Title: Tangled Up in You (Meant to Be #4)

Author: Christina Lauren

Publisher: Hyperion Avenue 2024

Genre: Romance

Pages: 320

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Fairytale Retellings

Spice Rating: 3

She has a dream. He has a plan. Together they’ll take a leap of faith.

Ren has never held an iPhone, googled the answer to a question, or followed a crush on social media. What she has done: Read a book or two, or three (okay, hundreds). Taught herself to paint. Built a working wind power system from scratch. But for all the books she’s read, Ren has never found one that’s taught a woman raised on a homestead and off the grid for most of her twenty-two years how to live in the real world. So when she finally achieves her lifelong dream of attending Corona College, it feels like her life is finally beginning.

Fitz has the rest of his life mapped out: Graduate from Corona at the top of his class, get his criminal record wiped clean, and pass himself off as the rich, handsome player everyone thinks he is. He’s a few short months from checking off step one of his plans when Ren Gylden, with her cascading blonde hair and encyclopedic brain, crashes into his life, and for the first time Fitz’s plan is in jeopardy.

But a simple assignment in their immunology seminar changes the course of both their lives, and suddenly they’re thrown out of the frying pan and into the fireon a road trip that will lead them in the most unexpected directions. Out on the open road, the world somehow shifts, and the unlikely pair realize that, maybe, the key to the dreams they've both been chasing have been sitting next to them the whole time.

For most of this book, I was fully engaged in the story. I do love the forced proximity trope and the sunshine/grump trope, and this one was a great example of those. The beginning was a bit slow, but once we got on the road, the story really got moving. I loved seeing Ren and Fitz begin to trust each other and find themselves on the road trip. The scene in the biker bar was hilarious and just perfect for their story. I was interested to see how their relationship progressed. But then we get to the last fourth of the book. Everything was way too rushed for my tastes. I wanted to sit with the characters a bit more. I wanted to see the characters interact with others (like Mary!) and let those other characters see how they have changed. I wanted to see the main characters in their next place. The epilogue was a complete throwaway. I just really wanted more with this book.

Meant to Be: