For the past several months
I’ve been debating whether or not I should start reviewing books for my blog,
and I’ve spent a lot of time in bookstores looking at various books to possibly
review. Once I found several books that I’m interested in reading, Tangled by Emma Chase being one of them,
I asked people both here on my main blog and on several of my Tumblr pages for
their input, and I ultimately decided to read Tangled for my first foray into reviewing books on a potentially
semi-regular, if not regular, basis after several people suggested that I read
this book.
One thing that’s extremely
important to note about Tangled is
that the story for the most part has a rather nonlinear structure, and the book
is written in the first person point of view with Drew basically telling us the
story of how he fell in love Kate Brooks, a woman who also works at his dad’s
investment banking firm. Also, I didn’t technically read the book; I listened
to the audiobook version of it, which was flawlessly read by Sebastian York.
This brings me to one of the few complaints that have about the book. While I
ultimately came to view the nonlinear manner in which Drew tells the reader his
story to be one of greatest strengths of the book, I was a little annoyed with
it at the start of the book.
When I first started
listening to the book on my iPod, I found the way Chase jumped around from Drew
lying in bed lamenting to the people reading the book about the fact that he
had the flu and had been in bed for a week, but how he didn’t really have the
flu, to talking about what events led to him being in bed with the flu rather
discombobulating at first, which prompted me to listen to several different
parts of the beginning of the book a second time. Drew telling the reader that
he had “the flu” was basically his way of saying that he had been stuck in bed,
hung up on Kate and the fact that he at the time believed that she had chosen
to be with her high school sweetheart, Billy, who she was engaged to for a
significant part of the book. Personally, if I were Emma Chase, I would have
held off on jumping back and forth between the past and the present just a
little bit longer than she did, simply so the reader can have the chance to get
somewhat acclimated with the character Drew and what was going on with him at
the start of the book.
However, the nonlinear
nature of the book ultimately proves to be one of the greatest strengths of the
book, if you ask me. Since Tangled is
essentially Drew telling the reader the story of how he fell in love with Kate
and won her heart, it makes a lot of sense to me that he would jump around a
little bit as he’s telling the story. The way the book is written feels very
true and natural to how a person would verbally tell someone a story in real
life. After all, if a person is telling someone a story verbally in real life,
the odds are that they won’t necessarily mention every person who’s involved in
the story and every little detail they feel their audience needs to know in a
sequential order. Maybe they might think you need to know about other people
and details of story before they talk about a part of the story so that you’ll
have a better understanding of the story as a whole. The other reason I think
people do this is that a person’s memory isn’t perfect, so they aren’t necessarily
going to be immediately reminded of something or someone, and for whatever
reason they won’t mention it until a certain point where they have to backtrack
in telling their story.
One very good example of
this would be that Drew doesn’t mention his niece, Mackenzie, and the special
relationship that he has with her until the reader is pretty far into the book.
The fact that he doesn’t mention Mackenzie or his special relationship with her
until pretty far into telling his story doesn’t mean that Mackenzie and the
relationship that Drew has with her will ultimately prove to be insignificant
and not even worth mentioning. The character Mackenzie, and Drew’s relationship
with her actually plays a very crucial role in Drew succeeding in winning Kate
back after a major misunderstanding occurs between them, which is something I
really liked about the ending of the book.
Another good example of this
would be that Drew is very upfront about the fact that considers himself to be
a major mama’s boy, but he doesn’t even admit that until even further into the
book when he’s screwed things up with Kate and is trying to win her back. Much
like Drew’s special relationship with Mackenzie, that aspect of who Drew is
plays a big role in his decision to come up with a plan to win Kate back after
he talks to his mother about Kate.
One of the many reasons why
I chose to read this book and review it was because I’ve actually been a huge
fan of romance novels from a fairly young age. The fact that I both read and
bought a lot of romance novels as I was growing up was something that never
made my mom very happy, but I always liked them anyway due the fact that I’ve
always considered myself a bit of a hopeless romantic. While I’ve always loved
romance novels and have read a lot of them over the years, I think it’s pretty
safe to say that it’s a genre full of clichés and plots that are really
formulaic. You know, the story will often be centered around a guy and a girl
who work together and are rivals in the workplace, only to wind up having a
steamy fling that usually ends with them realizing that they are soul mates.
Another common storyline that I’ve come across is a young woman will have a
brief fling or one-night stand with an emotionally wounded millionaire, only to
wind up getting pregnant, and of course that kind of story usually ends with
the guy being emotionally healed by the woman and their baby.
