Review: A Fine Tangle by Kennedy Sutton

Title: A Fine Tangle

Series: Silver Locket Origins: Book Two

Author: Kennedy Sutton

Length: 340 Pages

Category: Historical Drama

Rating: 4 Stars

At a Glance: While I prefer more dialogue in telling a story than this book offers, the things that happen to Mickey and Hugh, and the things they make happen to survive until they meet again, held my attention and imagination like a swashbuckling pirate’s tale should.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: When the crew of King’s Glory tore their officers apart and renamed their brig Sneaky Lass, more than just rank changed for Hugh Digby. After a lifetime in the Goranese Navy, coming to terms with the piratical turn his life has taken is all the more challenging when his mind and heart stray to his brother-in-law and complicated lover, Mickey, even after Hugh sent him back to Alouett to care for his growing family.

The path of Mickey Compton’s life has never been smooth, mostly due to his own impulsiveness. Meaning to put all of the disasters with Hugh Digby behind him, he arrives in Alouett, heart set on being a responsible family man, but finds only tragedy and expense once again.

Taking the first job he can find, Mickey finds that fates are not done with him, and after a run-in with a pirate fleet, he is left wondering if he would have been better off remaining on Sneaky Lass with the man who occupies his mind, Hugh Digby.

As Mickey and Hugh struggle to find footing on their new paths and to reconcile the places each occupies in the heart of the other, they’re left to wonder if it’s a knot worth untangling at all.

Review: A Fine Tangle reads very much like the Act II bridge it is in the overall arc of the Silver Locket Origins trilogy. It’s a book that shows some, tells much more, and could just as easily have been one of the many journal entries Mickey Compton composes as it is a novel that recounts his and Hugh Digby’s hardships and misfortunes.

Mickey and Hugh spend all but the last pages of this book separated by fate and life’s demands on them, including the birth of Mickey’s daughter while Hugh is at sea pirating. Life is harsh in the alt-world Kennedy Sutton has created, never more so than when death waits and watches for its opportunity to strike. Death and brutality both come calling often as the two men mourn their separation and struggle to persist and move forward.

This installment of the series doesn’t reveal more than I already knew about Mickey and Hugh from A Glorious Mess, but the two men are presented with more than enough adventure and hardship to keep the story afloat until their inevitable reunion. The secondary characters take on more dimension in A Fine Tangle, specifically Bennett Holt, Hugh’s shipmate and best friend. Ben is a tortured soul who has never met a horrible choice he wouldn’t make, and he consumes his self-loathing like a poison. Hugh taking on the role of Ben’s conscience was, in some ways, as much for Hugh’s wellbeing as it was for Ben’s, and I’m looking forward to discovering the significance of Ben’s silver locket, for which the series is presumably named.

While I prefer more dialogue in telling a story than this book offers, the things that happen to Mickey and Hugh, and the things they make happen to survive until they meet again, held my attention and imagination like a swashbuckling pirate’s tale should.