Representation: Asian characters
Trigger warnings: Racism, racist slurs, sexism, fire, building collapse, death of an infant in the past from an illness
Score: Six points out of ten.
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

Well. I added this book to my list a few months back but I put it off for a while until I finally picked it up and read it. When I finished it, I felt that it was an intriguing historical at first but it could've done more with its pages so that I could enjoy it more and there were so many flaws in it I had to lower its rating to three stars. It starts with the main and titular character Lucy whose last name I don't know living in Sydney, Australia in the late 1880s to early 1890s when she applies for a job as a printer but here's the catch: there's a lot of sexism in the society Lucy lives in which is horrific but understandable since it's the 19th century after all. Here is where the flaws surface, I couldn't connect to any character since the author didn't write them well since they were two dimensional and almost indistinguishable other than their names. Lucy is outspoken which I can understand since she drives the narrative forward but what I didn't like was when she used the word Chinaman, a racist slur. Really? Not to mention the sexism is rampant because the men are trying so hard to block women from printing. It's ridiculous. The ending was dramatic when someone used a cigarette to start a fire in a building but at least there's a high note when the boycott against the women's rights newspaper, The Dawn, didn't come to fruition ending the novel on a high note. The few pages of the afterword were intriguing to read also. ( )

Bit similar to the "My Story" series and I'm not sure how much the girls are going to be interested in the first female newspaper published in Australia by the mother of Henry Lawson. Lucy's father is a printer and through him Lucy has learnt various jobs that will help her when she applied to work at Mrs Lawson's newspaper "The Dawn". Once there, Lucy learns all about the Larrikins who stand at the gate. ( )