entangledby Cat Clarke

The same questions whirl round and round in my head:What does he want from me?How could I have let this happen?AM I GOING TO DIE?17-year-old Grace wakes up in a white room, with a table, pens and paper - and no clue how she got here.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? (goodreads.com)

One of my most favourite online friends, Jenny from Wondrous Reads got me this book for my birthday in January. I was beside myself with happiness because I was very, very, very much looking forward to reading it.When I first started reading this book the main character, Grace, sort of reminded me of Carla from The Crooked Shelf. I announced on Twitter that she should star in the movie if they made one. Soon after that proclamation I changed my mind. Grace became one of the most unlikeable characters I have ever read in a long time. In fact I disliked Grace so much that I had trouble finishing the book.There were a lot of WTF? moments in the story, I was frustrated by wanting to know what was going on and at the same time wanting to like Grace a lot more than I did. I think if I liked her the story would have been less angering for me. I couldn't figure out why someone would be kidnapped and not told why. I couldn't understand why the mysterious Ethan was as vague as he was and why Grace kept swooning over someone who was holding her captive. Her acceptance of being held in that white room was making me angrier than the way she treated her "best friend" was.Early on I began to have my suspicions about what was going on and I was disappointed to discover that everything I'd suspected was right. I think the story was told in a very original fashion and I am impressed that the author came up with this, my real problem was that I just could not like Grace no matter how hard I tried. I think she treated her friends poorly, her mother poorly and herself poorly.One of the things entangled made me think about was something that I actually thought was well done - the whole cutting issue. I think Clarke did a good job of making the disorder a very realistic one and not just toss that aspect of Grace's life in there for something to do. The whole issue of cutting however seems to be the new chic disorder to have in a book these days. Maybe I'm just extra sensitive to these things due to personal experience, but I am finding that self-mutilation is the new Disorder du Jour in young adult books. Used to be teen girls were either anorexic or bulimic in books, now they are all about the cutting and I feel that in many stories (NOT this one) it's just a way to show how "emo" this character is. Not all books and authors get it. I didn't think it was "gotten" in Willow, for example. I do think that it was got in entangled. One of the aspects of the book I DID love was how clearly Cat Clarke was able to show how messed up and depressed Grace was. Even if I didn't like her, I didn't feel that her self-destructive behaviour was false. That aspect of her struck a chord with me even if I wasn't enjoying her on the outside, inside I was feeling her pain.I think I might have to do a Rambling Reader post on the over-or-miss-use of disorders in teen fiction. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a blatant show of shock value and it doesn't.But back to the book I am actually writing about - I actually feel very bad about not liking Grace because I so wanted to connect with her. I just couldn't. I kept looking at the cover and saying to my husband, "But...the cover is so BEAUTIFUL!" I couldn't believe I wasn't connecting with Grace at all. She's someone I would have avoided at all costs in real life, loud, obnoxious and somewhat self-centered. The suspense was there and I liked that this was NOT a paranormal book, but a suspense novel (which I did not know when I started reading it!)Grace seems to have connected with many readers out there, though sadly not with me. I did like Devon, I could have had more of him in the story.  I am sorry Grace, that I didn't like you. At the same time your actions pretty much brought a lot of that on, so it's not entirely my fault.I am sorry to, to the author, that I didn't like Grace, however I did like your writing style and would like to read more by you. :)It's rare I feel so bad about not enjoying a book, normally I can let it go, but for some reason part of me feels like no wonder Grace had all these issues, I didn't like her!On a happier note - the cover for this book wins the award for best cover so far in 2011. I don't think many other covers will be as eye catching to me. I LOVE this cover and would put a poster of it up on my wall if I had one (a poster, that is, not a wall, I have many of those).