Tied: It’s a real shame that the cast of Bridesmaids never showed up, because that probably would have made this book A LOT better (My thoughts on Book #4 in the Tangled book series by Emma Chase)

 

As I said back in my review for Tangled (My thoughts on Tangled), that book and the way it was written reminded me a lot of How I Met Your Mother. If you read my review for Tangled, you might remember that I also said that I really hoped that when I eventually finished reading all of the books in the Tangled series, I wouldn’t be left feeling so disappointed by the ending of the series that I would be wishing that I had never taken time to read the entire series in the first place like the series finale of How I Met Your Mother left me feeling. Right off the bat, I’ll say that while I found myself being incredibly disappointed by Tied, it thankfully didn’t leave me feeling so upset by the way the series ended that I wish that I never invested my time in reading the entire Tangled series in the first place. However, I’ll say right now that in my opinion Tied is definitely the worst book in the series. That being said, I should probably mention that technically I still have to read the short story “Holy Frigging Matrimony”, but since this book is last book in the series and “Holy Frigging Matrimony” apparently goes back to an earlier point in Drew and Kate’s relationship, I’m going to consider Tied to be the end of series.

If had to say right off the bat what one of my biggest problems with Tied is, it probably would be that I feel like the overall plot of this book is very cliché and paper-thin, and it’s severely lacking conflict that’s genuinely interesting or entertaining. That’s a real shame, because one thing that I’ve always loved about the Tangled series is that it’s written almost entirely from a man’s point of view, which I’ve always felt helped put a fresh spin on a genre that’s often full of clichés and severely lacking in originality. Honestly, Tied reminded me a lot of the movie Bridesmaids when I was reading it given how the book focuses a lot on Drew and Kate’s bachelor and bachelorette parties, as well as their wedding, which takes place in the epilogue. Personally, I think the movie Bridesmaids is much more entertaining and funny than Tied is. Tied feels like more of a 256 pages long epilogue to the series than anything else, which I think is pretty weird given the fact that this book has an actual epilogue. However, the book also included some flashbacks to when James was a baby, and he’s two years old now, which allows the reader to see what Drew and Kate are like as parents.

One thing that I loved about Tangled and the epilogue in Twisted was getting to read about Drew’s views on relationships, women and life in general. While Drew has definitely always had a tendency to be a bit of an asshole at times, he’s at least always been willing to admit that he can be an asshole at times, and I still thought that he was a very likable protagonist in Tangled and Twisted. However, I have to say that when I was reading Tied, I suddenly found myself frequently thinking that he wasn’t a likable asshole any more, he was just being an obnoxious asshole most of the time throughout the book.

For starters, his comments about women in this book just seemed rude, disrespectful and immature, especially after how much he seems to have grown and matured throughout the series. The following quotes from Tied are the ones that probably bothered me the most:

“Bikinis as far as the eyes can see - some I wish I didn’t see. Remember, ladies, two-piece bathing suits are a privilege, not a right.”

“Women are like Kleenex - soft, disposable, a convenient place to come.”

“She’s sort of hot - in an aging-hooker, been-around-the-block, her-pussy-is-probably-as-wide-as-the-Lincoln-tunnel kind of way.”

I apologize for not including the page numbers for those quotes. I bought the audiobook version of Tied like I also did with the first three books in the Tangled series instead of buying the actual book, so I don’t know specifically what page each of those quotes are on.

Personally, coming from Drew, those comments might not have bothered me as much as they did if he had said those things back in Tangled. At this point, those comments really seem out of character for Drew given how much he has allegedly grown throughout the series. I say allegedly, because this book really made me question if Drew truly had grown throughout the series, or if he had simply convinced himself that Kate had changed him for the better. Drew’s behavior in Tied seriously left me thinking that perhaps Kate hadn’t actually changed him for the better after all, and perhaps he was just in denial about not having changed.

It really bugged me that Drew kept insisting that his bachelor party wasn’t really for him, and that it was mostly for his friends. However, when it actually came time for his bachelor party, he ended getting tied to a chair and is given a lap dance by a stripper, who from what I understood puts her crotch in his face. Yeah…Drew…What your friends really wanted and needed was for you to get tied to a chair and be given what seemed like a rather gross lap dance. You sure are a generous guy, aren’t you?

There were times when Drew’s behavior in Tied reminded me a lot Christian Grey’s behavior in the Fifty Shades trilogy, especially the part where he got upset about the fact that Kate was going to get a massage from a male masseuse and basically guilt-tripped her into requesting a female masseuse instead. Drew’s behavior regarding the whole massage thing really bugged me when I was reading that part, and it bugged me even more after I read the part where Drew gets the aforementioned lap dance at his bachelor party and ends up getting aroused by the whole thing. When it comes to those particular incidents, Drew’s behavior really made him seem like a jealous, hypocritical asshole in my opinion.

Honestly, while I thought a lot of Drew’s comments on women and other various aspects of life were interesting, clever and amusing, if not outright funny in Tangled and Twisted, a lot of Drew’s comments in Tied felt pretty forced, offensive, or they just fell flat. As I was reading Tied, Drew’s comments frequently made him come across as a comedian who was doing a standup comedy routine and was just completely bombing for the most part, if you ask me. If Drew was doing a standup comedy routine and was saying some of the things he said in this book, I think he would end up making a lot of people in the audience very uncomfortable.

