Entangled by Cat Clarke- Review

Paperback, 374 pages

Published January 6th 2011 by Quercus Publishing Plc

The same questions whirl round and round in my head: 

What does he want from me? 

How could I have let this happen? 

AM I GOING TO DIE? 

17-year-old Grace wakes up in a white room, with a table, pens and paper - and no clue how she got here. 

As Grace pours her tangled life onto the page, she is forced to remember everything she's tried to forget. There's falling hopelessly in love with the gorgeous Nat, and the unravelling of her relationship with her best friend Sal. But there's something missing. As hard as she's trying to remember, is there something she just can't see? 

Grace must face the most important question of all. Why is she here? 

A story of dark secrets, intense friendship and electrifying attraction

REVIEW

Ah, hell, this book.

I'm going to GUSH about the cover first because I think it's simply amazing. The colors, the simple style, the text- everything is just GORGEOUS. This, mark my words people, is the kind of cover I'd totally die for. 

First up, Entangled is like it's name. The story has different threads all tangling together to form a big picture which we disentangle only at the very end. The concept was not new or anything and I figured out what was going on within a few pages, but you have to give it to Ms. Clarke for going about the story with such panache. More than the storyline of Entangled I would read it for the characters. Grace is amazing as a character- so tender, yet so tough; so vulnerable yet so able to hide all that beneath her colored hair and pretenses. She's a raw, fun, easy-to-relate to character although I would never say I could empathize with her (I can't. I'm nothing like her) And I don't know what to make of Nat, or Sal, or even Ethan- who truly confused me at first until I realized the point to him being in the story.

Entangled is good because of the various relationships in Grace's life it focuses on. There's the bestfriend, the boyfriend(s), the parents. Her relationship with each one of them is so complex and tangled that I kept wondering how she was going to pull herself out of the mire. Again, this is Grace's brilliance as a character: she doesn't mope too much. Yeah, she mopes but her moping is weirdly fun. She has a sort of sarcastic voice, and she's not a person who is doing what she does for sympathy.

The other really interesting character (?) is Ethan. We wonder what the hell he is doing, who the hell he is, and maybe some of you won't get it even when the book ends. The explanation is not given easily, you have to think for it to come.

The other amazing thing about the book is its ending. It's not a conventional teen-book sunshiney ending, and neither is it some kind of tragedy-inspired sob-fiesta. You have to read it to get what I'm blabbering about- and I'm giving this book a good verdict hoping you WILL get it (buy the book, that is), and get what I'm blabbering about...I'm confusing myself. I must be entangled too.

The final verdict is that the book is good. It lacks BRILLIANCE, it maybe has, you know, ~brilliance~ but it's not BRILLIANT. (Whatever). I would read it for the characters, I would read it for the jigsaw-like storyline, and I would remember it for it's cover. That said, I would still have preferred a more poetic language to the book. (Ah, to each his own)

4 on 5

Cover Talk:

Gorgeous!!!

5 on 5