Fortunately, when comes to Tangled, I feel like Emma Chase really
excelled at taking a genre of books that’s full clichés and formulaic plots and
putting a truly fresh spin on the genre by having the book be from a man’s
point of view, which would be Drew Evans. I feel like I need to mention that
I’m currently in the process of reading Fifty
Shades of Grey at the moment, and as I was reading Tangled I couldn’t help but think a lot about Fifty Shades of Grey and of the ways that Emma Chase is a much
better writer than E.L. James is. If you’re currently looking for a steamy
romance novel to read, and you haven’t read Fifty
Shades of Grey or Tangled, I
strongly suggest that you forget all about reading Fifty Shades of Grey and read the Tangled series instead. When it comes to how likable Anastasia
“Ana” Steele is a protagonist compared to Drew, Drew is a much more likable and
well written protagonist than Ana, or Christian, is for that matter.
Sure, Drew is a man who’s
full of self-confidence to the point where he can definitely come across as
being rather cocky and arrogant, especially when it comes to his love life. He
can also come across as a bit of womanizing jackass who seems like he’s
typically more interested in adding new additions to the endless parade of
women that he’s apparently slept with throughout his lifetime than he is about
finding love and having a committed relationship with a woman at times,
especially at the beginning of the book. After all, towards the beginning of
the book when he starts telling the story of how he ended up in bed sick with
“the flu”, he talks about getting a blowjob from a woman, whose name he’s very
open to admitting to the reader that he can’t remember. However, I feel like
Drew ultimately proves to be a womanizing jackass with a heart of gold. Emma
Chase definitely did an excellent job of balancing out some of his flaws and
bad qualities, such as his incredibly cocky attitude, with enough good
qualities that go a long way to making the reader really care about Drew and
his story. Plus, it also helps that he genuinely changes for the better by the
end of the book.
While I do think that Drew
comes across as a guy who has managed to piss off a lot of women and break a
lot of hearts prior to the start of the book, he is, if nothing else, very open
and honest with the reader that he has a history of being a bit of an asshole
and promises the people reading the book that he’s going to be honest with them
and tell it like it is. It makes a Drew a very reliable storyteller in my
opinion, and to me, that’s better than having a protagonist who tries to act
like they are a good person or that they are genuinely the victim if something
bad happens to them, when in reality they are actually not a very good person
and that they bring a lot of their problems upon themselves, but refuse to take
responsibility for their actions.
While I do think that Emma
Chase did an excellent job of putting a fresh spin on a genre that’s full of
clichés and is often severely lacking in originality, I don’t think that Chase
managed to write a story that was completely free of clichés and somewhat
ridiculous elements. After all, the book still employs the common scenario of
having both the man (Drew) and the woman (Emma) initially start out as rivals
at work, which I think is an extremely common element when it comes to romance
novels. While writing the book from Drew’s point of view and the way Drew is
written as a character definitely puts a fresh spin on the romance novel genre,
Kate in my mind is a character that comes across as being somewhat riddled with
some of the clichés that are fairly common when it comes to stories about
romance.
For starters, she’s been
engaged to her high school sweetheart Billy for years, who Drew pretty much
describes as being a deadbeat loser. Drew seemed to be especially judgmental of
the fact that Billy is an aspiring musician once Drew starts to realize that he
has feelings for Kate. The fact that Drew and Kate become romantically involved
with each other while she’s still engaged to Billy definitely seemed rather
cliché to me since that’s something that happens so often in romance novels,
but I suppose Kate being engaged to Billy helps add some drama to the story. Also,
while Kate isn’t a virgin at the start of the book, I feel like Chase was
trying to portray Kate as being somewhat sexually inexperienced by making it a
point to establish that she had never been given oral sex. The reason for this
being that apparently Billy doesn’t like getting blow jobs, and they had a deal
where neither of them makes the other do something sexual that they don’t want
to have done to themselves.
Given the fact that Fifty Shades of Grey seems to be
essentially romancing the BDSM lifestyle and E.L. James depicts Christian Grey
as a romantic hero when in reality he acts extremely abusive and controlling
towards Ana and he’s also definitely got some serious emotional and
psychological issues, I really appreciate the fact that Emma Chase was able to
write a steamy romance novel where the romantic relationship between the
characters is actually fairly healthy and built on respect. Personally, I don’t
get the appeal of the whole BDSM lifestyle or find it the least bit romantic or
sexy, and Drew even briefly talks about how he doesn’t get the appeal of BDSM
either. The fact that Drew talks about BDSM in Tangled is one of the reasons why I decided to share some of my
current thoughts on Fifty Shades of Grey
in this review. Tangled definitely
isn’t as explicit or erotic as Fifty
Shades of Grey is, but it’s still steamy in its own way. The fact that Tangled has likable characters and is
actually an altogether well written book is far more important to me than having
book that has a ton of sex but is horribly written. Sex may sell, but great
writing sells too.
