Trial by Desire (Carhart #2) By Courtney Milan

2 out of 5 stars

Cut to the Chase:

This is the first full-length novel of Milan’s that I’m actually unable to recommend. Though there are a lot of good aspects here, there is just too much unevenness... the subplot (helping an abused wife and child escape from a violent, unstable husband) overwhelms the main story. The characters are left without time to fully develop on their own, and we’re left to infer a lot of their romantic journey.  The heroine feels very hazily drawn (sometimes she’s a firecracker, sometimes she’s an actress, other times, she seems genuinely unsure and immature). She’s got a cause (helping abused women), but little else to recommend her. Similarly, our hero struggles with demons of his own... and overall, the characters struggle more with their internal conflicts than with each other; their story ultimately feels more annoying than intriguing.

Greater Detail:

I’ve been wondering how Milan would make Ned Carhart, who plays the fool in Milan’s debut novel, Proof of Seduction, into a viable hero. The last time we saw him, he was a bit of an impulsive fool -- he was deeply depressed, and had taken to visiting a fortune teller named Jenny (our protagonist in Proof of Seduction), who had told him there were happy times ahead. Trying to prove that Jenny could, indeed, predict the future, he tried to entrap his cousin in marriage with a young woman Jenny had predicted would be the future countess. He fouls it up, and ends up ruining the woman, and having to marry her himself. 

The problem with the initial portrayal of Ned’s character is that he’s almost too foolish, and very, very difficult to relate to -- similarly, we have an uneven introduction to Kate (why would she marry this man? or agree to meet him in a possibly compromising manner to begin with?)

Though three years pass, it feels clear that both characters are still somehow trapped by their initial characterizations.

And the subplot, though interesting, is sooooo interesting compared to our somewhat bland main characters that it’s difficult to focus on them. Louisa, the wife who is escaping her abusive husband, the infant boy she’s trying to protect, even the abusive husband (Harcroft), who has such a well done socially-acceptable-mask,vare super interesting, and super involving, so that when we cut back to the main romance, it’s almost hard to care. When they finally do sleep together again for the first time in three years, it’s right after a particularly violent scene with Harcroft making all sorts of threats and it actually felt inappropriate (which is saying something, for lovemaking to seem misplaced within a romance novel)! All I cared about, by then, was how the subplot was going to resolve, which though interesting, means that the main thrust of the story, the romance, was a bit of a failure.

Comparisons to Other Authors/Books:

The fully fleshed out characters make me think of the better of Lisa Kleypas’s, Julia Quinn’s or Sherry Thomas’s works. Milan has a heck of a vocabulary on her, and everything is just very smoothly written (like Lisa Kleypas in terms of well drawn characters, but a little less hit-me-with-a-thesaurus than Sherry Thomas). Sensuality-wise, she’s definitely below Stephanie Laurens and probably more similar to Julia Quinn. Humor-wise, I’d say she’s somewhere along the lines of a Tessa Dare (who she’s apparently friends with... but a little more serious). And drama-wise, she has setups that remind me of Kat Martin or Amanda Quick, but these resolve in a less-dramatic-and-more-believably layered way. My favorite is still Unclaimed, followed by Unveiled and Unraveled. The only Milans I would avoid are Unlocked and What Happened at Midnight (both novellas)... and my favorite novella by her is undoubtedly A Kiss for Midwinter.