I mean, I feel like bully-turned-lover romance isn’t my favorite trope ever because of how inherently problematic it is, but wow, does Courtney Milan know how to do it right. He understands the weight of his actions. Evan works to demonstrate his feelings and maturation, and also doesn’t feel entitled to Elaine’s love at the end of it all. This is a book where a previously awful main character doesn’t just show up and expect his love interest to fly back into his arms, nor does he expect that an apology will solve all of the issues at hand. Just because he’s remorseful doesn’t make everything better right away. But in Unlocked, Evan apologizes profusely and often, and he also understands that Elaine isn’t obligated to accept his apology or spend any more time with him than she wants. The difference in that situation was that the protagonist in the other book never apologized for their actions. I’ve read another historical romance novel where the protagonist absolutely ruined another person’s life, then disappeared for several years before coming back. Basically, everything the reader seems to know about Evan hints that he’s a terrible person.Įxcept he’s genuinely remorseful and works for a period of several months to prove this to Elaine.
And then once he realized what he’d done, he ran away rather than facing up to reality and apologizing to Elaine. In short, he was in love with Elaine and wanted to get her attention but also wanted to keep his love a secret, so he…made fun of her. Why should she?īecause Unlocked is narrated in dual-perspective from both Elaine and Evan’s points of view, the reader is able to understand Evan’s motivations in this situation as well. Like any smart woman, Elaine doesn’t buy it. Then, after a year, Evan left England, but now a decade later, he comes back and apologizes for how he behaved. The rest of society joined in, until it was the height of fashion to make fun of Elaine, and she began to hate herself so much that suicide seemed like a viable option.
Always a bit different, Elaine was proud of herself until Evan Carlton, the Earl of Westfield, began to bully her. Lady Elaine was first introduced in Unveiledas a sort of unlikeable friend to the protagonist, but now in Unlocked, Milan is able to really explore Elaine’s character and bring out her past. Even a tricky romance like this, between a woman and the man who bullied her mercilessly, comes out all right when written by this author. Unlocked is a truly delightful story about second chances, forgiveness, and absolving for past mistakes. Even in an abbreviated form, Courtney Milan knows what’s up.
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