Unraveled by Courtney Milan
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Genre: Historical Fiction/Romance Main characters: Miranda Darling, Smite Turner Time and place: Bristol, 1843 First sentence: “Well, Billy Croggins, why are you here again?” Verdict: Enjoyed it a lot, yet a bit less than the rest of the series. |
Summary
“It’s a sweet tale, about kittens and puppies and rainbows and love.”
Well, there are some stray cats at one time. And a dog. And a rainbow of sorts ( :) :) ). And love enough to conquer all.
Miranda Darling lives in ‘the other side of the town’, the area where the poor live and the bad smells abound, the streets where the law is more of a guideline than a rule. A mysterious person called the patron makes the rules there, and Miranda has no choice but to obey. They have a sort of agreement that she will serve him once a month — and usually this ‘service’ he needs of her involves a brush-up with the law. Nothing truly bad, but nothing completely clean either.
Smite Turner spends his days as a magistrate in Bristol. He is so devoted to his duty that people joke around him that he’s married to his work. He has a fantastic memory, that allowed him to see through Miranda’s disguise when she almost committed perjury in his court. He warns her off it, and she knows that it’s in her best interest to mind his warning. And yet the Patron sends her out again…
General impression
Ah, the book of Smite. I bought it a few months ago and been waiting for a special moment to savor it, like a treat. And quite a treat it was, for the most part. However, my expectations were sky high, so it’s little wonder that I ended up a wee bit disappointed.
Characters
One of the reasons I like this series is that Ms. Milan knows how to build compelling, multi-dimensional characters.
Smite has a painful past, that still gives him nightmares. Their family was poor, the mother was going mad, and no one ever helped them. As a child, he went to the town elders to beg them to intervene, lest he or his brother should end up hurt by their mother. But no one listened to him, and his mother punished him savagely when she found out. Now an adult, Smite takes great pains never to forget that. He lives an austere life, almost devoid of comfort, because he worries that if the nightmares will stop he will forget how important it is to be just to the under-privileged, to always hear their side of the story too.
In his own words:
“I do not fear what comes at night. I dread its absence. I fear being caged by luxury. I fear that one day I will no longer understand desperation, and with that, I will slowly stop listening to what others have to say.” [...] “I don’t regret what circumstances have made of me, inconvenient though they may be. I make a difference.”
Miranda too is a fighter. A child of actors, she has been raised on the road as she was travelling with her parents troupe. However, she was lucky enough to be well educated, as one of the men in the troupe was an ex-Oxford teacher, no less. She had a happy childhood, but everything changed when she lost her mother. Her father simply stopped functioning; the troupe broke. Miranda was left at sixteen to fend for herself and for Robbie, an eight year old boy whose mother abandoned him. It’s only then, faced with the real world, that she discovers how sheltered her prior life was. And yet she does her best, with courage, despite the fact that Robbie treats her surly and she’s always terrified about what he might decide to do next.
Relationships
As usual, the family dynamic among the Turners is one to be enjoyed. There are some frictions still between Ash and Smite, as the former still feels the need to help the latter somehow, to compensate for not being there for him when they were kids, yet even these are resolved by the end of the book (which sadly is also the end of the series *sigh*).
And then, of course, there’s the relationship between the two main characters. A relationship that I was happy to notice was, despite the conditions they have met in, based on trust. When Miranda sees him in a less-than-honorable situation (throwing up in the bushes) Smite, the upright, the efficient, cannot let her wonder what was that about1, and also cannot lie, so he tells her about his childhood trauma and the effects on him. Later on, he unwittingly hurts her, due to another unfortunate reflex the same trauma instilled in him. And, as the author puts it, he didn’t have enough experience dealing with women and feelings, so instead of doing what others might have done, buy her a trinket, he went to her and risked real intimacy. Told her his story, to make her understand. And thus he had a chance to discover that not only she didn’t think him “broken”, but admired him because he had faced everything he did and turned his trials into strength. I liked that the author took care of this earlier rather than later, getting it out of the way, letting the characters actually know each other throughout the book, rather than having them — or at least Smite — wear a mask for the most part.
