Customer Reviews

Tangled Up in You

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

True crime writer Maddie Jones is researching a story near and dear to her heart - the double murder-suicide involving her mother and her lover and the betrayed wife which left two families destroyed 17 years ago. Armed with her mother's diaries, she travels to Truly, Idaho to interview the police, townspeople, and hopefully surviving family members. She doesn't count on becoming attracted to Mick Hennessey, the son of the woman who murdered her own mom. Unknowingly, Mick pursues her then discovers her deception after falling in love with her. Will he be able to forgive the daughter of the woman who he thinks ruined his family?

Adding to the mix is Mick's older sister Meg who knows a little more about what went on in their household than she has admitted and who tends to wallow in the past. He fears the publication of the book will open old wounds and cause further damage to his fragile sister.

Gibson's third in the Boise writer series is a step up from her last couple novels. Maddie is a complex heroine with many scars, who hasn't really dealt with her loss. In traveling to Truly, she finally understands the mother she never had a chance to get to know. The chemistry between Mick and Maddie sizzles off the pages, with equal parts romance, confict, and bittersweet memories. Gibson deftly weaves the other Boise writers (Lucy, Adele, and Clare) into the storyline and adds a secondary romance for long suffering Meg to complete the story.

4 ½ stars. I loved this latest book by Rachel Gibson. Tangled Up In You is the story of Mick and Maddie, which takes place in Truly, Idaho, the fictional town from the book "Truly Madly Yours". (It is now seven years later, and yes, we get a sneak peak into the lives of Nick and Delany!)

Maddie shows up in town to write the story of a murder / suicide that took place 29 years earlier. Mick is the owner of two bars in town and a former helicopter pilot for the military, and not the least bit happy that the desirable Maddie is un-earthing the story of his parents' death. But she is unlike any woman he has ever met, and they find themselves drawn to each other despite the obstacle of her book.

Maddie is one the best heroines Rachel has penned to date. I just loved her outlook on life, her sense of humor, and even her obsession with over indulging in "hedonistic" desires such as carbs, cheesecake, scented lotions and, uhm, sex. Mick is a classic Rachel Gibson hero. He's a bit rugged, handsome as sin, and pursues his heroine in a way that just make your knees weak! Together, these two really steam up the pages. This is definitely one hot and sexy book, and the passion scenes are very well done.

There was a bit of a mystery to the story, but it is not a "who did it?" story. The romance is the main focus of the story, which was great. There were a few minor parts of the story that bothered me, but they were minor. The biggest one being Meg, Mick's sister. I just didn't get her. I am just glad she wasn't in the story all that much. She remains "damaged" from her parents death, which makes you want to scream GET OVER IT!! The ending was also wrapped up a bit to neatly. Without spoiling anything, all I will say is that I would have liked to see more emotion on both their parts given what happens prior. In short, I can't help but feel that Maddie would have made Mick work much harder for the happily-ever-after. But that goes to show just how much I connected with the hero and heroine. By the end of the book, they felt real and very three-dimensional. Rachel Gibson remains my favorite contemporary romance author.

This is the 3rd book in a series about 4 author Friends. The First is Sex, Lies, and Online Dating, the second is I'm In No Mood For Love.

Maddie Dupree is the true crime writer out of her author friends; she spends most of her time writing about serial killers. She has recently moved to Truly, Idaho, to write the most important book of her life. Maddie is setting out to write the story about the town's biggest scandal; a scandal that changed and shaped her life forever.

Mick Hennessey the town bad boy has recently came back to Truly to run the family bars and to watch over his sister and nephew. His life was also rocked by that same scandal many years ago, and he has spent most of his life trying to forget.

While uncovering the past, Maddie is keeping some pretty serious secrets in order to protect herself. Those secrets threaten to harm the one man she never expected to fall for, Mick.

With the first two books of this series I was a little disappointed. They weren't bad; they just weren't up to her usual excellence. With this third book I felt I was finally reading the type of Rachel Gibson book I had previously discovered and loved. Tangled Up In You was sinfully sexy with delectable characters that steamed up the pages one minute and littered them with hilarity in the next minute. This book was a little more predictable than I would have liked, but over all a very enjoyable read.

I have read most of Rachel Gibson's books and they've all been good but this one is one of the best. There were moments when I laughed out loud. The hero was sexy and it's one of the few books where I didn't feel compelled to skip paragraphs waiting to get to the good stuff. The love scenes were hot and I genuinely cared about these 2 getting together. Highly recommend this book, along with others written by Rachel Gibson.

