Entangled Review (Novel)

Title: Entangled

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal Fiction, Romance

Put on the Song: What the Hell by Avril Lavigne

Rating:




This book was given to me via Netgalley for an honest review.

Blurb:

Two months after dying, seventeen-year-old witch Graylee Perez wakes up in her twin sister Charlene’s body.

Until Gray finds a way back inside her own body, she’s stuck being Charlene every twenty-hour hours. Her sister has left precise instructions on how Gray should dress and behave. Looking like a prep isn’t half as bad as hanging out with Charlene’s snotty friends and gropey boyfriend.

The “normals” of McKinley High might be quick to write her behavior off as post-traumatic stress, but warlock Raj McKenna is the only person who suspects Gray has returned from the dead.

Now Gray has to solve the mystery of her death and resurrection and disentangle herself from Charlene’s body before she disappears for good.

Review:

(WARNING: This review is absolutely riddled with Spoilers.)

Paranormal check, romance check, this book is so my genre. And for something that is so me, it is soooooo... Hmm... Not-uh, me. The premise is certainly rather, well, interesting. Not really refreshing or unique perhaps, there's been plenty of body-switching books out there, just take a peek at AIRHEAD by Meg Cabot, that was pretty fun. And well... ENTANGLED didn't measure up in quite a few ways.

PROS	CONS
Pleasant-ish protagonist Generally amusing writing style Easy-to-read Well-paced	Terribly annoying side-characters Nonsensical plot (To me)

Synthesis: More pros than cons, but the cons add up to something disastrous.

The story starts of nicely enough, Gray was coaxing her sister from apparent suicide. Not really doing a stellar job of it, I might add. Well, Charlene wasn't really intending on 'suiciding' either, so that's all peachy. We get to see Gray interacting with a number of people. Her sister, Charlene, her best friend, Thea- both of which, were the typical, mass-produced YA models. You know, the flighty, boy-crazy sort. Are all girls supposed to be like that? Sheesh, it's like this recurring theme.

We also get to see Raj and Nolan, the cute boys in Gray's court. You know, the suitors for her hand in marriage. Not that marriage's in the question. More like coitus, or copulation. Well. What's a romance without action? Sorry for the bad pun. I need better restraint.

All right, so Gray doesn't 'die' till Page 41, and that's about a third into the book, which is fine. Really, it is. So maybe I'm the sort of person who likes being dropped into the drama, the action. Sort of like a Transformers movie.

Gosh, I just love all those cool visuals. Okay, but enough of that. The body switching doesn't happen early in the book, pfft, so what? That's no big problem. It gives Ms Jefford time to set up the characters,   gives us time to get to know them better, to grow to... l- li- like, well, 'like' is too strong a word, understand, them better. Although, I must say, the body-switching was pretty abrupt. It was like ladee-dah dee-dah everything's fine and dandy. Falls asleep, wakes up and bam.

SHE'S IN HER TWIN SISTER'S BODY! TWIN. SISTER'S. TWIN. HUHHHHH... AND SHE DOESN'T EVEN REALIZE IT HERSELF. WELL.

It was rather novel actually, the part about her inhibiting her sister's body. The 50/50 thing, so she gets the body every alternate day, and remains in limbo in between. I haven't seen that before. So like I said, it was unique. The problem lies therein when the bulk of the book goes to detailing how Grey fits into her sister's life. I mean, yeah, it's a bag of laughs, but there's the garnish, so where's the meat?

This is not going to fill my stomach. I'm not like Charlene (Oh and yes, she's obsessive about her figure too- salads and diet shakes and everything. Sorry, I'm just not on the thinspiration bandwagon). This is not real food.

Gray is very, very concerned about getting back into her own body. No shit. I'd be concerned about getting back my body too. But honestly, I'd be more concerned about why I died.Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome? Try repeating them five times over. If someone told me I died of SUDS, I'd tell them very graphically what they could do to themselves, even if it's anatomically, physically impossible.

Well anyway, Gray doesn't care about her death. That's fine. She goes around hunting for ways to split herself from her sister with said boys, Nolan and Raj. And honestly, I did feel that she was two-timing them. A little. You know, the Chinese have a saying that goes something like, 'Stepping on two boats with a single foot'. Alright, it doesn't translate very well. But it basically means that she was jerking them around.

So Nolan goes from nice guy to angry asshole.

Yeah, like that. After he witnessed Gray's and Raj's kiss. The turn-about was a little startling. More like a lot. And he's not the only character that changes in the blink of an eye. Charlene does it too. She seemed to be rather sisterly, not really loving and affectionate, but sisterly, with Gray and then the next moment, she wants Gray dead. I mean, purged. But really, dead and gone.

The cause of Grey's death was handled pretty badly too, and it was figured out in five sentences. Not particularly long ones either. It was just like, 'Oh. So that's why I died.' And then the next second, 'Oh. So that's how I'm going to get back at my sister who killed me.' And then, 'Oh. So now I'm gone.' And 'Oh. I woke up in the some girl's body.' The last one was pretty predictable. I figured that out waaaayyyy before it happened.

For a paranormal, murder-ish plot, I'm thinking 142 pages is far too short. When we're nearing the ending, there were so many, many moments, I went like:

WHATTT??? THAT'S IT??? YOU'RE TELLING ME THAT'S IT???

Okay, to sum it up, I felt cheated. There's a voice in my head going, YOU'RE RESOLVING IT LIKE THIS??? WHY YOU... ... I'M GONNA... ...

Oh boy, I gave this three notes for the first half of the book, but now that I'm done reading it, I'm putting it down to two notes. Read this if you're not that much of a stickler for rational, probable plots. Read it for the romance, oh heck, there isn't even much of that. Read it for... I've no idea what. For Gray then, she wasn't a pathetic protagonist at the very least. I actually did like her. She acknowledged it when she started being an ass, and she even made conscious effort to rein in her temper.

So now, the things I'm going to quibble about:

Page 14: "Fat chance. Emphasis on fat." Oh Raj, talking about girls like that is not going to earn you brownie points. Or Scout badges. No self-respecting male protagonist should ever make a derogatory remark about a girl based on her weight or physical appearance. I thought that was like one of those unbreakable rules for romance novelists.

Page 39: ...if you didn't speak Chinese how could you translate the symbols... Well, you can speak Cantonese and read Chinese no problem. You can even speak Hakka or Teochew, or Hokkien, and still 'translate the symbols'. Okay, I know I'm quibbling, but really. There is a difference between speak and read.

Page 59: "Jenna Hawkins? But she's ugly!" I thought Gray was supposed to be the nice one. Really, I don't think truly nice people would think that way. But who am I to quibble? Since I'm not very nice myself.

There's a good bit more than that. But I'll leave it at here. ENTANGLED started off pretty well, but somewhere nearing the end, it became an impeding train wreck. Well, at the very least, the pretty cover gives it a visual flavor that might compliment the aesthetics of a book shelf.