You know, if there is one thing I very much LOVE (yes, with caps :) ) about Ms. Milan’s books, it’s this: the characters always communicate wonderfully. There are none of the pretenses found elsewhere (you know, the ‘I’ll act in a completely different way than I want to, to protect X’ kind of things). When Jessica was blackmailed in Unclaimed, she told Mark so. When Miranda was blackmailed, she went straight to Smite, although she knew he might send her away. When Smite thought it was best for Miranda to go, find someone else, less flawed than himself, he told her so, straight on, without trying to hide the effect this’ll have on him. And so on. If only more authors would do this rather than have their characters dissemble.
Plot
I think that the reason part of the book fell flat for me is the subplot regarding the Patron: there supposedly is this guy who runs a sort of crime cartel, and who Miranda has unwittingly struck a deal with when she was younger. And now she tries to get out of it, and bad things start happening. And, of course, Smite would want the Patron caught and entrusted to the long arm of the law. And the reader is supposed to be curious about who the Patron may be, etc etc. However, other than Miranda and her ‘ward’, Robbie, there is only one other family introduced in this book. A family that lives in the same area as Miranda and the Patron, and a family that knows Miranda’s every move, as one of the members is her best friend and confidant. Which is why it was beyond obvious all the way who the culprit was + it made me want to give Miranda a shake every time she had a talk with the best friend — alas, so many moments she spent revealing her secrets to her enemy. And I knew that, and of course I did not enjoy it.
What I liked
First of all, ever since first finding out about the Turner brothers’ names — they were named by their mother, who had a sort of religion mania — I was curious what might Smite’s name be. And now I know, and I am happy to say that it is far less violent than I imagined:
“The Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every living thing, as I have done.”
It’s a Bible verse about what God told Noah, after the flood. Making Miranda exclaim, after she found it out, that Smite was named after the rainbow :) :)
Miranda’s name is not bland either. Her full name is Miranda Darling, and Smite usually calls her that. She always wonders whether he means Miranda Darling, as in her name, or Miranda-comma-darling, with an endearment term. Not that Smite is one for endearments, but he too enjoys the ambiguity of it.
Also, I loved Smite’s sense of humor, his sarcasm that he uses to strike at those who annoy him. He and Miranda are a perfect match from this point of view too, as she too can be (and is) sarcastic (but not cruel), and as such their banter is one of the things I enjoyed most in the book. I am actually sorry there is no fourth Turner brother (or sister. or distant acquaintance.), which means I’ll never get to see Miranda teasing Smite about his sentimentality quota2 again *sigh*.
A quote, to get an idea:
“An act,” Miranda repeated. “Stand as tall as you like, and frown at me all you wish. I saw you just now. You were feeding cats.”
“So I was. And do you make something of that?”
“You,” Miranda said daringly, “have a kind heart.”
He turned away from her, the tails of his greatcoat swirling about him.
“Don’t enlarge too much upon the matter. The cats were hungry. I had food. This seemed to be a problem with a ready solution. It’s not kindness to solve problems; it’s efficiency.”
“I stand corrected. You have an efficient heart.”
Thoughts on the title
Throughout the series, I have complained about the names being too ‘stock’ to be truly interesting. This book is the exception, as I totally love the title :) The reason? For once the author has clearly explained what the title refers to. It is the state of mind Smite finds himself in after he sent Miranda away:
“At the moment,” he muttered numbly, “I may be coming a bit unraveled.”
Which is probably the best declaration ever, coming from someone as in control of himself as Smite always was; and I was absolutely delighted by it.
Thoughts on the ending
The ending (other than the HEA I was looking forward do and was happy to get) felt a bit contrived. Again, it’s about the matter of the Patron, that was solved in a way that made everyone happy (everyone but me, the reader, who thought the stars have aligned a bit too well in this particular case)
show spoiler
Recommend it to?
All the historical romance lovers, of course. Although I recommend reading the previous books (Unveiled and Unclaimed) first, to get a sense of the family dynamics. The book is enjoyable by itself, but it is even more so if you know the back story.
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This book is a sequel to:
Unveiled | Unlocked | Unclaimed
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- or well, he probably could, but I imagine deep inside he was longing to share his secret with someone else [↩]
- this sentimentality quota Smite has is a cool thing in itself. When he was thirteen, just starting at Eton, he devised this strategy where each day he had 30 minutes allotted to complain about how tough things were, while the rest of the time he worked to fix the problems he no longer allowed himself to complain about [↩]
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