As I said in my review of Tied (My thoughts on Tied), that book really left a
bad taste in my mouth to the point where it made me feel like I needed to take
a break from reading the Tangled
series before I would read and review “Holy Frigging Matrimony”. Honestly, I was
originally going to wait a little while longer before I read and review this
story. Pretty much the only reason that I decided to review it now is because I
wanted to listen to something on my iPod while I vacuumed my basement the other
day, so I figured that listening to “Holy Frigging Matrimony” would be a good
choice since it’s a short story; that being said, here are my thoughts on the
story.
Going into this story, I was
really hoping that Emma Chase would be able to redeem both herself and Drew as
a character at least a little bit after the extremely disappointing Tied. I recently discovered that Emma
Chase has read the reviews that I’ve written for each book in the Tangled series, so I’ve honestly been very nervous to write this review. The
reason why I’ve been pretty nervous to write this review is because unfortunately,
I don’t think that there’s a lot to like about “Holy Frigging Matrimony”.
The story itself is rather
pointless in my opinion. Drew, Kate and their friends are all going to a
celebration for the second wedding that Matthew and Dee were having since they
had eloped in Vegas at the end of Tamed,
which had apparently devastated Matthew’s mother since she wasn’t able to see
her only son get married. At the risk of sounding really shallow, my favorite
part of the story was definitely the sex scene between Drew and Kate at the
beginning of the story. Despite the fact that the Tangled series wouldn’t be considered erotica and the Fifty Shades trilogy is considered
erotica, I honestly think that the sex scenes in the Tangled series are a lot steamier and written a lot better too. Admittedly, I thought that Drew pouring his mimosa
on Kate’s breasts was kind of hot. However, I thought the fact that he also
poured some of his drink on Kate’s crotch during the sex scene was kind of
gross though.
For the record, the sex
scenes in the Tangled series aren’t the
reason why I’ve read all of the books. The main reason why I decided to read
and review each of the books in the Tangled
series is because I’ve been a huge fan of romance novels and romantic comedies
for many, many years. Plus, the fact that the Tangled series was written primarily from the guy’s point of view
was really appealing to me as a reader since it’s something that I hadn’t seen
before when it comes to romance novels. As much as I love romance novels,
there’s no denying that it’s a genre that’s often full of clichés and severely
lacking originality. By writing the series primarily from a guy’s point of
view, I feel like Emma Chase has offered fans of romance novels something new
with the Tangled series.
That being said, it kind of
bugged me that Drew tried to stop Kate from taking a shower after they had sex
since she was apparently all sweaty. Personally, I hate going somewhere without
taking a shower if I could easily take a shower after I’ve been sweating a lot,
so I don’t blame Kate for wanting to take a shower. Even if I don’t stink from
sweating a lot, I still feel a lot better and more refreshed if I can just take
a shower. I’m guessing that Kate’s skin would probably also be a little sticky
from Drew pouring the mimosa on her breasts and near her crotch, so Kate taking
a shower seems like a good idea to me. Personally, Drew objecting to Kate
taking a shower made me feel like he was kind of channeling Christian Grey in
that moment.
One of the other reasons why
I like reading the Tangled series so
much is because I think it’s a great way to take a break from the crappy
writing for the Fifty Shades trilogy.
I definitely don’t want to be reminded of Fifty
Shades when I’m reading the Tangled
series. The only exception to that would be the conversation that Matthew has
with his mother in Tamed about Fifty Shades of Grey. Their conversation
about Fifty Shades of Grey is
definitely one of my favorite parts of Tamed,
because Matthew’s reaction to his mom talking about Fifty Shades of Grey is absolutely hilarious and priceless.
Another part of the story
that I really enjoyed was the part where Drew talks about how he likes it when
women wear high heels, because that’s something that I personally can relate
to. While I really like it when women wear high heels, I especially love it
when women wear leather boots, but I digress.
Unfortunately, I feel like
the story pretty much only went downhill after Drew and Kate have sex. Much
like I did when I was reading Tied, I
felt like Drew was being a straight up asshole in this story, not the lovable
asshole that I know he can be at times. He was just being a straight up,
obnoxious asshole for the most part with the comments that he made about Dee
and Billy throughout this entire story.
The way that Drew talks
about Dee and Billy really makes him come across to me as being a mean-spirited
bully who thinks he’s better than everybody else. Honestly, I wouldn’t be
surprised if Drew had been established at some point in the series as someone
who had bullied his classmates when he was in high school simply because he
thought that they weren’t cool enough for his standards. There’s no denying
that Drew can be extremely cocky at times. A big part of why I hate it when
Drew starts acting like a mean-spirited bully is because I was bullied and
teased by my classmates a lot as I was growing up, especially when I was in
high school. His behavior towards Billy and Dee reminds me a lot of the crap
that I had deal with growing up when it came to being bullied, so I can’t help
but feel sorry for Billy and Dee when Drew makes rude comments about either of
them. That being said, it would be unfair of me to not acknowledge that Dee
also made some rude comments about Drew at one point in the story, so she’s not
entirely innocent either. It’s just that I think Drew tends to go too far when
it comes to some of the comments that he has made about Dee, and especially
Billy.
