Title: Unraveled Series: Turner #3
Author: Courtney Milan
Published: December 8, 2011
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 501
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Smite Turner is renowned for his single-minded devotion to his duty as a magistrate. But behind his relentless focus lies not only a determination to do what is right, but the haunting secrets of his past--secrets that he is determined to hide, even if it means keeping everyone else at arm's length. Until the day an irresistible woman shows up as a witness in his courtroom...
Miranda Darling isn't in trouble...yet. But she's close enough that when Turner threatens her with imprisonment if she puts one foot wrong, she knows she should run in the other direction. Yet no matter how forbidding the man seems on the outside, she can't bring herself to leave. Instead, when he tries to push her away, she pushes right back--straight through his famous self-control and into the heart of the passion that he has long hidden away...
It’s interesting (and lucky) to note that a “bad” book by Courtney Milan is really rather good by other standards. I must confess that Unraveled was by far the weakest installment of the Turner series for me, as well as being one of my least favorite novels by Milan, but it was nevertheless an enjoyable experience overall.
By and large, Unraveled is just vastly different than any other romance novel I’ve ever read—and I’ve read a fair few. Milan has always thwarted convention, but this time she goes a little further outside its bounds. The main couple never has an argument or a break up, they don’t reconcile in the end because they don’t need to, and there are no misunderstandings between them that aren’t immediately cleared up. (One nice thing about Milan characters is that they always communicate with each other.) Instead, the driving plot, especially in the second half, comes from the main character, Miranda’s, struggle against a crime boss who’s blackmailing her and threatening her adopted brother. Which is fine—I liked that Smite and Miranda were more or less united for the duration, but…I don’t think the author writes actiony sequences nearly as well as she writes other things, so Unraveled suffered as a consequence.
I also feel like, for the fans, Smite Turner was always the “favorite” brother. He’s the dark, mysterious one with the extremely tortured soul and the drive to mend society. But…he didn’t do much for me. I don’t deny that he was well-written and such, but either something in his presentation or in Smite himself failed to strike a note with me. Miranda, for her part, was similarly uninspiring as a character. Which, I mean, “uninspiring” in Courtney Milan terms doesn’t mean anything bad, really.
I think what this comes down to is that I’ve read several of this author’s novels before and I know what she’s capable of and I have my favorites. So the bar’s been set high, and this book, while good, did not meet up to expectations. Not that I would have thought better of Unraveled had it been my first Milan novel, but it’s hard not to compare now that I have a point of reference. In short: a solid romance novel, but absolutely not the best example of either the author’s talent or what the genre has to offer.