Due to the fact that the
book is written in such a way that Drew is basically telling the reader the
story of how he fell in love Kate and won her over, I frequently found myself
thinking about the TV show How I Met Your
Mother as I was reading this book. If you’re like me, and you hated the
series finale of How I Met Your Mother,
and you feel like the series finale singlehandedly ruined the series for you, don’t
worry, Tangled ends on a really great
note. Of course, this is only the first book in the Tangled series, and I haven’t read the other books yet, but I’ve
read a lot of reviews on Amazon for the final book in the series, Tied, and the general consensus seems to
be that it’s a great ending to the series. Time will tell if I agree with that opinion
once I read the book though.
While Tangled is a romance novel that features a fair amount of angst and
drama, it also features a great deal of humor as well. One part that I found
particularly amusing was when Drew was talking about how he and according him a
lot of guys have a crush on Ariel from The
Little Mermaid. While I wouldn’t say that I think Ariel is hot, I found
that part amusing because I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I do think
that Elsa from the movie Frozen is
kind of hot. Until I read that part of the book, I thought the idea of having a
crush on a cartoon character was something that was pretty weird and messed up.
However, that part of the book made me come to the conclusion that perhaps I’m
more normal than I originally thought I was.
Despite the fact that I
think Emma Chase is without a doubt a much better writer than E.L. James, whose
writing is ridiculous in more ways than I could ever possibly count and keep
track of, I do think that Chase’s writing is somewhat ridiculous in its own way
too. For example, Drew seems to get erections as often as Ana blushes in Fifty Shades of Grey…which is
constantly. Sometimes it seemed like Drew gets erections at the drop of a hat. I
definitely don’t suffer from erectile dysfunction, but I also don’t get an
erection nearly as often as Drew seems to, and I’m not sure that others guys
who are perfectly healthy do either. If I were Drew, I would probably feel the
need to always be standing behind something that would obscure a person’s view
of my crotch so they wouldn’t be able to tell that I constantly have an
erection. Maybe the constant mentions of Drew having an erection when he was
around her or was simply thinking about her was one of the ways Chase decided
to convey to the reader just how attracted to Kate Drew truly is, but I still
think she went a little overboard with that aspect of the book.
Once I got to the part of
the book where Drew is carrying out his plan to win Kate back after his plan to
make Kate jealous had backfired on him, he makes a point of talking quite a bit
about how he’s decided to not jerk off until the next time he and Kate have
sex, because he wants them to come together. I suppose there’s a certain level
of romance to feeling that way, but I still thought that was kind of weird
since he seemed to talk about how he hadn’t jerked off in days as often as he mentioned
him having an erection. The other thing that I found myself wondering about a
lot was just how much money Drew is supposed to have. I did some research on
how much money investment bankers make, and while it seemed like investment
bankers make a fair amount of money, I’m still not sure someone like him would be
able to afford all of the somewhat over-the-top romantic gestures that he made
in an attempt to win Kate back. Sure, he works for his father’s company, so I’m
guessing he might make at least a little more than the other people he works
with make, but I still had some doubts about how realistic Drew’s financial
situation was. Since this is actually a truly fantastic book, I’m willing to
suspend my disbelief when it comes to wondering if someone who has the same
kind of job that Drew has in real life could actually afford all of the
romantic gestures that he made and just go along with it though.
All things considered, I
would definitely declare Emma Chase’s Tangled
a must read, especially for anyone who’s a fan of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy or just steamy romance novels in
general. Drew is a very charming, funny, likable, and altogether well written character
who goes through what I found to be a highly entertaining and enjoyable journey
throughout the course of the book. The fact that Tangled is from Drew’s point of view is definitely one of greatest
strengths of the book. Kate was also a very well written and likable character,
which is definitely very important since the Tangled series is about Drew and Kate’s relationship. Despite the
fact that Drew is the romantic hero of the book, I still found myself caring
about Billy, so I was happy to discover that he’s also featured in the other
books in the Tangled series when I
read some reviews for them on Amazon. I’m without a doubt a huge fan of Emma Chase’s
writing after reading Tangled, and
I’m extremely excited to read the rest of the Tangled series.
That being said, my final
score for Tangled is 9 out of 10.
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