Turns out I don't think I love Flynn Ryder type of guys as much as the movie Tangles led me to believe. It was still cute at points and I liked the differences the retelling had, but just wasn't my fave.

At first I felt like this book was a little awkward and cringey but I think that is kind of the point of the characters and the romance truly does get better! By the end of the book I was in love with how the author weaves in details of what I loved in the movie Tangled and yet still made it more realistic. The subtle nods to Tangled were really great. By the end I ultimately struggled the most with how naive and young the characters felt, especially for Fitz being almost done with college.

When I first picked up this book, I wasn't sure what to expect. The story gradually grew on me, despite my initial confusion. As I continued reading, everything started to make sense, leading to a satisfying conclusion.

Throughout the book, I couldn't help but notice parallels to a familiar story, reinterpreted in a modern context. It was surprising to discover that the book was indeed a modern retelling of this classic tale. The author's reimagining added a fresh perspective that kept me engaged and intrigued.

What impressed me the most was how the book explored contemporary themes through its characters and plot. The characters were well-developed and relatable, and their journeys kept me invested in their outcomes. Each chapter revealed new layers to their personalities and motivations, making the story both compelling and enjoyable.

In conclusion, this book turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It took a traditional narrative and gave it a modern twist, delivering a story that was both familiar and innovative. If you enjoy stories that reimagine old tales in fresh and thought-provoking ways, I would definitely recommend giving this book a read.

ARC provided by Publisher in exchange for an honest review.

"These aren’t very fun rules.”
“You’re blackmailing me. I’m not going to make this trip enjoyable.”
“I told you I feel bad about that.”

I would like to thank Hyperion Avenue and NetGalley for the copy of this eARC. Tangled was a very new style to Disney in terms of storytelling and humor, and I feel this was also a new adventure for Christina Lauren.

It's not a bad book. It was perfectly average for a contemporary romance and I mean that with all my love, because I would still listen to it again. So why three stars? The moments that really stood out to me, that had me laughing out loud and that I truley loved, were all too wound up in how you could trace their footsteps back to quotes from the movie. I feel like seeing that recreation had me more excited than what I was reading in the frist place.

I think I would've loved this so much more and rated higher if I haven't seen tangled as many times as I have. The modern way in which she pulled the key elements were very well done, especailly with Wren's kidnaping, but I left the ending looking for the "Why" of her being taken.

It's explained as they saw a single dad struggling, but it didn't really hit with me. I feel like it wasn't a strong enough reason to drive a couple to steal a child, abandon the modern world and change their identies. A more compelling argument to me would've been her mother convincing her self Wren was a child she had lost. To me to have a good villain you still need to emphasize with them a little bit. While you don't agree, you should be able to see where a villain is coming from, and understand that they think that what they are doing is right or the only option.

If you love disney, and especailly Tangled, I say read it. judge for yourself, because I had a great time. But In a sea of my 3.5 star ratings recently for Contemporary Romance, I just wish this one went a little bit farther for me.

I liked this one a lot. Knowing it was going to be based off Tangled made me request it. I have actually only seen that particular Disney movie one time, and I immediately fell in love.

I would have to say this book is LOOSELY based on the movie. While I was expecting lots of love and heart eyes knowing this was based on a Disney Princess, I think the insta-love was a little too much for me.

Overall, super cute, super sweet, and no explicit spice. Definitely a great summer read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hyperion for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Christina Lauren will always be an autobuy duo author for me and this book is just another example as to why.

This book contained the fairytale elements of Rapunzel/Tangled with a fictional twist on Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated. And I couldn’t put it down for a single second.

Going into this one, I was intrigued by how Christina Lauren would go about their reimagining…how to make this story maintain the elements of Tangled without the actual magic. And the way they managed to do it honestly blows my mind. It’s unique, it’s clever, and it’s everything I never knew I wanted in this story.

Think about it… how would you explain an adult who doesn’t fully understand how the world operates? Who has never used technology, doesn’t pick up on sarcasm, and sticks out like a sore thumb when she finally has the chance to go to school for the first time in her life?

The way CLo captured Ren’s intelligence, her daring nature, her kind heart, and her innocence was magical in its own right, and I cannot get enough.

Each book in this series can be read as a standalone, but I highly recommend reading them all because, if you enjoy reimaginings, it’ll be fully worth it. Promise. OH and Jesse Q. Sutanto is writing book five…a reimagining of Mulan!!

