Title: Entanglements
Author: P.R. Mason
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Createspace
Publication Date: September 30th 2011
Goodreads | Author Website
Rating: 3,5 stars
Review copy provided by Bewitching Book Tours.
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Accidentally opening a vortex sucks!
Fifteen-year-old Kizzy Taylor is just hoping for an evening of fun when she joins her friends in a spelunking expedition through an under-city tunnel. But fun turns bizarre when Kizzy accidentally opens a vortex and her stepsister is swept through to an evil alternate dimension. The only way to rescue her stepsister is to reopen the vortex and go in after her. But will Kizzy be able to return home?
Entanglements starts with introducing us to Kizzy Taylor on what is probably one of the worst nights of her life. Her own father, the man who was supposed to love her and care for her, holds her at gunpoint, ordering her to jump off a bridge. She tried to save herself and her baby brother by running from her, but unfortunately he did fire and killed her kid brother in the process. Now, several months later, Kizzy is still suffering from survivor’s guilt, and struggling to keep on going with her life. She’s no longer the person she was once before, and her old friends don’t seem that appealing to her anymore either.
At school, Kizzy runs into a new guy, named Rom. He’s very strange, but also extremely attractive. Rom acts and talks like he walked straight out of the Roman Empire. Although Kizzy thinks he’s cute from the moment she meets him, she’s a bit wary as to why he talks and acts so strange. When he joins her and her old group of friends to go investigating abandoned houses in the middle of the night – their current target an asylum that has been closed for several decades – things start getting really weird. For starters, something sucks Kizzy’s arm straight into a wall. And then a vortex appears in the middle of a room, sucking her stepsister right in, transporting her to another dimension. It’s up to Kizzy to save her stepsister. That is, if she doesn’t get killed by the nightmarish creatures who escaped from the other dimension first.
I liked Entanglements. The heroine is especially interesting because she holds the middle between being stereotypical and being too weird for her own good. The fact that she’s still struggling from survivor’s guilt adds to her personality. As a reader, you feel instantly sorry for her and what happened to her. If the person who’s supposed to love you most tries to kill you, that’s simply terrible. Kizzy’s friends are intriguing characters as well. We have the stereotypical nerds and cheerleaders squads, but beneath those stereotypes we can find actual people with actual personalities.
Don’t get me started on Rom though. Rom is the whole reason why this book went from a 4 star rating to a 3,5. I just didn’t like Rom; I thought he was the weakest part of the entire story. For starters, he talks like he’s the reincarnation of Julius Cesar, and I’m not a big fan of that. If a guy came to me and began talking like he lived several centuries ago, that would rank highly on my list of turn-offs. The fact that Kizzy hardly seems to bother, even when she doesn’t yet realize who he really is, annoys me. It’s like saying: hey, although this guy is totally insane, he looks hot, so I’ll date him. I’m not a big fan of such behavior or thinking. The good part is though that the romance plot is a subplot, and it doesn’t take too much attention away from the main plot and action. Considering that I didn’t like the potential love interest from the start, I was glad that it only played a minor part in this story.
The storyline itself is interesting, to say the least. P.R. Mason talks about vortexes and travelling between several dimensions/universes. I thought the explanation for vortexes, although a tad bit scientific, was intriguing and original. The moment they were introduced in the story, I wanted to read more about them: what exactly are they and how do they work, etc.
I must also add that the writing pace was fast, and that the book sucked me in from the very beginning. That said, there were some things that could use a bit of work – the love interest, for example, and the relationship between Kizzy and Rom – and I also wished some of the side characters were better developed. Entanglements is really entertaining though, and I would recommend it to all people who enjoy young adult paranormal romance novels.
This book counts towards the Fantasy Challenge 2012, Speculative Romance Challenge and the Go Indie Challenge.
Tour Schedule: Entanglements
Thank you for the review. I very much appreciate your time and thoughtfulness. P.R. Mason