Entwined with You: Oh, for the love of God! Do Eva and Gideon ever stop having sex? (My thoughts on Book #3 in the Crossfire book series by Sylvia Day)

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 5^th. 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.