Let me start off by saying
that I really went back and forth on trying to decide when I would read and
review Sylvia Day’s Entwined with You
since it was a book that I was very interested in reviewing given the fact that
I had already reviewed Bared to You and Reflected in You,
I really enjoyed them, and my reviews for both of those books have gotten a lot
of page views. Plus, it has been somewhat of a goal of mine to review both this
book and the fourth book in the Crossfire
series, Captivated by You, by the
time the fifth and final book in the series, One with You, is released on April 5th. That’s
definitely going to be coming up before we know it, so I decided to go ahead
and listen to the audiobook version of Entwined
with You this past weekend; that being said, here are my thoughts on the
book.
Right off the bat, I have to
say that while my feelings about Reflected
in You were definitely mixed, my feelings regarding Entwined with You are very, very, very mixed. One of the things
that bothered me the most about Reflected
in You is the fact that there was so much drama and angst going on between
Eva and Gideon in that book, and the story itself was rather lacking when it
came to there being truly happy and romantic moments between them, which really
made me question whether or not I should actually be rooting for Eva and
Gideon’s relationship to work out. Fortunately, I feel like Sylvia Day did a somewhat
better job of including, or least trying to include, enough moments between Eva
and Gideon in Entwined with You that
showed me why I should root for them as a couple.
While I do think that Sylvia
Day does a better job of showing why the reader should be rooting for Eva and
Gideon in this book, reading this book makes me think that Day’s idea of
including lots of happy moments between Eva and Gideon in the books is to have
them have lots and lots and lots of sex with each other, all the time. Reading
this book made me feel like when Day was writing this book, she must have thought
about the expression “sex sells”, and decided to cram as many sex scenes into
this book as she possibly could, and just went completely super duper ultra
mega overboard with how much sex is featured in this book. I get that the Crossfire series is considered erotica,
but I still think there needs to be an actual plot and some subplots as well in
erotic novels. Sure, there were definitely quite a few sex scenes in Bared to You and Reflected in You, but there were still plenty of clearly defined
plots and subplots in those books.
When it comes to Entwined with You, I feel like there are
so many sex scenes in this book that it kind of feels like the concept of
having a clearly defined plot for the book was sacrificed as a result of there
being so much sex in this book. I’m kind of tempted to make jokes about how
trying to describe the overall plot of this book is a lot like looking for a
needle in a haystack, but I think that would be a bit of an exaggeration. If I
had to say what the plot of this book is about, I’d say that this book mainly
focuses on Eva and Gideon trying to move past what happened in Reflected in You, with Gideon killing
Nathan so he wouldn’t be able to hurt Eva again. However, their entire plan for
how they would gradually publicly get back together seemed awfully convoluted
to me.
Not only is the idea of this
book having a clearly defined plot kind of sacrificed for the sake of this book
having so many sex scenes in it that if you made a drinking game out of keeping
track of how many sex scenes there are, you would most likely die of alcohol
poisoning before you reached the halfway point of the book, so is the idea of
including some actual character development for Gideon. It’s really frustrating
that I’ve now read the first three books in what’s supposed to be a five-book
series, and I still don’t know what exactly happened to Gideon when he was
younger, and what causes him to do all of the weird stuff that does in his
sleep at times. I feel like if Day wasn’t so focused on making it so that Eva
and Gideon end up having sex with each other essentially every time that they’re
alone together, especially in this book, we would probably know by now what
exactly happened to Gideon in the past.
Having read quite a few
reviews for this book on Amazon, I know that I’m far from being the only one
who thinks that there’s too much sex in this book and is disappointed with the
serious lack of character development for Gideon at this point in the series.
That being said, some of my issues with the lack of character development for
Gideon are related to his behavior during some of the sex scenes that are
featured in the first three books in the series. For example, it has always
been pretty clear that Gideon has issues with anal play, but especially in this
book when Eva and Gideon were having sex at one point, and Eva tries to engage
him in some anal play. He’s reluctant to go along with it, but he still let her
do it, and then he ended up clearly being somewhat traumatized by her actions.
Eva also asked Gideon if he was bisexual at one point in the book, and she even
told him that she would be okay with him being bisexual if that were the case,
but he adamantly told her that he’s not sexually attracted to men.
