Query Critique - Leigh Statham

For a start, I love this lady! She's hard working, smart, funny and a great CP! I think she's read one of my WiP's about a hundred times because I just can't get it right and keep nagging her to look at my revisions. So, I'm honored that she would allow me to use her query on my blog.
Query -Fifteen-year-old Lady Marguerite Vadnay loves spending her days covered in grease while fitting gears with the smithies. She's always had the run of her father’s steam-powered estate and millions in the bank, but as she approaches her sixteenth birthday she begins to feel the leash her social position is attached to might be poised to strangle her. Lord Vadnay, her well-meaning father, hires the best governess in France, who also happens to be the most evil governess in
France, to ensure her education as a lady. Her best friend, Claude, an orphan, tells her to grow up and be grateful for her money and secured future. Even her overly pedicured suitors make her feel her days of running wild through the fields and studying engineering in the forges are not only over, but were wasted. Not sure what to do, Marguerite grits her teeth and goes along with the plan until Claude takes a position with the Royal Corp of Engineers that will send him to New France and her governess starts to talk about a school for well bred but unmarriageable girls, which would be a fate worse than hell. Marguerite decides it's time to take her future by the reigns and make her own destiny. She never would have considered crossing the sea as a Daughter of the King, a social program set up by young King Louis XIV to shore up the colonies in New France, but now it seems her best option is to follow Claude's lead and try to catch up with him in the New World.

Marguerite prepares to take the aership voyage alone, but finds
herself surrounded by an unlikely group of supporters: a brilliant
automaton, a simpering neighbor and the annoyingly attractive Captain
Laviolette. As the voyage progresses, Marguerite learns that life
outside her father’s estate is full of people who hate her because of
her birthright, illness can strike anyone at any moment, and that love
is not something you can plan. Regardless of hardship, she sticks to
her goals and her standards until their aership is attacked by
ruthless pirates and she begins to think she’s made the wrong choice.
But the cogs of fate have been set in motion and Marguerite’s life
isn’t the only one dependent on her becoming more than a spoiled rich
girl. Her natural leadership skills and days of running wild in the
fields of Western France, studying engineering, prove to be
instrumental in saving the lives of her crew mates and herself, but
only fate will bring her full circle to the love and forgiveness she
realizes she desperately wants.

17th century New France (Canada) was constantly under attack. Young
King Louis XIV quickly realized a larger population of family
settlements, rather than single men and soldiers, was the fastest way
to thwart occupation. He vigorously recruited young women to join
their countrymen across the sea, to marry and build the population up
against invasion, for several years. Nearly 1,000 of these “Daughters
of the King” were rewarded handsomely for trekking across the pirate
infested Atlantic to a strange land. The greatest reward, perhaps,
being that they were allowed their choice of spouse. My great-great
grandmother, Marguerite, was one of these girls.

Okay so my notes -
For
a start, way too long! An agent won’t read past the first paragraph
"she begins to feel the leash her social position is attached to might be poised to strangle her" This sentence feels odd.
Switch the Sentence about Lord Vadnay to read: Her well-meaning father, Lord Vadnay, hires the best governess in France...
"Claude, an orphan, tells her to grow up and be grateful for her money and secured future. Even her overly pedicured suitors make her feel her days of running wild through the fields and studying engineering in the forges are not only over, but were wasted" - This is probably something you can either cut or summarize to make the query shorter.
"Claude takes a position with the Royal Corp of Engineers that will send him to New France and her governess starts to talk about a school for well-bred but unmarriageable girls, which would be a fate worse than hell. Marguerite decides it's time to take her future by the reigns and make her own destiny" - This would probably make a really good hook. Re word it a little and shrink it down and it would be perfect.
"a brilliant automaton, a simpering neighbor and the annoyingly attractive Captain Laviolette" - So unless you mention them again in the query, cut them. There’s already so many people mentioned. My query letter for Kiya doesn’t even mention two of my most
important characters, her love interest and the Commander who uses her to rock Nefertiti’s boat. They’re great to have in the story, but too many in the query distracts from the main plot points.
The second paragraph is more like a short synopsis. Paraphrase and summarize.
I don’tknow if you deliberately didn’t include the name, genre, and word count but I’d put
it before the last paragraph to show the end of the query and the beginning of the history.
The last paragraph is a nice little piece of history which is relevant, and you’re right to put it
at the end.










Thanks for letting me look this over, and good luck with your queries! If anyone else wishes to add anything, please feel free, I'm sure she'd appreciate the help.