I liked "Tangled Up in You" and I thought it was better than her last two efforts (both of which I've wiped from my memory), but not as good as some of her other books. I thought the chemistry was great between Maddie and Mick and the love scenes were enjoyable, but I found the plot-not that there is much of one-boring and her characters seemed predictable.

I have read most of Rachel Gibson's books, although I own all of them. This book was absolutely phenomenal - maybe the best in the writers series. Rachel sucks you into the lives of Maddi and Mick and their families. The book is very well-written, with a story line that is really different, as a lot of romance novels have similar plots and storylines to follow. I read this book in less than a day I was so hooked into it. By far, this may be THE best Rachel Gibson book I have read thus far, though there hasn't been one I didn't like!

Unfortunately, Rachel Gibson did not have her magical pen in hand when writing this one. In fact, her pen has been in the repair shop for quite some time now.

She has got to stop with this series of characters. They are so unlikable and it is amazing how she keeps referring to them in each book and retelling their boring stories in the process. In fact, she even reached further back to the characters from one of my favorite books, "Madly Truly Yours" and made them unlikable, too.

Please come back, Rachel!! Please!!!

Now that I've read it--or as much of it as I could stand--I can hardly believe the positive reviews for this tiresome, wooden, badly written collection of sex scenes posing as a novel and hung on a wire coat hanger of a plot that has little substance and no denouement. Further, I cannot believe that the person who wrote Daisy's Back in Town is also responsible for this book's awkward writing, unappealing cardboard characters, and total lack of charm. I don't care enough about it to outline the plot, if you can call it that, but suffice to say that tough writer heroine returns to the town of her past where she meets tough bar owner who shares the same past. They like each other, don't like each other, she teases him, says no, says yes, they have sex, like each other, hate each other, have sex, like each other, hate each other.....well, you get the drift. That's pretty much the story.

Besides the insult of the writing, the book is poorly edited, proving the fallacy of spell check. To cite just a few of the many errors Avon allowed to go to press: "[the box] had also held a satin bag filled with jewelry. Cheep stuff mostly." I believe she meant "cheap" though I suppose the reference could be to something feathered. Further along: "You weren't planing to tell me." "Planning" with one "n" is their error, not mine. Again, "One of his hands slid to hers and grasped her like a hot vice." A hot vice? What? Like smoking? I could only assume the writer meant "vise". At this point I stopped circling errors; I also stopped reading. But I am seriously considering writing to Avon to ask for my $6.99 plus tax back.

The phenomena of bad writing appearing under the name of writers who are also credited with good writing continues to puzzle me. At the back of this Avon paperback edition appears an excerpt of 100 Bad Dates, purporting to be Rachel Gibson's next offering (which features Adele, one of the characters in Tangled Up in You). The quality of the writing in this excerpt is extraordinarily better than in Tangled Up in You; actually it is so much better there is no comparison. Since the excerpt is brief I can't comment on the characterizations, but the writing itself--the syntax, semantics, structure, the obvious skill, is comparable to Daisy's Back in Town. It is what I expected to find in Tangled, and didn't. So I have to ask: Is Rachel Gibson really this uneven? Is Tangled an early effort when she was not yet unpublished? Is the difference in the editing? Whatever the answer, I shan't be ordering any more Rachel Gibson offerings based on reviews appearing here. Only in a bookstore, where I can test the waters first, will I give her another try.

Mack and Martha are sexual explosion waiting to jump off the pages. The twist is that Mack's mom killed her mom in a jealous rage when they were both young children. I devoured this book in one day. I loved the obsession with scented body products.

Four Women in Search of Love all authors great series check it out:SEX, LIES & ONLINE DATING (1) I'M IN NO MOOD FOR LOVE (2)TANGLED UP IN YOU (3)NOT ANOTHER BAD DATE (4).

I really liked this book. It is the third book in a series about writers and it is much better than the last book. RG takes readers back to Truly, Idaho, a setting in several of her books and several characters in previous books are mentioned but you don't need to read those books to follow this one.

The main characters, Mick and Maddie, are brought together when Maddie returns to Truly to write a true crime book about her mother's murder. Mick's mom murdered her cheating husband and his girlfriend before she turned the gun on herself. When Maddie arrives sparks fly between her and Mick yet the time never seems right for her to tell him who she really is. They fall in love and then the truth comes out.

The only reason I didn't give this book a five is because Mick says some cruel things in anger at Maddie but never really apologizes for them in the end. I also didn't care for the way Mick and his sister especially acted like Maddie's mothers death was not as important as their parents deaths. But overall it's a good book and can't wait to read the next one.