Saturday, April 28, 2012

Review: Entangled & Entwined by Colette Gale

Entwined Author: Colette Gale {site}
Genre: Erotica, Classic Retold, Romance
Format: Kindle
Published: 23 January 2012 & 8 April 2012
Publisher: Avid Press
Series: Yes {serialized fiction}
Price: $0.99 & $2.99

Synopsis: {via GoodReads}
ENTWINED

When not-as-proper-as-one-would-think Victorian woman Jane Clemons convinces her father to take her on an expedition in the jungle, her only goal is to find her lover Jonathan, who disappeared three years earlier. She and her father, along with Jonathan’s trusted friend Kellan Darkdale, set off on their journey. But shortly after their party arrives on the coast of Madagascar, Jane finds herself enthralled not only by the freedom and beauty of the lush jungle, but a reclusive wild man who seems to be fascinated by her. ENTWINED is a novella (about 80 pages). It’s the first in a series that will follow Jane Clemons and her explicit, erotic adventures in the jungle.
Entangled
ENTANGLED

The erotic adventures of Miss Jane Clemons in the jungle of Madagascar continue in this second installment.

For mature, over-18 readers only.
Review:

I've been a fan of Colette Gale since reading Bound By Honor, An Erotic Tale of Maid Marian, in 2010. As a fan of classical romance, and the classical tales, these erotic re-tellings are right up my alley and I've enjoyed every book she's written! This, I admit, is no exception. The most awesome thing about them is that both Entwined and Entangled are really quick reads. That's a huge thing for me right now because as I race to finish up my master's thesis I have almost no time to put aside for casual reading--I think it may have taken me two hours to read both of them. Awesome!

The Characters:

As an erotic re-telling of an older story, the characters are all a very familiar part of our collective culture. We all know the story of Tarzan & Jane, so the characters are cozy from the start. Jane Clemons, the main character, is bright, young, and vibrant. She's fun and much more sexually liberated than most Victorian woman. What I liked about her is that although she has a very clear understanding that some of the things she's doing are culturally unacceptable for a good English girl, she doesn't much care.

Tarzan, on the other hand, is both Tarzan and isn't.  He's the perfect (sexy) Tarzan archetype, but his name is Zaran. She spends most of the book calling him "wild man" and lusting after him, which is quite believable. He's also incredibly sympathetic and there are moments when his mix of intelligence and innocence are very touching.

The other characters are a mix of good and bad. Jane's long-lost fiance, Jonathan, is not a nice guy but Jane can't see that. Meanwhile, his business partner, Kellan Darkdale is troubling and handsome, and while I get the feeling he's supposed to be a sort of bad-guy, I actually like him. I'm attracted to the darker guys, so it works for me, except for the fact that he's a little too sexually aggressive, and not in a good way, but you get the idea that he actually cares about Jane in his sick way, which, again, works for me.  Jane's father and her maid are also alright, but they're the only characters in the whole story I feel are stock archetype characters. They're okay, but not my favorites.

The only character issue I had is actually with Jane's maid, Effie.  In the first book, Effie has a dialect about her speech. In the second book, her dialect is all but gone. The change in her speech is really noticeable when they're read back to back, and while it's a small issue, it was pretty distracting.

The Plot:

So far, the plot is really good, but since this is only two of a serialized series it's hard to say what the future will bring. The frame of the story is pretty simple, but works brilliantly. Jane goes to the jungles of Madigascar with her butterfly hunting father and Kellan Darkdale, where they reside in an old "treehouse" built by, and abandoned, previous occupants. There Jane hopes to find her long-lost-fiance, Jonathan. Overall, I think it took longer to get to the sexy fun in this story than it has in any of her previous novels of this type, but when it does it's worth the wait. There are a few awkward moments, but the plot flows well from one point to the next and is believable.

The Verdict:

Rating: 5/5
I'm really, really looking forward to the next installment. The one thing I don't much like about this series is also the one thing I think is really neat about it: the serialization. Victorian literature was often serialized, so this works in the fashion of literature of the time. However, waiting months between installments is brutal. I want the rest of the story now, but there's no clear idea of how many installments there will be or how long it will take to publish the whole story. All in all, I definitely recommend this story to anyone who enjoys erotica, but it's definitely for audiences 18 and older.

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