While I’m still on a complaining train, Drew’s entire attitude towards Billy throughout the book was one of the many things that made him seem like a major asshole. He was frequently making fun of Billy, both internally and to his face, which really made me feel sorry for Billy. At one point in the book, he decides that he’s going to help Billy meet women. I know that some of the people who wrote reviews for Tied on Amazon really liked this aspect of the book, and I’ll admit that I was really excited to see how that would play out after I read those reviews given Drew and Billy’s history with each other. However, I ended up being extremely disappointed by this aspect of the book when I was reading Tied.

I probably would have liked the parts of the book where Drew was giving Billy advice about meeting women if his motives for helping Billy weren’t so self-serving and if he had been nicer to Billy when he was giving him advice. He pretty much flat out admits to one of his friends that the reason he’s helping Billy meet women is because he thinks it will get Billy out of the picture and that it might lead to Kate rewarding him with sex for helping Billy. I’m really glad that one of Drew’s friends pointed out how ridiculous his attitude toward Billy was at this point, because I definitely have to agree given the fact that:

1.    It’s been several years since Billy and Kate broke up, and unless Emma Chase omitted any details about Billy trying to cause problems for Drew and Kate, there’s no reason to believe that Billy is a genuine threat to Drew and Kate’s relationship.

2.    Kate chose to be with Drew, and she hasn’t given any indication that she’s still interested in Billy in any way.

3.    Drew and Kate have a kid together.

4.    They're about to get married.

Honestly, I don’t know what else Drew could possibly need for him to get over his issues with Billy. Admittedly, I’m not always the best at moving on from the past when it comes to dealing with people that I don’t like, but it seems to me like Drew is still stuck in the past, while Kate and Billy have clearly both moved on. The way Drew was acting throughout the book really made me want to tie him to a chair and force him listen to the song “Let It Go” from Frozen on an endless loop for 48 hours straight. Hopefully, that would make him realize how ridiculous he’s being. Billy seems like a really nice guy, and I found myself feeling really bad for him when it came to how Drew was treating him and mocking him internally throughout the book. It also kind of made me wish that Emma Chase had written a book from Billy’s point of view where he meets someone else and falls in love with them. Most of the time when it comes romance novels, the guy is portrayed as being rich, very good looking, charming and can talk to women easily, so I definitely think that it would have been something truly unique for the genre if Emma Chase wrote a book from Billy’s point of view.

One of the biggest problems that Tied has is the fact that the story suffers from a lack of real conflict, which made this book a major chore to get through. Most of the book really revolves around Drew and Kate bachelor and bachelorette party antics with a few flashbacks here and there to show what it was like for Drew and Kate when they were adjusting to being new parents after James was born. It was established that Drew and Kate both decided to adjust their work schedules after Drew’s erratic work schedule was causing him to rarely be able to be home when James was awake. I liked the flashbacks, especially the one where they decided to change their work schedules, because I felt that they showed how Drew has changed for the better throughout the series, at least to a certain degree. However, the flashbacks didn’t add all that much intrigue to the story for me personally.

While it definitely annoyed me at times that the main conflict in both Tangled and Twisted stemmed mostly from Drew and Kate not communicating with each other very well and them (Mainly Drew) jumping to conclusions because of the lack of communication between them, at least there was enough conflict to make the two books interesting and enjoyable to read. With Tied, the actual conflict that Drew had to deal with was very short-lived and it took place toward the end of the book. Drew got blackout drunk at his bachelor party, woke up in his hotel room and discovered that the stripper from his bachelor party was in his shower.

This caused Drew to freak out, thinking that he had once again screwed up with Kate by sleeping with the stripper. He panicked, thinking that unlike she did with his previous mistakes, Kate wouldn’t forgive him this time. This whole thing ended up being resolved within a matter of pages though. It turns out that he hadn’t slept with her, and that Billy and the stripper had impulsively gotten married. As stupid as this whole thing was, it did cause Drew to change his attitude towards Billy, which is nice, but I think it’s pretty stupid that the only reason Drew’s attitude towards Billy changed is because he realized that he hadn’t slept with the stripper and that she was there with Billy, not him.

One part of the book that I liked was the conversation that Drew had with Alexandra, A.K.A. The Bitch, about her recent behavior towards Steven. Steven had found a pregnancy test that was negative in the trash, but he was unsure of how to handle the situation since Alexandra had apparently been acting like he couldn’t do anything right. Drew found Alexandra crying at one point in the book, and they ended up talking about what was going on. It turns out that after Alexandra took the pregnancy test that Steven had found in the trash, she went to the doctor to see if she might be pregnant after all, only to discover that she was going through early onset menopause. Drew encouraged Alexandra to talk to Steven and tell him what was going on with her. I thought that this part of the book was surprisingly sweet, and it was one of the rare times in the book where I felt like Drew wasn’t acting like a major asshole.

