Entangled - Cat Clarke

Entangled – Cat Clarke

Pages: 372 (ARC)
Publisher: Quercus
Release Date: 6th January 2011

From Goodreads: 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?

A story of dark secrets, intense friendship and electrifying attraction.

I have no idea why I waited as long as I did to read Cat’s debut. I loved every page of it.

Grace recounts her story in sharp, snappy and concise prose. Her almost stream-of-consciousness narration is infallibly modern with her firm grasp on modern teenage slang. But her real talent lies in getting across this modernity without sounding like an adult trying to be a teenager. Cat Clarke writes Grace in a way that her voice lifts her off of the pages and into my heart. Her voice is so full of emotion, whether it be angst, anger, joy or unbearable hurt, and completely identifiable as her own.

Entangled is a complex and enigmatic novel. We are thrown into the deep end with Grace from the very beginning and so I literally HAD to keep reading. There are so many questions thrown up in the first few chapters: Who is Ethan? Why did he kidnap Grace? Why did she want to kill herself? All of these things that Grace herself didn't know drove the novel forward at a remarkable pace considering she was locked in a white room and telling her story through flashbacks for the entirety of Entangled.

Through these flashbacks we got Grace’s story leading up to her as she is writing. With this Cat Clarke subtly tackled lots of issues that far too many seventeen-year-olds have to deal with: self-harm, suicide, teen pregnancy and broken families. But it’s not in any way patronising or forcing warnings and messages down the readers throat.

Although I guessed a few of the major plot twists, they were dealt with beautifully and still managed to surprise me. Entangled is a stunning debut and promises big things from Cat Clarke.

For my British Books Challenge 2011 and 2011 Debut Author Challenge

A huge thank you to Quercus for providing a review copy.

Sophie