Tangled Up In You by Christina Lauren on June 25, 2024
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Contemporary, Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
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Ren has never held an iPhone, googled the answer to a question, or followed a crush on social media. What she has done: Read a book or two, or three (okay, hundreds). Taught herself to paint. Built a working wind power system from scratch. But for all the books she’s read, Ren has never found one that’s taught a woman raised on a homestead and off the grid for most of her twenty-two years how to live in the real world. So when she finally achieves her lifelong dream of attending Corona College, it feels like her life is finally beginning. Fitz has the rest of his life mapped out: Graduate from Corona at the top of his class, get his criminal record wiped clean, and pass himself off as the rich, handsome player everyone thinks he is. He’s a few short months from checking off step one of his plans when Ren Gylden, with her cascading blonde hair and encyclopedic brain, crashes into his life, and for the first time Fitz’s plan is in jeopardy. But a simple assignment in their immunology seminar changes the course of both their lives, and suddenly they’re thrown out of the frying pan and into the fire on a road trip that will lead them in the most unexpected directions. Out on the open road, the world somehow shifts, and the unlikely pair realize that, maybe, the key to the dreams they’ve both been chasing have been sitting next to them the whole time.
This is a retelling of Tangled and had a strong YA vibe. While I enjoyed it, I didn’t love it. I usually adore Christina Lauren books and this one was missing the mark a little bit for me. If you have watched Disney’s Tangled, then you know somewhat what is going to happen, which made this book predictable to a degree. I enjoyed the journey of Ren and Fitz together and of them separately. I put this in the liked but didn’t love category. The authors did a great job being true to the story and making it modern. I am sure that a lot of time and thought went into the writing of this book. I wonder how many times they had to watch the movie to nail everything. I must give them mad props for that. It was just lacking that little bit of something to push my rating higher.
I rated this novel 3.5 stars. There were some cute moments, like the detours they took on the road trip, but overall, this was so slow moving and I was quite bored for a good portion of it. I didn’t feel the ending on the farm was authentic to the story, but I suppose it’s just their spin on things.