Honestly, I’d say that Cary
has gotten significantly more character development in the first three books in
the Crossfire series than Gideon has,
and Cary is only a supporting character in the series. Don’t get me wrong, I
love the character Cary, it’s just that it’s definitely very frustrating that
Cary, a supporting character in the series, has gotten more character
development than the male romantic lead character in the series has. That being
said, in some ways I like Cary more than I like Gideon at times, especially
when it comes to this book. Cary was definitely a major bright spot in this
book for me personally. While the problems he was dealing with in this book
were pretty much going on in the background, I still thought his problems and
the things that he was dealing with in terms of his own love life were much
more compelling and interesting compared to everything that Eva and Gideon were
doing throughout the course of Entwined
with You, which was mainly having sex, copious amounts of sex. (Sighs
heavily)
While I do think that E.L.
James is a terrible writer for the most part, and Ana and Christian’s
relationship is pretty sick and disturbing, at least James had Ana and
Christian interacting and doing with things with each other that didn’t always
lead to them having sex. For example, in Fifty
Shades of Grey, Christian took Ana for a ride in a glider in an attempt to
give her “more” in their relationship. I think this book would have been a lot
better if Day had toned down the copious amount of sex scenes in this book and
included moments where Eva and Gideon go on an actual date, and do things similar
to Ana and Christian going for a ride in a glider. Sure, there are some moments
like that between Eva and Gideon in this book, but they were few and far
between.
That being said, I still
thought that Sylvia Day did a good job of showing that Eva does have a life
outside of her relationship with Gideon by focusing at least a little bit on
Eva’s life at work and her friendships with Cary and other people. With Ana in
the Fifty Shades books, Ana’s entire
life seemed to revolve around Christian once she met him. Even when they
weren’t together, Ana is constantly thinking about him, and often times she
doesn’t completely pay attention to the people she’s actually with when she’s
hanging out with her friends. When Ana’s attention is focused on other people and
things unrelated to Christian, her thoughts tend to be rather bitchy, stupid
and rude, but I digress.
Much like she did in Bared to You and Reflected in You, Eva’s mother, Monica, continued to really piss me
off in this book as well. Monica is probably the most annoying and unlikable
character in the Crossfire series, as
far as I’m concerned. She continued to act very whiny and refused to take
responsibility for her actions in this book whenever she was caught doing
something that she shouldn’t have been doing in the first place. Monica pretty
much always just tries to make excuses in an attempt to justify her behavior to
other people when she gets called out on her messed up and crappy behavior, and
the way Monica acts is constantly beyond infuriating to me. In this book, Eva
discovered that Monica had put some kind of tracking device in a watch that she
had gotten as a gift at some point.
The watch had apparently
always been very special to Eva, but discovering that her mother had secretly put
a tracking device in it so she could keep track of Eva’s whereabouts, pretty
much ruined all of the sentimentality behind the watch for her. That seemed like
an extremely messed up thing for Monica to do, especially given how upset Eva
had been with her in Bared to You
when she discovered that Monica had been using the GPS tracking technology in
her cell phone to keep track of her whereabouts. Unfortunately, I can’t remember
if it was mentioned in this book how long Eva had had the watch, whether she
had gotten the watch for a gift prior to the beginning of the series, or if she
had gotten it during the timeframe that the Crossfire
series has been taking place in. That being said, I think it was established
that she had given Eva the watch years ago.
Anyway, assuming Monica gave
Eva the watch a long time ago, prior to Eva finding out that Monica had been
using the GPS tracking technology in her cell phone to keep track of her
whereabouts, I think that Monica really should have told her about the watch
when they went and talked to Eva’s therapist, Dr. Petersen, and he had told Monica that keeping track of Eva’s
whereabouts by using the GPS tracking in Eva’s cell phone was a major violation
of Eva’s privacy back in Bared to You.
Personally, I wish Monica’s crappy behavior was limited to just being Eva’s
mother. Unfortunately, if her behavior in this book alone is any indication,
I’d say that Monica is an all around horrible person since it’s clear that she
treats the men that she’s married to or dating pretty badly since she apparently
cheats on them.
