Tangled Webs

I honestly didn’t dislike the overall book, but there was a lot of elements in it that added up to an overall low rating. The biggest factor, I have to admit, is the characters. Unfortunately, I couldn’t connect to or sympathize with any of them. Not Arista, the main character, or her childhood friend/crush Nic, or her instalusty masked highwayman Grae, or the people who made the “tangled webs” in the story.

I WANTED to like Arista, but her character seemed so unrealistic. Throughout the book she’s conflicted about her feelings; having grown up on the seedier side of London, she’s always been used and she vacillates between “I want to be free!” and “I CAN’T be free, the only life I’ve known is this” in the book.

It scared her, this sudden burst of conscience. If she wasn’t Lady A, then who was she? Where did she really belong?

Alright, Arista’s character premise sounds legit, but she really, really wasn’t that strong of a character. Sure, she could do stuff with her knife (that the author never failed to point out was on her thigh – I get it after the fourth time, thanks). But sometimes she’d be badass with her knife and threatening people and the other times she freezes and hesitates and is caught up in a daydream or something. I find myself wondering how she was able to stay alive throughout her life, if she acts that inconsistent.

Don’t get me started on when she meets Grae, and sparks fly. The sparks flew so much that she got distracted in her spying game and seriously, I was like “Getcha head in the game!” while she was caught up in Grae’s stormy eyes.

“When he touched her bare shoulder, Arista forgot how to breathe. The warmth she remembered so well spiraled outward from his touch. When he curled his fingers around the back of her beck and inched her head closer, a frantic beat began in her chest.”

Grae himself seemed like a nice guy, but we see a very superficial side to him. You can definitely tell he cares for Arista, but his lack of character makes him seem quite shallow. Nic was the only character that seemed interesting in the book, and he hardly appears at all. The evil guys are as wooden as the main love interest and are your typical mustache-twirling blackmailers. If I had to draw a comparison, I’d say the characters are a bland meal without any spices or sauces to add depth and flavor to the eater, or this case, reader.

I think Bross does her best in making the historical setting seem real, but it kind of fell flat. There are cameos of real life people (dead, of course), but it’s just a brief mentioning that has nothing to do with the story. In fact, the historical background is just that – a background. The story doesn’t have elements of the time period to add to the plot, it just stands there like a cardboard stage. I’m sure most people would think that’s good enough, but I guess I was expecting something a little… more.

Overall, the ending was quite satisfying. There are still enough loose ends to make another book, but there wasn’t a cliffhanger to make me want to grab the sequel. I kind of liked it actually. I’d recommend this to people who don’t really read historical fiction – this is a pretty light and short read to get introduced to the genre. But to someone who’s been there, done that, then this probably isn’t something you’d enjoy.

Things to look out for in Tangled Webs by Lee Bross

A VERY confused MC. Meet Arista aka Lady A aka Ana aka someone help me because so many “aka’s” aren’t even legal. Arista is a thief…or rather, the aid of a thief. Her boss, Bones (Villain #1), collects secrets of the aristocrats in London’s society and he’ll keep them safe, for a price, of course. He is cruel, abusive, and basically owns Arista. He keeps her starved and filthy, only allowing her to dress up family for the sake of masquerade parties, when Arista becomes Lady A and collects the payment from London’s richest. But Arista doesn’t know who she is, or what she wants to be. When she’s Lady A, she cherishes the control she, a girl, has over the richest of the city. But when everything is said and done, Arista only wants to run away, and lead a normal life. All of this struggle and angst is fine, but not until it wears the reader down. Duuuude. You don’t know what you want to do. Newsflash: None of us teens do. What you’re experiencing is normal teenage behaviour. Jeez. Don’t show me your inner struggle for 302 pages out of your 304 page book.

A host of characters with the depth of the finest potholes in your city. When I read a book, I expect to see characters who are thicker than a cardboard and deeper than potholes. I don’t want to see these characters come and go when the story line requires them to, and I don’t want them to be used to drag the story along. Examples of these characters? Nic (Love Interest #1), Becky (Arista’s “friend”), Grae (Reigning Love Interest) and most importantly Wild (Villian #2). These people came when they had to utter a few dialogues, and then left, leaving Arista to ponder upon—what else?—her identity crisis. Sigh.

Instalove? Instalove! I could go on and on and on about Arista and Grae and their love-at-first-sight situation. How she fell in love with his voice and the fact that he had been to India. How she thought about him all the time, forgetting how best friend and companion Nic had always protected her from Bones. How she thought that she wouldn’t even give him her name for fear that he would…what go to the cops? How she decided (without him, might I add) that she would help his family (who found their way into the book, somehow) and make sure that they lived happily—no matter the fact that she'd essentially dug her own grave. And then there was Grae. I loved him the first time he met Arista. He was all soft voice and strong arms and swoons, but as I kept seeing more and more of him, I realised that while he was likeable, he wasn’t some special character that I’d remember. Not bad, but nothing new either. Bummer, because I really like his name. MY NAME IS GRAE SINCLAIR AND I’M MYSTERIOUS AND SEXY *insert sexy pelvic gyrations*

Villains who are as cliché as they come. Two villains in this story, ladies and gents, and both do basically the same thing. One is a brute about it, the other uses sweet words to get what he wants. And if you don’t do as they say, they will take from you, whether you like it or not. Let me tell you, in the history of YA has never been one villain who made me fear for the character’s life. And Tangled Webs is no different. The two bad guys could have been worse had they shown something that other stereotypical villains don’t but they stuck to the old classics and that just weakened the plot even further.

London, 1725…or was it? One of my main reasons for picking up this book was the time period. London in books is my happy place, whether in current times or two hundred years ago. And in Tangled Webs, apart from the repeated mentions of the London slums and squalors and the filth in the alleyways, nothing else made me feel like the book was based in London. In fact, it could be the current time in a city that hosted a little too many masquerades and my feelings about the book would remain unchanged. What is the use of such an elaborate setting if it brings nothing of consequence to the plot line?

Overall, I’m not too sure if I’m going to pick up the sequel to this one, but it’s a confirmed two book series, so why not, right?


*I was provided a free ecopy of this book in exchange of an honest review. This did not in any way, however, influence the content of this review.*