The Holy Terror

ETA on 4-24: Free on Amazon! Grab it!Historical romance isn't my least liked genre though it's nowhere near my favorite, but every now and then I feel the need to read something that isn't YA or fantasy and I branch out into the world of corsets, cravats, and carriages. I generally don't enjoy the time I spend there, and I often find myself at odds with fans of the genre, but thankfully this short story has high ratings because it's a tale that people who don't automatically love the genre can still enjoy. Milan's characters are well-developed, the plot is intriguing, and she writes in an easy-to-digest and quickly moving manner that makes it difficult to stop reading. And let's not forget the incredibly hot sex! Thank you for the realistic scene, Milan.Let me get this out of the way though; the heroine is raped and she feels guilty and blames herself, though she never lets what happened define her. Don't click the spoiler if you want to go into this blind, but you will learn that info early on. I think the most important thing to remember is that this is a story of damaged people who haven't been broken beyond repair.The relationship between the heroine, Serena, and her shut-in sister, Freddy, was one I found particularly interesting, as they each see the other as having deficiencies while they themselves are living the "right" way."Do you not understand what happened to you?" Freddy glared at her. "You suffered a fate worse than death, and still you—""I am alive," Serena said. "My child is alive. I intend to carry on living. Can you say that much?"..."You always put things at risk. If you fell out of a tree as a child, I'd clean you up and bandage your knees, and next I looked you'd be out climbing again. You never learned your lesson."Oh, she'd learned her lesson: Climb harder....How could they be sisters? It seemed impossible that they should view the world with such fundamentally different eyes.The conversations between these sisters added a dimension to this romance that I think really helped to flesh out Serena's character. I thought it was a clever way to develop the heroine when Milan didn't have that many pages to do so.I enjoyed the witty banter between the hero, Hugh, and Serena very much, and their notes back and forth to each other were some of the highlights of the story. I also thought that what we got of Hugh's backstory was sufficient; sometimes I don't need someone's entire life spelled out for me. When he recounted his memory of his mother I even teared up a bit, though I think I'm just a softy when it comes to moms (I've felt emotional at parts that dealt with moms where others didn't.)I also liked that Hugh wasn't some gorgeous, overly tall, enormously endowed man and that Serena wasn't a "plain Jane" that nobody but the hero paid attention to; they're just average people who fall in love in an albeit unaverage way.This is a novella so it's obviously not going to be as developed as a full-length novel, but Milan uses her 100 or so pages masterfully. Many people enjoyed this romance for good reason, and I think if someone like me who doesn't typically like historicals found it entertaining I think others will as well, and I'm excited to see what else she has to offer.