary #1)

Audience: Young Adult

Genre: Historical Fiction

Overall Content Rating: Somewhat Clean

Content Warnings

Death

Murder

LGBTQ+ Topics

Lesbian relationship

Minor Profane Language

One instance of WTF (literally says the letters) and they play it off as meaning "what the frog"

Sexual Content

speaks of mistresses

talk of people spectating as the married couple "does it"

mentions thinking about sex a lot

Substance Use

an offered flask of "liquid courage"

Overall Review

My Contrary Mary is a book that I've been looking forward to reading for a long time, and while I don't believe it was as good as The Lady Janies series (reviews coming... eventually haha), it was still pretty good. There were some parts where I was frustrated enough to put the book down, but with all good books, there's gotta be some plot development, and apparently, the turn of events contained in this book tended to make me mad.

However, this book did shock me with the amount of sexual content that was mentioned. In past books by this dynamic trio of authors, there's been no mention of such things, so I'm not sure whether they thought that it was called for or not, but it was a major plot point (needing an heir to the France & Scotland thrones). Nothing was graphic, but it was implied many times that they needed to do "the thing" and even one instance of the current King wanting to spectate as they (his son and the queen of Scotland) "did it." Overall it wasn't handled badly, I just didn't appreciate how much of a central point it was. However, I'm not sure that it's something that could've been logically substituted for something more tame.

The reason I'm arguing that this book is "Somewhat Clean" is that the number of things that were mentioned were handled (usually) well. The death wasn't graphic and the characters genuinely had to grieve the death, the sexual content was uncomfortable even for the characters in the story, and the one instance of profane language wasn't even actually written out but instead spelled and explained as something else. While arguments may be given otherwise, my opinion is that because they handled it well, it's not a Moderately Clean book and is instead Somewhat Clean.

My favorite part of this book (as with the Lady Janies series), was the humor that was spread throughout the book. The characters had fun, but they also had hardships. Despite it all, there were instances where the narrators inserted their own thoughts and they brought a form of levity into the story. I'll leave what they say in the book to be discovered by those who read it, but suffice it to say that there's plenty of sarcasm, irony, and other general humor sprinkled in across the course of the book.

Overall, I'm quite happy with this read regardless of what things I didn't like about it. While some things irked me a bit, there was still a story element that kept me reading through and dragged me forward whether I wanted to finish or not. When I wanted to skim, there was the part of me that didn't want to miss any of the things I wanted to read about, so, I kept reading.

Hope this review helps and see you next time!