We also got some follow-up on what’s going on in Matthew and Dee’s lives now that they are married, which was definitely one of the few highlights of this book for me personally. They were in process of adopting a baby, and apparently Matthew’s father was a real jerk about the whole thing when they announced to their friends and family that they were adopting a baby. Apparently, he thought that unless Dee had issues with infertility and couldn’t get pregnant, it was her duty as a wife to have kids; otherwise in his mind Dee was just being self-centered for not wanting to have children that were biologically hers and Matthew’s. However, it doesn’t sound like Dee or Matthew had fertility issues, and Matthew’s dad apparently did eventually accept their decision to adopt a child.

Drew and Kate’s wedding took place at the end of the book in the epilogue, and as much as I dislike this book and got really bored reading it, I did like the epilogue. Drew and Kate’s wedding vows to each other were very sweet, and the way Drew described details of their wedding, wedding reception and their wedding night really made me feel like Drew was finally acting like the guy I had loved in Tangled and the epilogue of Twisted instead of acting like the obnoxious asshole that he was for most of this book.

As I said at the beginning of this review, Tied feels like more of a 256 pages long epilogue to the series than anything else. Given how paper-thin the plot is, I honestly think that Emma Chase should have just combined some of the ideas in this book with the events that took place in Twisted instead of writing an entire book about Drew and Kate’s bachelor and bachelorette parties and the events of their vacation as a whole in this book. If you’ve read my review of Twisted (My thoughts on Twisted), you may recall that I really think that book would have been much better if Chase had alternated between Kate and Drew’s point of view from one chapter to the next, so I think that she could have easily included some of the moments between Drew, Kate and James from this book, as well as Drew and Kate’s wedding in Twisted, and she could have just left out all of the stuff with Drew and Kate’s bachelor and bachelorette parties since I felt like that was all a major low point for this book. Plus, none of the books in the Tangled series are very long, so I don’t think that integrating the aspects of this book that I’ve mentioned into Twisted would have made that book outrageously long. Maybe people will disagree with me, but I just don’t think that a lot of the stuff that happened in this book was interesting to make a whole book out of it like Chase did.

In the epilogue Drew mentions that Jack and Erin are in a no strings attached relationship, which definitely intrigued me. However, I found myself not being able to remember who Jack and Erin were, much like I wasn’t able to remember who Matthew and Dee were when I first found out that Tamed was about their relationship. As I said in my review of Tamed (My thoughts on Tamed ), my inability to remember Matthew and Dee was probably due to my getting so invested and focused on reading about Drew and Kate’s relationship in Tangled and Twisted that most of the minor characters ended up becoming forgettable for me personally. That being said, I would definitely be interested in reading a book that focuses on Jack and Erin’s relationship if Emma Chase ever decides to write more books for the Tangled series.

All things considered, while I do think that Tied is a rather disappointing end to the series, I definitely don’t regret taking the time to read the entire series, and I’m definitely going to read  “Holy Frigging Matrimony”. I know that I’ve been pretty critical when it comes to my comments regarding Tied, but I just didn’t like this book very much at all, and I simply can’t deny that it has a lot of problems, in my opinion. While I wouldn’t say that Tied completely ruined Drew as a character, it definitely tarnished my opinion of him quite a bit. Drew is no longer a lovable asshole; he’s just an asshole for the most part in Tied, especially when it comes to his entire attitude towards Billy. Drew’s commentary to the reader on women and life in general wasn’t all that engaging and entertaining like it was in Tangled and Twisted, instead it felt rather forced and offensive at times.

My biggest problems with this book are definitely a combination of Drew being frustrating and unlikable for the most part, the plot is paper-thin and the story itself lacks genuine and engaging conflict and was simply a major bore and a total chore to get through. Tied truly did feel like a 256 pages long epilogue to the series when I was reading it. When I was reading, or to be more accurate listening to the audiobook versions of Tangled, Twisted and Tamed, I got really sucked into the story and was excited to see what was going to happen next with each book. With Tied, I found myself constantly getting bored and I had a really hard time focusing on the book. Even writing this review felt like a bit of a chore for me given my dislike and frustration with Tied. If I had to briefly sum up my thoughts on the Tangled series they would be as followed:

• Tangled is definitely the best book in the series.

• Twisted is a rather disappointing follow-up to Tangled, but it’s definitely not the worst book in the series.

• Tamed is definitely a major improvement over Twisted, but it’s not as good as Tangled. It’s definitely my second favorite book in the series.

• Tied is without a doubt the worst book in the series.

Tied definitely left a rather sour taste in my mouth, so I’m going to take a bit of break from the Tangled series before I read and review “Holy Frigging Matrimony”.

The next book that I’m going to start reviewing is The Wonder Garden by Lauren Acampora. Since it’s a book of short stories, I’m going to review each story individually, similar to how I’m commenting on each chapter of Fifty Shades of Grey individually. The title of the first short story in The Wonder Garden is “Ground Fault”. I’ll probably go back and forth between reading and reviewing each short story in The Wonder Garden, chapters of Fifty Shades of Grey and eventually “Holy Frigging Matrimony”.

That being said, my final score for Tied is 2 out of 10.