“He’d wanted to touch many women in his life. But he’d never so badly wanted to deserve one before.”

Read if you like:
- Survivor stories
- Raised off the grid
- Flawed hero
- Innocent yet daring FMC
- Tangled + Rapunzel
- Fairytale reimaginings

Because Rapunzel and Flynn Rider’s story is one of my all-time favorites, I worried about how it’d be approached in the Meant to Be series. Powers don’t exist, we’re in the real world, so what’s the story here? How is it going to feel honest yet warm when the story’s narrative is relatively dark? And of all the ways that the adaptation could’ve gone, Tangled Up in You by Christina Lauren is nothing short of brilliant—warm, clever, sharp, deeply soft, and wholeheartedly vulnerable in a way that had me sobbing during the entirety of the last few chapters.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for the advance reader copy.

FULL REVIEW: https://marvelousgeeksmedia.com/2024/06/27/tangled-up-in-you-by-christina-lauren-review/

How can you not want to read a book that has a 1965 Mustang on the cover? I learned to drive in that car. This story is a retelling of the Disney movie "Tangled" and I tried very hard not to let that influence me. I loved seeing the world through Ren's sheltered eyes and how she reacted to everything that was beyond her experience growing up on an isolated homestead in Idaho. The girl had a lot of grit. From the beginning I found her relationship with her parents to be very strange and didn't like the one-dimensional portrayal they were given, but after all they were the villains in this fairy tale story. Fitz was a great character who has tremendous growth during the story. I wasn't found of the long navel gazing sections, I'm a more action-oriented reader. The climax of the story was a surprise and full of the action I love.

Ren Gylden is crazy smart. Living on an isolated homestead in Idaho, she and her parents had to be self-sufficient, and Ren devoured every book in the county library system. She was self-taught and quite the mechanical wiz. Her dream was to go to college, which at 22, was a desire her parents firmly disapproved of. They wanted to keep her down on the farm with them, only them. That wasn't Ren's desire at all. She was ready to see that the world beyond her homestead was really like.

A full ride scholarship to Corona College in Spokane, Washington is Ren's entry to that world. Meeting Fitz Fitzsimmons was her first experience with a handsome, smug, rich jerk. Fitz had a carefully constructed facade to mask his past, but Ren managed to sneak underneath it with her exuberant personality and beautiful long, long blond hair. And her crazy smart brain. During an immunology seminar a test sends them both careening in a direction neither expected to go. A road trip leads them both to discoveries about themselves and each other and new directions and relationships. 3 1/2-Stars

My thanks to the Publisher and Author for providing a complimentary digital Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of this novel via NetGalley. This is my fair, honest and personal review. All opinions are mine alone and were not biased in any way.

Tangled Up in You is a super cute retelling of (imo) one of the better Disney movies of the recent past. It captures all of the vibes of Tangled while still standing alone as its own story. The romance element and both main character were lovely. The college and road trip setting worked super well, and several of the real-world substitutions - like turning sketchy tavern The Snuggly Duckling into a biker bar - had me cracking up. That said, the shift to the real world made the kidnapping subplot and everything to do with Ren's "parents" infinitely more stressful! Getting rid of the layer of remove a fairy tale gives you apparently makes a big difference! And that level of stress did make the book slightly less fun and enjoyable, even if it did provide a layer of depth.

4/5

A modern day retelling about Rapunzel, Christina Lauren brings the magic of Ren and Fritz alive while staying true to the roots of Tangled. I enjoyed diving into this universe, and also finding out that Tangled Up In You is part of the Meant to Be Series.

This is a clean fiction novel, so don’t expect the spice, but do expect to laugh a lot. From Ren’s naivety while trying to navigate through college, to Fritz’ car having a name, you’ll fall in love with their story. I found the middle of the book to drag a bit, but I found the ending brought the drama I expected.

Thank you for the gifted ARC.

3.5 Stars
This was super cute with a lot of nods to the Disney movie and it's characters. However, I felt that it dragged a lot in the middle and ended way too abruptly for my liking (with a classic Disney HEA ending of course). There were definitely some cute moments throughout Ren and Fitz/Edward's road trip, but the magic that was in the movie was missing in this for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for the ARC!

