Arrogant dude bro falls for a woman infinitely too good for him. As is usual.

I chose to read this for the Adult Reading Round Table discussion on Erotic Romance. Everyone told me I’d like this. Everyone was wrong.

Now, I’ll be fair. This book isn’t bad. It’s not the worst book I’ve read, it doesn’t even come CLOSE to being the worst romance novel I’ve read. Honestly the only real issue I have with this book is that it is entirely just…fine.

Drew Evans has it all. He’s rich, he works hard and seemingly spends every minute outside of work banging women whose names he hasn’t learned, but he emphasizes (too often) that he’s not a bad guy. He’s just a man. Cool bro, we get it. Katherine Brooks is a seemingly accomplished, put together businesswoman who catches Drew’s eye one night and turns down his advances. How dare she! Of course the next day, Drew realizes she is the new associate at his firm, which of course his father conveniently owns. Because he’s rich, remember?

Thus our will they/won’t they romance is born. This book is pretty typical. She breaks up with her longtime boyfriend who definitely didn’t deserve her but honestly? Neither does Drew. The main failing of this book for me is the fact that Drew is unlikable. Having a romance novel written completely from the perspective of the male lead is interesting, except man this character has nothing to say. It almost felt like Chase was so smart in writing the story from a male perspective, she went over the top in presenting him as this alpha male dudebro I found more annoying than seductive. This is one instance in which I think having a male and female perspective switching chapter to chapter would have really changed the book in a positive way. He is a smug prick who has a heart somewhere. He has, of his own admittance, banged a woman a week since he was 17. Roughly that ends up being about 700 different women, but Katherine is the issue for staying with her loser boyfriend for too long and not being willing to date Drew immediately after her 10+yr relationship has fallen apart. Right.

This book just bored me. The dialogue is great and Emma Chase is a solid writer. A lot of her prose and dialogue reminded me of Christina Lauren, and I consider that an awesome compliment. My issue was that Drew and Katherine are so boring as characters, none of the great dialogue seemed to fit their personalities. There’d be biting, amusing banter, but based on the characters it didn’t seem to be a natural thing they would have expressed. I don’t know, nothing about this book sparked joy in me (I’m Marie Kondo-ing everything now apparently) and thus I wouldn’t recommend it. Also this book is RIFE with harassment in the workplace so if that bothers you I wouldn’t even bother giving it a look.

Title:  Tangled
Author:  Emma Chase
Format:  Paperback
Pages: 232
ISBN: 9781476761770

Three Descriptors: Banter-filled, Steamy, Flawed

Read Alikes:
Sweet Filthy Boy by Christina Lauren
Bared to You by Sylvia Day
Rules of Contact by Jaci Burton
His Beauty by Sofia Tate
Racked and Stacked by Lorelai James