Sunday 23 January 2011

'Entangled' by Cat Clarke

EntangledEntangled by Cat Clarke


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


3.5/5 stars- I liked this


I'll give you the blurb from the back of the book- it'll give a better summary of what this is about than I could-



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

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 dangerous secrets, intense friendships and electrifying attraction.



The whole story is just Grace's writings from her cell- it is her raw and confused thoughts and feelings about where she is and about her kidnapper, mixed in together with her memories. There are happy memories about her father before he died, and darker, more recent memories about her boyfriend and best friend and her way of coping with stress- cutting herself. There is nothing else to do in the cell except to write, and this is a therapeutic purging of emotion for Grace, a chance to untangle her complex thoughts and feelings of the events leading up to her kidnap on the night she decided to kill herself. Once Grace starts pouring out her story it is difficult to stop, and she feels that she needs to stay and sort through what happened. In doing so she comes to terms with many things, and comes to some important realisations.


It was a brave move on the authors part making Grace the kind of character that people would usually find hard to like or sympathise with. She is a teenager who drinks quite heavily and sleeps around. She is very selfish and manipulative and can sometimes be a bit of a bully. But despite all this you still do feel for her, and hope that there is a positive resolution for her. She has a naivety and vulnerability that felt real said in her own voice, and although the persona that she presents to the rest of the world is strong and snarky, underneath it she has very low self-esteem.


Overall this was a very good story, and one that keeps your attention throughout. It keeps you guessing and making your own connections and theories from the clues littered in the writing, right the way up to the reveal at the end.




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