Unraveled, by Courtney Milan

[rowyn]

This is the third and last book in the Turner series I've been reading. It's also my favorite of the three. The characters are refreshingly forthright about what they want, and there's a lot of good banter. The characters are lovable and their motivations clear and intelligible.

One of the things I like best about Milan's work are its contra-trope facets. This one works against the idea of the "broken hero that only the heroine can fix through the power of LOVE". The male lead in Unraveled had a traumatic childhood, and he's quite plainly traumatized by it. But he's got established coping methods, functions fine in society despite the trauma, and doesn't regard himself as "broken". Neither does the female lead. It's cute.

Another thing: in each of Milan's books, there is at least one point where one of the leads has the opportunity to pick up the Stupid Ball. This is a chance to do something profoundly awful that the protagonist doesn't really want to do. The protagonist is given a handful of quasi-sound justifications for picking up the Stupid Ball. The reader, however, can tell that doing so will damage the relationship between the two protagonists, betray the trust of one of them, and benefit no one in the long term. This will happen around two-thirds of the way through the book, so the reader knows there's still time to patch over the damage from the Stupid Ball, and it's frankly exactly the sort of stupidity one expects in a romance novel. (Like "let's be irrationally jealous of this clearly platonic relationship!") The protagonist will then consider all of the reasons to pick up the Stupid Ball and run with it. And then, the protagonist will go "Nah, forget that, it's obviously a terrible idea." THIS IS SUCH A RELIEF. It's as if your favorite sitcom looked like it was about to use that plotline you hate and you're already cringing in anticipation of how bad it will be, and then it's all "HA FAKE OUT" and the episode is about something good instead.

Unraveled does have a poorly-developed sideplot with a resolution that's simplistic and naive, so I'll mark it down for that. But the central romance is delightful. I'll give this one an 8.5.

Comments

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with jacket blurbs is that they are, after all, a form of advertisement. I've all too often read jacket blurbs that sounded like FASCINATING setups ... and then I read the story and felt that some of the blurb details were misleading if not outright lies about the actual contents of the book. (I've felt the same way sometimes about fantasy/sci-fi novel COVERS, but I know that historically, sometimes that was honestly because the cover art WAS NOT specifically made for this story, but rather the publisher had a stock pool of "fantasy/sci-fi art" and would just slap on something that might remotely fit the story ("close enough!") or be generic enough not to matter.)

If I'm going to read any sort of "blurb" about a story, I'd prefer it to be from a third party who's giving his or her spoiler-free assessment of the story (after actually reading it, I hope). That's pretty hard to get shy of personal recommendations, though.

As for the personal recommendation part, I'd say 75% of the books I've read in the last few years have been because Gwendel got it and said, "Here, read this." (I am not counting comics & graphic novels in this. For some reason, our taste in comics and graphic novels varies more widely than our tastes in conventional written novels.)