Between Penny Parker from First Time (Ian’s Story) and First Time (Penny’s Story) by Abigail
Barnette, whose parents are both pretty horrible to her, Molly’s mom in Katie
Cotugno’s 99 Days, and Eva’s mom,
Monica, I feel like I’ve fallen into somewhat of a trend of reading books where
the protagonist of the book has at least one really crappy parent. Given the
fact that the next book I’ll be reviewing is the first book in The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa
Meyer, Cinder, which is a reimagining
of the story Cinderella, I think it’s
pretty safe to say that the trend of me reading books where the protagonist has
at least one really crappy parent is only going to continue for at least a
little while longer. Honestly, I’m halfway tempted to do a blog post where I
talk about all of the books that I’ve read in the past few months that feature
protagonists with crappy parents and debate which one of them has the worst
parent or parents.
Much like I thought Divergent felt very repetitive, given how much of the book focused on
Tris’ training as a Dauntless initiate, this book definitely felt incredibly
repetitive after a while due to how many sex scenes are featured throughout the
book. Don’t get me wrong; I do think the sex scenes are well written and very
steamy. It’s just that there are so many sex scenes throughout the book that
eventually the sex scenes kind of stop being enjoyable and interesting to read,
and they start to feel boring simply because there are so many of them in the
book.
Even when Eva and Gideon
aren’t having sex with each other, and they’re just talking, the writing for
this book still feels incredibly repetitive. While their conversations aren’t
all word for word identical to each other, it often felt like they were talking
about the same very short list of topics that they usually talk about over and
over and over again. Throughout Entwined
with You, they basically constantly talked about how much they love each
other; Gideon trying to convince Eva to come work for his company; sometimes
they talked about Gideon’s tendency act very bizarre in his sleep; their plans
for publically reconciling; Gideon’s past relationship with Corinne, and Eva’s
mother. Maybe other people will disagree with me for thinking that Eva and
Gideon constantly talk about a very limited list of topics for conversations,
but that’s just how I felt when I was listening to the audiobook version of Entwined with You. If I had to describe
the overall structure of the plot of this book, I’d say that it’s a lot like a
hamster wheel. It’s pretty much the same thing over and over and over again,
i.e. one sex scene after the other, accompanied by them talking about how much
they love each other.
I have to say that I was
really surprised that Eva and Gideon got married in this book. That’s honestly
something that I wasn’t expecting to happen until the fourth book in the Crossfire series, Captivated by You, most likely at the end of the book. That being
said, despite the fact that I have a lot of problems with this book as a whole,
I do like how the whole thing with them getting married and the conversation
that they had about Eva taking Gideon’s last name and the details of the prenup
was handled. That scene really reminded me why I think Eva and Gideon are much
more likable characters than Ana and Christian from the Fifty Shades books are. Plus, I really like that they’re keeping
the fact that they got married a secret for the time being, given their whole
plan for how they were going to publically handle their reconciliation.
That being said, much like Reflected in You made me question
whether or not I should actually be rooting for their relationship to work out
given how much angst and drama there was between them throughout the book, the
fact that Eva and Gideon were constantly having sex throughout Entwined with You and didn’t seem to do
very many things together, other than have sex, really made me wonder how much
depth their relationship truly has. Sure, they talk about how much they love
each other and how intense their love for each other is, but most of their
relationship really seems to revolve around sex. The fact that they’re
constantly having sex really makes me wonder if eventually the novelty of their
relationship and the passion between them will die out. Maybe that wouldn’t
necessarily happen in the relatively short timeframe that the Crossfire series seems to take place in,
but I really have to wonder if five years down the road they’ll grow apart to
the point where they’d decide to get a divorce, or maybe in even less time than
that.
All things considered, Entwined with You is definitely at least
somewhat more disappointing than Reflected
in You was. I honestly wasn’t originally planning to devote as much of this
review to talking about how I didn’t like how much sex there is in this book as
I did, but in the end I focused a lot on that aspect of the book for the simple
fact that there isn’t much else to talk about when it comes to discussing this
book. It really is rather disappointing that this is the third book in the
series, and yet there hasn’t been a lot of character development for Gideon,
and he’s the male romantic lead character in the Crossfire series. As much as I like Cary and the storylines that
he’s had throughout the series, it’s a real shame that he has pretty much
gotten more character development than Gideon has at this point, and he’s only
a supporting character in the series. There’s still a part of me that hopes to
read and review Captivated by You
before One with You comes out in
April, but at the same time, the fact that both Reflected in You and Entwined
with You proved to be rather disappointing books has definitely diminished
my motivation to do so.
That being said, my final
score for Entwined with You is 4.5
out of 10.
