Entangled by Nikki Jefford
Publisher: Self published
Pages: 303 pages
Series: Spellbound #1
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Rating: 
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.
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s this. When there’s a reasonably professional, respectful self-published whose book I just don’t jive with.
The concept is pretty cool. One twin dies and then her mother performs illicit black magic to bring her back. Problem? She has to share her twin’s body like a time share thing. Awesome, right?
And it’s not like the writing is necessarily bad. The novel’s been reasonably well edited and clearly Jefford has put a lot of effort into providing a professional product to her readers. I think this is a great credit to her.
But my problem with the book came from the inexplicable actions of the characters. They acted outside the realm where you would think sense and reason exist. Their response to stress and stimuli were just foreign and completely alien to me. There was this great divide between the events of the novel, and the response of the characters.
For example, Graylee and Charlene are the twins sisters and it’s quite clear from the beginning of the novel that Charlene is a selfish horror-cow of epic proportions. When Charlene’s boyfriend leaves her for Stacey, Graylee and her mother reasonably believe that Charlene will hurt Stacey. Like just straight up murder her. There is an amazing lack of response to this from either of them. Just stop imagine if your sibling or child was honestly someone you believe would murder another girl over something as stupid as a highschool boyfriend. Just look at whatever family member is closest to you and wonder what your reaction would be if you genuinely thought they could just murder the hell out of someone.
Just the nonplussed reaction by either of them to this fact is one of many baffling character decisions in this book. Raj is another one. Why does he suddenly like Graylee? Why is Graylee terrified of him? Why is she very suddenly not terrified of him? What is it with Graylee’s complete and utter reaction to her own death? There is no chemistry between these characters because I couldn’t, for a moment, think up a single thing they actually had in common – other than both like an invisibility spell.
I found everyone in this book almost completely lacking reasonable motivation. They just seemed really cardboard and did things without genuine incentive.
The plot was, similarly, overwrought with ridiculousness. On the plus side, I finished the book and it wasn’t a horrible read. Many people will probably enjoy this book a lot if they’re into that sort of thing. I personally need a stronger, tighter storyline, plot and characters.
For Spoilers:
[learn_more caption="Click here to learn more"]The weirdest thing about this book was just how full of crazy people it was and how little this bothered the other characters.
Charlene was definitely the weirdest instance. Like when Graylee was like, “Hey Mom, that girl Charlene totally wanted to kill was in an unfortunate accident two days after my death. Ya think Charlene had anything to do with that?”
Mom: “I put a protection spell on Stacey so that Charlene couldn’t use magic on her. Hey, check out this sweater!”
Excuse me, what?! Your daughter is a psychopath! You actually think she COULD kill another human and this is your reaction to that?
And the way Graylee died? This comes up later like it’s supposed to be a big shock that it was Charlene that killed Gray. Cause, ya know, that wasn’t immediately obvious by the source text?
Then there’s Nolan. Nolan is this semi stranger/casual acquaintance who agrees to help Graylee. The morning he’s supposed to go off with her, she makes out with Raj. So of course, OF COURSE, his reasonable reaction to that is to join with Charlene and purge Graylee’s soul (basically killing her). Yup. Totally reasonable and not at all insane.
No, actually, that is completely insane and there is no justification given for this by the way. I can’t express how many times a guy I’m vaguely acquainted with has tried to murder me because I’ve started dating another guy. Of course!
It’s just all so inexplicable – but the worst moment, and I mean the absolute worst, came at the very end. When Charlene’s other psychotic friend (how many sociopaths attend this school!?) purges Graylee from Charlene’s body. Whatever shall Graylee do? Well, of course, there’s Stacey’s body in a coma. Why not just go use that body?
Cause even though the body already had a soul, all it needed was a shot of vitamin Gray! Bam! Graylee is back in the form or Stacey! Joy!
Look, the fix to a coma is not to insert a different soul! Comas don’t work like that… Stacey’s body is not sitting around waiting for a different spirit to get in there and make some magic!
It was all just so crazily dumb that I struggled not to whack myself in the head.
So I guess the word of the review was inexplicable. Because that’s what this book was for me. Inexplicably irrational, dull and boring. But at least the review was cathartic to write.[/learn_more]
Kat Kennedy
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