Title:  Entwined With You
Author: Sylvia Day
Publisher/Year:  Penguin Group (USA) 6/4/13
Length:  368 pages
Series: Crossfire #3

Overview

The worldwide phenomenon continues as Eva and Gideon face the demons of their pasts and accept the consequences of their obsessive desires…

From the moment I first met Gideon Cross, I recognized something in him that I needed. Something I couldn’t resist. I also saw the dangerous and damaged soul inside—so much like my own. I was drawn to it. I needed him as surely as I needed my heart to beat.

No one knows how much he risked for me. How much I’d been threatened, or just how dark and desperate the shadow of our pasts would become.

Entwined by our secrets, we tried to defy the odds. We made our own rules and surrendered completely to the exquisite power of possession…

My Thoughts

****WARNING – just as a precaution, if you haven’t read the other books in the series, there may be SPOILERS*****

let’s start by saying OMG – i don’t know how i thought this, but i for some reason thought this book wasn’t coming out until December.  Don’t know why i thought that, and when i got an email from Barnes & Nobles telling me my pre-order download was ready, i literally jumped for joy.

So this 3rd installment picks up just days after Reflected In You ended – after major drama took place.  If you’ll remember, Eva had this haunted past with Nathan, her step brother i believe – who sexually assaulted her for some time, and that’s why she was so ‘damaged’, ended up in therapy, met Cary and built her life from there.  In Book 2, Nathan begins stalking her and even threatens Gideon because he knows that it’s one way to get to Eva and a way to extort him.  Well, things didn’t turn out so good for Nathan, seeing as how he didn’t quite make it to the end of the story alive.  We find that Gideon took care of things, which came at a price – and that threw a HUGE wrench in everything that we had been building towards in the relationship between Eva and Gideon. Eva is led to believe that circumstances weren’t really what they were, that it was an affair going on vs. Gideon protecting the one thing that means the most to him.

See, Corinne, a woman from Gideon’s past kept coming back up since she’s still in love with him, and she becomes Gideon’s semi-alibi at a point, only as a means to protect Eva from any number of things.  With this, Gideon and Eva find themselves in a situation where Eva wants nothing to do with him (again, thinking that he’s back with Corinne), and Gideon really just trying to put some distance between them so that the police don’t name his as the prime suspect.

We start EWY when they are slowly finding their way back together because things are starting to settle down, however it can’t be public knowledge that they are together for the sake of keeping them both safe.  While that’s going on, there’s plenty of other drama coming up.

A reporter starts stalking Eva to get information on Gideon (mind you we learn that she’s got a past with Gideon herself).  Cary is still juggling 2 relationships one with Tatiana, which Eva isn’t too pleased about and one with Trey whom Eva really likes.  it’ll be interesting to see how that develops as the story goes on since i think that we’re all clear on who we want him to be with.  We also get to see a bit more of a build in the relationship with Eva and Megumi (which i hoped would be the case coming out of the last installment) and Mark (her boss) and his own personal life. I think that it’s a nice supplement to the main story lines that we get to be involved more in these secondary characters.

It reminds us that the story isnt’ JUST about the sexual relationship and trouble relationship that Eva and Gideon have but that she’s a girl who’s new to NYC, just out of college and trying to find her way.  We forget about that a bit since it really started all from Day 1 when she mapped out her timing/route to go to her new job in the beginning of Bared to You.

All that aside, you have to assume that there will be even more drama coming for Eva since things seem to be getting a bit more normal for her.  That would mean – re-enter Brett, her ex something or other who we met briefly in the 2nd book.  he’s a rock star and has this tumultuous relationship history with Eva-  really meaning that it was highly sexually charged, and potentially a love relationship as well but that didn’t happen.  Eva’s moved on somewhat to Gideon, but Brett is still holding out hope that something can happen.  Since no one can know that Eva and Gideon are back together, that just means that there’s chance for Brett to get his hopes up, for Gideon to get jealous and for Eva to be stressed out.  The media is making an assumption about the 2 of them since Brett wrote their hit song about her and they debut a video that features an Eva look-alike.  And well, there’s a bit of blackmail going on tied to the pair too which adds a bit more spice.

What i really liked in this story is that while it was really predictable what was going on in a lot of these story lines, there were quite a few curve balls thrown in that kept me wondering.  The story line with ‘who killed Nathan’ kept coming up and since we know that it was Gideon but there’s still a bit of mystery there.  the detectives are on the trail of who did it, and we’re worried that it’ll be attention put on Gideon, or that someone else will be taking the fall for it which we know that Gideon won’t really let happen.  I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on since it’s a bit twisted – and there’s a bracelet that is talked about a number of times that you just wonder ‘what’s that about’

My Questions

1) What’s next for Eva and Gideon?  Will they last, will they be happy

2) What’s the story with murder case and what’s going to come of it?  are they safe?

3) What’s next for Cary?  There’s a story line developing there and i wonder what that means for him

4) What’s going on with Megumi?  She’s ‘sick’ but i wonder if there’s more to that story

5) While Eva’s Mom and Dad ever sort out their relationship?  we know from Reflected in You that they still have love for one another, and that’s definitely re-hashed a bit in EWY

so, the GREAT thing that i loved here, which i hope isn’t too much of a spoiler, is that throughout this story i thought that the series was a Trilogy.  I was about 3/4 of the way through trying to figure out how Sylvia Day planned to resolve some of these story lines, and then at about 10 pages left i was saying to myself ‘this is going to be such a let down with the ending since it’ll all resolve so fats’ and guess what?

i’ve learned that this is a 5 BOOK SERIES.  How awesome is that?  i can’t be happier knowing that the story continues for 2 more books, and that there could be so much more to the development of these relationships and what happens next.