Fast-paced and suspenseful, Entanglement was a thrilling read with a confident and brazen protagonist. While there were definitely some world-building issues, and the romance was a little too forced for me to believe in it, I still found that I enjoyed Entanglement for most of what it had to offer.With any plot involving an alternate Earth, I expect a lot of history to help me understand how that Earth got to be where it is now. While I appreciated that Entanglement didn’t info-dump its history on me, the bits that I did get to help me understand how the process of entanglement had been discovered and then implemented, had me asking as many questions as I had answered. For example, there is a process called juvengamy, where two halves are introduced as babies or young children. It is now illegal, as the consequences for the halves can be fatal, but there is a large group of people – who call themselves the Brotherhood – who believe that juvengamy keeps the bloodlines pure (whatever that means). And this particular process was started by…wait for it!…Adolph Hitler. I got the parallels between the Brotherhood’s purity goals, and those of the Adolph Hitler from our Earth, but without proper context as to what it means to be a pure bloodline, I found it just pulled me out of the story.With entanglement having only been discovered for around eighty years, I also found it hard to believe that, as a population, the whole world would subscribe to the idea of halves in such a short period of time – I know it was mentioned briefly that India (I think?) was one of the sole countries who hadn’t conformed, but even so. The fact that the vast majority of the planet was ready to adopt such a radical idea in such a short amount of time, without results to show what the pros/cons of living with – and living without – a half would do to someone, just didn’t sit well with me. Why would the population be so quick to reject such a lengthy history of choice, in favour of something predetermined? I also didn’t understand how four generations had passed in eighty years (isn’t a generation defined as thirty years?), why halves were now unable to live without one another (if one half died, the other died shortly after from half-death), and how the emergence of halves cured all of the worlds problems; according to Aaron, there was little-to-no violence, since the emergence of halves. Why is this?While I found many of these questions perplexing as I read Entanglement, I admit I was a little too caught up in the plot to pay them much attention. With the secrets surrounding his blocked clairvoyant path beginning to reveal themselves, and the enigma surrounding Amber and Clive’s relationship beginning to become clearer, I found myself completely caught up in what would happen to Aaron, once he turned eighteen and found out who his half was. I also found myself constantly at war with Aaron’s actions, which took up a lot of my attention! As soon as he managed to get himself out of one dangerous situation, he was leaping head-first in to the next, in his quest for answers. While I found many of his actions to be completely foolish – who escapes from his captor’s prison, only to run right back to that same captor to retrieve his cell phone?! – I also couldn’t help myself from admiring his tenacity.As for his relationship with Amber, it took a while for it to grow on me. At first, I couldn’t see why they were so attracted to each other. Every other word was said in anger, or with the intent of hurting the other’s feelings. But then one of them would comment, internally of course, about how much they were starting to care for the other. Considering Aaron is described as golden-skinned, athletic and dark-eyed while Amber is a bright-green-eyed blonde beauty, I assumed their feelings for each other were purely on a superficial level. But then they started throwing around the L-word, and I just couldn’t believe in it. It felt more like their relationship was forced on to them, because they needed to feel strongly about each other in order for the plot to make sense. That’s not to say that I didn’t find some moments between them to be endearing though.She glared at him. “If you call me buttercup one more time, you lose all boyfriend privileges.”“Oh, so I am your boyfriend?” he said.“No.”“Right…” Aaron felt a smile tugging at his lips. “I just have the privileges.”From its beginning, Entanglement drew me in. I was curious about the history behind halves, and what it meant for someone who’s channel to their half was blocked. As it progressed, I did find myself questioning many things – like where Aaron’s parents were for the entire book – but mostly, I found myself enjoying the read.