How do the duo, Christina Lauren do it? Another good read in a month! Ren grew up on a homestead doing farm chores and not connected to anything outside homestead. She starts college at age 22 after convincing her parents she would return every weekend to do chores. Fits has the golden boy sheen but darkness hides behind the carefully constructed facade. They are forced to take a road trip…will Ren’s sunny rub off on Fitz’s darkness? Or the other way around?

I really enjoyed this book. If you enjoy the tangled movie you will definitely love this book. Easy and fun read. Will definitely be reading the others in the series.

What a fun book! This was my first 'Meant to Be' book and I absolutely adored how it felt Disney-inspired while still staying true to everything I love about Christina Lauren as authors. I think they navigated this well and I absolutely recommend it to Disney and Clo fans alike!

Ren has grown up living on a homestead in Idaho where her family lives off the grid. Ren is now being dropped off at Corona College. While not school-educated, Ren is plenty knowledgeable, self-taught from library books and hands-on experience raising livestock and farming the land. It here that Ren meetsFitz and is forced into a cross country road trip with him.

Meant to be a modern retelling of Tangled, this will hit better for fans of the movie.

Ren has lived a sheltered life, she has never had a phone, never surfed the internet, never had a crush. She has read her way through every book she could get, taught herself physics, chemistry, 5 languages, and how to rebuild almost anything. Somehow this girl from rural Idaho gets a full ride scholarship to got to college, and better yet her society fearing parents have agreed to let her go with a lot of rules she has to follow of course.

On her first day she gets a campus tour from the campus' notorious playboy, Fitz. Fitz is the top of his class, has charm for days, and does not buy into the hype that Ren's story is causing amongst the student body. After an assignment in their one class together sends them both in a tailspin they end up road tripping together to Nashville, where they will both learn a lot about who they thought they were, and who they truly are.

The set up for this one was certainly interesting. Tangled is one of my favourite disney movie, and Christina Lauren one of my favourite authors, so I had very high hopes for this one. Overall it just did not land for me. I had fun but I felt disconnecting from the story. I just didn't buy the characters chemistry. They didn't have any banter, their attraction and feelings didn't make sense to me, it just felt flat. I like them both as characters individually but not together. Also Fitz did not give me Flynn vibes at all which is a real shame.

Tangled Up in You is the latest, book four, in the Meant to Be series, modern retellings of classic Disney films, and this may be my new favorite! And I’m SO excited for the next book in the series which will be a Mulan retelling by Jesse Q. Sutanto 😍 Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for early access to the title in exchange for my honest opinion.
Ren has grown up sheltered, living on a homestead in rural Idaho where she and her parents live off the grid. The story begins with 22-year old Ren, who has not attended school, being dropped off at Corona College. While not school-educated, Ren is plenty knowledgeable, self-taught from library books and hands-on experience raising livestock and farming the land. While her parents were opposed to it, Ren convinced them to let her apply for a scholarship to attend the college. And once she arrives, her eyes and world are opened up far wider than she could have even imagined. A cross country road trip with an attractive male student, stopping at epic places like Wall Drug and Mount Rushmore, is the beginning to the end - aka her parents finding out and bringing her back to the homestead, with no plans to return to school or to the wider world. The story culminates, combining a coming-of-age romance with a mystery, taking a turn after which I couldn’t put the book down.
I am not a big Disney fan, and I still really enjoyed this book, but I think bigtime Disney fans will enjoy it even more than I did. And although this book doesn’t have the steamy scenes that typically occur in Christina Lauren books, it doesn’t feel like any part of the romance is missing. I recommend checking this out, as it was released on Tuesday.

This was just 100% a good time.
I loved Tangled, so the very idea of a romance retelling had me intrigued. It was so fun with some of my favorite tropes. Road trip, check. Forced proximity, check. General sass & wicked chemistry, double check! This was just what I was in the mood for and loved the shenanigans. Perfect summer read.

Tangled Up in You is a wonderfully fun retelling of Rapunzel. Ren is brilliant but sheltered. She branches out into the world and goes to college. What she discovers there sets her on an adventure with Fitz, a very unlikely vacation partner. The fun unrolls from there told in only the way Christina Lauren knows how. A great YA read easy to recommend.

One of my favorite authors and I was looking forward to her retelling of Tangled/Rapunzel. They did it justice! Such a cute story with the authors’ classic rom com and writing style. I loved this one and highly recommend it to other rom com lovers!