Need To Read: Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1)

New week, new book!  Our next Need To Read on our ABU radar is Gail Carriger's debut YA novel, Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1). One of Goodreads YA Novels of 2013, Etiquette & Espionage looks promising and has already received some outstanding reviews.  Some readers are comparing this to Harry Potter or Downton Abbey but we'll need to see...

Summary (Courtesy of Goodreads):  

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. Temminick 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 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.

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

Carriger is known for her witty characters mixed with a Victorian paranormal steampunk style and strong and willful heroines with humor sprinkled throughout!  I, for one, cannot wait to dive into this read!