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A review by lizshayne
The Turner Series by Courtney Milan
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I feel like the rating for this series is almost entirely about "how much tolerance do you have for people not having conversations"
Which Milan is very aware of, especially by the third book, and threads the needle pretty deftly in justifying why (it's usually reasonable fear and trauma, so points for that).
And also there were moments of "have you people considered not hurting each other to protect each other!? Maybe?"
A significant amount of what I appreciate about Milan is that she has such fun upending tropes as well - often the places where you would expect the separation to show up are the moments where her characters say "yeah, so what?" Which is very nice.
And also this was a series about three brothers, each traumatized by a fundamentalist mother in a different way, and each coming to terms with their (lack of) religion in their own way and like, there was just so little about the theology. Which I know she talks about as distancing herself from "inspirational romance" (meaning Christian...*laughs in Orthodox Jew*) and this very clearly is not that and also...some non-inspirational romantic conversations about faith would be very nice.
(Also, now that you've written Hamilton's Battalion, go back and write Richard Dalrymple's story!)
Which Milan is very aware of, especially by the third book, and threads the needle pretty deftly in justifying why (it's usually reasonable fear and trauma, so points for that).
And also there were moments of "have you people considered not hurting each other to protect each other!? Maybe?"
A significant amount of what I appreciate about Milan is that she has such fun upending tropes as well - often the places where you would expect the separation to show up are the moments where her characters say "yeah, so what?" Which is very nice.
And also this was a series about three brothers, each traumatized by a fundamentalist mother in a different way, and each coming to terms with their (lack of) religion in their own way and like, there was just so little about the theology. Which I know she talks about as distancing herself from "inspirational romance" (meaning Christian...*laughs in Orthodox Jew*) and this very clearly is not that and also...some non-inspirational romantic conversations about faith would be very nice.
(Also, now that you've written Hamilton's Battalion, go back and write Richard Dalrymple's story!)