Berkley, $15.00, ISBN 978-0-425-26392-1
Contemporary Erotica, 2013
Boy, am I late in reviewing this book! You see, I wanted to avoid all the drama surrounding this book when it was first released, so that I wouldn’t be prejudiced by all that fuss. Entwined with You is not the conclusion of the Crossfire series, in case you haven’t heard, as the series has been expanded. Of course, this is clearly the intention of the author all along – her muse told her during the creative gestation process that her life would be more fruitful if she pulled a Kate Gosselin-type of metamorphosis and had quintuplets instead of merely triplets.
I’m ashamed to say that, as soon as I put aside the book, I promptly forgot all about it until I recently came across the next book in the discount bin at my local bookstore. That would give you an idea of how enamored I am of the story of Eva Tramell and Gideon Cross all this while.
Anyway, you should read the previous books in this series first, as the whole thing is an ongoing series, and there will be many things here that are carried over from previous books. This one also ends in a cliffhanger, so you should be prepared to buy everything in this series if you want the whole story.
Now, since this book is never meant to be the conclusion of what is formerly a trilogy, it is hard to imagine why this book feels like the result of something hastily reworked in mid-progress to prolong and stretch things out. In the last book, I thought Eva and Gideon had buried some of their issues and we are getting somewhere, but in this one, the exes and the crazy other dudes are back and the main characters seem to have dug back out those issues and gone back to square one or two. Eva gets loud with her mother and shares boo-boo moments with her father while trying to keep that persistent other guy from ruining what she has with Gideon. Gideon gets Eva all jealous by still tangling with that woman. And, in a very special episode of “Who the hell cares?”, Cary is like, eenie-meenie… which one should he get down with. Oh, and the homicide thing.
Entwined with You, in other words, has officially entered soap opera territory. Just like in soap operas, the characters here seem to be stuck in a time warp of sorts, continuing to do and say the same things with minor variations each time, and everything moves at a snail’s pace. It is very easy to lose interest in the whole thing, especially when I’m not that enamored of these characters in the first place. I wished in my review of the previous book that the author would increase the crazy quotient in subsequent books to provide some campy fun, but here, chapters can pass without any decent advancement in the many story lines here. Still, there are sex scenes galore to pad the pages, so it’s not like this book is a complete waste of time.
At any rate, I’m glad I’ve bought all the books in this series so far at massively discounted prices. Otherwise, the resulting buyer’s remorse may not be good for my blood pressure.
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