However, since Drew is the
protagonist for most of the Tangled
series, I don’t think that Emma Chase would want to go that route with Drew’s
backstory. I think it’s safe to say that we’re supposed to like Drew. Don’t get
me wrong; I do like Drew a lot as a character. It’s just that I had an easier
time dealing with Drew’s attitude towards Billy in Tangled when Billy truly was his romantic rival, but after Tangled I feel like his attitude towards
Billy and Dee just became ridiculous and pointless. Sadly, Drew has just ended
up annoying me a lot when it comes to his behavior in both Tied and this story.
As I said in my review of Tamed (My thoughts on Tamed), I definitely thought
that Dee acted annoyingly crazy at times, so I can kind of agree with Drew for
saying that Dee is crazy. However, like I said earlier, I feel like Drew goes a
little overboard with some of the comments that he makes about both Dee and
Billy, which is why I think he can be an obnoxious asshole at times. That being
said, Dee does do something at the end of the story that definitely doesn’t
help prove that Drew is entirely wrong for thinking that she’s crazy, but I’ll
talk about that more in a little while.
Once everybody went to Dee
and Matthew’s reception, Drew and Billy ended up getting into what I would
basically consider a catfight over Kate in front of everybody. Drew was the one
who threw the first punch, and both he and Billy continued to trade insults with
each other, and Drew ended up mentioning all kinds of personal details
regarding his and Kate’s sex life while they were fighting. Eventually, Amelia
Warren broke up the fight, and personally I loved the way she chewed Drew out.
Unfortunately, Billy got chewed out by Amelia, too.
After that, Drew and Kate fought
about the fact that Kate is still friends with Billy. Drew ended up presenting
Kate with a hypothetical ultimatum about what she would do if he ever made her
choose between their relationship and remaining friends with Billy. This pissed
Kate off, and it also really pissed me off, since she and Billy have been friends
for many years, going back long before she even met Drew. Kate told Drew that
she would pick him if he did give her ultimatum, but she also told him that she
would resent him for it. Honestly, I can’t say that I’d blame her. Don’t get me
wrong, I get that it makes Drew uncomfortable that Kate and Billy are still friends
since she used to date Billy.
However, like Kate pointed
out, she has a very long history with Billy, both as his ex-fiancée and childhood
friends before that. I think it would be extremely self-centered on Drew’s part
if he actually gave Kate an ultimatum like that. As I talked about in my review
of Tied, I could understand Drew
having a problem with Kate remaining friends with Billy if Billy had proven to
be a genuine threat to their relationship. Since Billy hasn’t proven to be a
threat to their relationship, Drew’s behavior regarding Billy just comes across
as being selfish, immature and petty, especially since he’s constantly taking jabs
at Billy, both internally and to his face. He really does seem stuck in the
past, while both Kate and Billy have clearly moved on from their relationship.
Drew seriously needs to just let go of his issues with Billy.
Despite the fact that the
events of this story take place before the events that take place in Twisted and Tied, it’s obvious that Drew and Kate’s fight about Billy didn’t
have any long-term effect on Drew changing his attitude towards Billy in Tied, which makes me like that book even
less than I did before. That being said, it was interesting to read this story
knowing that Billy ended up being right when he said that Drew would probably
end up eventually screwing up and hurting Kate, which he did in Twisted. Sure, Drew and Kate obviously
got back together, but Billy was still right about Drew hurting Kate and for saying
that he would be there for Kate when Drew screwed up.
As I said earlier, Dee
doesn’t exactly prove Drew wrong for saying that she’s crazy. The story ends
with both Drew and Billy discovering that Dee had keyed their cars, writing the
words “Grow up” into the side of both of their cars. While that definitely was
a little crazy of Dee to do that, I honestly can’t say that I entirely blame
her since they made a huge scene and kind of ruined hers and Matthew’s wedding
reception. I’d be pretty pissed off too if two people got into a huge fight and
made a scene at my wedding. At the risk of sounding crazy myself, I wouldn’t
blame Dee if she had gone really crazy and set both Drew and Billy’s cars on
fire. Given how annoying I find Drew’s attitude towards Billy, I’d probably
volunteer to help Dee with pouring gasoline on Drew’s car to start the fire.
All things considered, I
honestly found this story extremely disappointing. I felt like Emma Chase took
the things that I hated and found annoying about Tied and put them all in this story. As shallow as I might sound
for saying this, I thought the best parts of the story were the sex scene and
the part where Drew is commenting on women’s shoes. Other than that, this story
is pretty bad in my opinion.
That being said my final
score for “Holy Frigging Matrimony” is 2 out of 10.
