‘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.’

A lot of peo­ple love this book, so I was really excited when I was kindly sent a copy as my first RAK. Unfor­tu­nately, I was left feel­ing pretty underwhelmed.

Entangled’s nar­ra­tive flows well and I fin­ished the story in about 3 hours, but this book (attempts) to deal with some very dark sub­jects, and I felt the light, easy-going tone of the book didn’t really fit with this. I was dis­ap­pointed as I never really felt that Clarke actu­ally explored any of the issues she incor­po­rated into her novel, they were just… there, with no expla­na­tion as to why the char­ac­ters acted, or felt, the way that they did. At times it felt the author was sim­ply pil­ing on trou­bles and prob­lems just to try to gar­ner sym­pa­thy from the reader.

The nar­ra­tive jumps back­wards and for­wards from the present, where Grace is locked in a white room, kid­napped by a mys­te­ri­ous guy (who seems to know every­thing about her), with noth­ing to do but write, and the past, as we relive Grace’s mem­o­ries via her writ­ing. This set up worked well for the most part, and, as I’ve said, the nar­ra­tive is easy to get into, but it did get a lit­tle frus­trat­ing at times. Grace would reach an impor­tant part of her back-story, and then sud­denly we would jump back to the present again. I sup­pose this was done to try to draw every­thing out and cre­ate an ele­ment of sus­pense, but as I found the story in gen­eral rather aver­age, this tech­nique fell flat for me.

I had two main issues with Entan­gled, the first being that the plot was noth­ing out of the ordi­nary. It was pre­dictable, and I guessed the var­i­ous secrets Sal was try­ing to hide from the start. After that, the main incen­tive to read on was just to find out whether or not I was right, not because I cared much what hap­pened either way. The twist at the end wasn’t very hard to fig­ure out either, and I feel that sim­i­lar end­ings have been done before, with far greater impact.

The main prob­lem was really that I just dis­liked Grace so much. As a char­ac­ter, she had a lot of problems. She cuts her­self, is fast on her way to becom­ing an alco­holic, is sui­ci­dal, sleeps around, has a trou­bled rela­tion­ship with her mother, and a sad past con­cern­ing her father. I was very aware while read­ing that I should have felt sorry for her, or at least empathized with her, but I didn’t. I didn’t feel any­thing in par­tic­u­lar for Grace other than a mild annoyance.

She was con­stantly self­ish and emo­tion­ally manip­u­la­tive to her friends and her boyfriend, and sadly by the end of the story, I didn’t feel that she had shown any growth as a char­ac­ter. I never got the impres­sion that she was depressed exactly, more just attention-seeking (as cruel and heart­less as that makes me sound). Her issues appear to stem from her unre­solved feel­ings sur­round­ing her father and her bro­ken rela­tion­ship with her mother, though this doesn’t cor­re­late when we learn Grace looses her vir­gin­ity at just 14 with a strange boy, long before the trou­bles with her par­ents started (as far as I can tell). Unfor­tu­nately, nei­ther of the par­ents and their role in lead­ing Grace up to this moment is really explored. Clearly, this char­ac­ter suf­fers from a severe lack of self-esteem and guid­ance from a very young age, but why does Grace feel this way? Why and when did she start down this path?

Entan­gled begins with Grace about to kill her­self. I expected (and hoped) the novel would explore how she got to that place, but it all feels very super­fi­cial, in that Grace came across as a whiney, bratty and overly melo­dra­matic teenager, rather than a deeply trou­bled, or emo­tion­ally ill young woman. I didn’t really feel the cut­ting aspect was dealt with very well either, though I can’t quite put my fin­ger on why. I didn’t feel any sense of revul­sion, or shock. It wasn’t upset­ting to read and I can’t help but think it should have been. Maybe that’s just me, rather than a reflec­tion on the author.

In the end, I found Grace a lit­tle to self-centered, obnox­ious, needy and fool­ish, though I did feel some sad­ness for her at the end. I hate to be so harsh on a char­ac­ter I was clearly meant to feel deeply for, given her cir­cum­stances. Grace has some hor­ri­ble things hap­pen to her and in a detached sort of way, I could see why she was self harm­ing, accept­ing that she was sim­ply a very emo­tional, volatile char­ac­ter, but there was noth­ing to endear me to her, so I just found myself annoyed and irri­tated with the way she treated everyone.

Entan­gled just wasn’t for me. There were too many clichés, the story was noth­ing new and though I found it an enjoy­able enough read, it didn’t grab me or make me feel any­thing. There is an end­ing some peo­ple will love and some will hate. I think, had I cared more for Grace, I prob­a­bly would have been haunted by ‘what could have been’ after fin­ish­ing this one. Disappointing — but I am in the minor­ity in think­ing this.

Rec­om­mended Read­ing Age: 16+

Rat­ing: 5/10