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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Tangled: Hey, Everybody! Do you want to read a story about two guys getting into a catfight over a woman? If you do, then this story is definitely for you (My thoughts on the short story “Holy Frigging Matrimony” by Emma Chase)


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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.

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