His relationship with Ash is strained, he lives alone with no servants, and his colleagues and those at his mercy in court see him as a zealot. Smite is only a tad close to one person, his younger brother Mark. These are books that must be read as a piece – Unraveled is firmly grounded in the brothers’ evolving relationships with one another and with Richard Dalrymple, once Smite’s closest friend and the brother of Margaret, Ash’s wife.Īsh and Mark have each found love, but, the Smite encountered in the previous books in the series seemed an unlikely candidate for intimacy. The three men are each acutely scarred by a childhood spent at the hands of a mother whose religious fervor devolved first into insane abuse, then into horrifying abandonment. Ash is an Earl with no formal education and an inability to read Mark, a ton darling who’s known for his treatise on and embracement of chastity Smite, a wealthy magistrate who shuns all material and creature comforts. My favorite of the three is the first, Unveiled my second, this tale of Smite and his unconventional love, Miranda Darling.Įach Turner is, in some way, an oddity. I found the series irresistible - taken together the books present an entrancing experience greater than that found in reading each alone. The series comprises three books and a novella and tells the tale, novella excepted, of the three Turner brothers, Ash ( Unveiled), Mark ( Unclaimed), and Smite, the hero of this novel. (Feb.Over a rainy post-holiday weekend, I read – back to back – Courtney Milan’s Turner series. While the love story is genuinely satisfying and Margaret's dilemma movingly portrayed, Milan (Proof by Seduction) leaves Ash's complex relationship with his brothers unresolved-perhaps to be explored further in sequels-and makes the conflict dependent on the unlikely scenario of Parliament legitimizing a bigamist's bastards, fatally marring an otherwise promising novel. Instantly attracted to almost impossibly kind and charismatic Ash, Margaret is torn between newfound love and loyalty to her boorish brothers. Ash has no idea that the dying duke's beautiful nurse is actually Margaret, set to spy on Ash and collect material to support her brothers' countersuit for a decree of legitimacy. Among the suddenly disinherited is the beautiful Lady Margaret Dalrymple, now shunned by society. Ash Turner becomes heir to the dukedom of Parford after uncovering evidence that the current duke's children, Ash's distant cousins, are illegitimate. Historical goofs mar this otherwise compelling Victorian romance.

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