Tangling with the CEO (Half Moon Bay) (Entangled Bliss)

by Annie Seaton

[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

Tangling with the CEO sounded like a cute, second chance romance with a side of opposites attract. Blake and Ana attended college together--both business majors, but with opposing views--and bumped heads all the time. Then one night, they sleep together, but when Blake gets home the next day, Ana is gone. Ana moved back to her home town to take care of her dying mother, and ten years later she's still there, but working in restoration. When her job is threatened, she heads to see the man responsible, and it's none other than Blake. Unfortunately, I didn't care for the characters at all. And the focus was mainly on saving the local business rather than on the relationship.

My main problem with Tangling with the CEO was Ana. She's quite ridiculous as a character and I just could not bring myself to care about her, or want her to get her man. It's not that she's an unlikeable character. She's philanthropic, a good friend, and generally helpful and compassionate. However, her views on business made me roll my eyes. She started a restoration company, which is going under, now that Blake is buying the store she works out of. They make no money, since she doesn't charge most of her customers. It's nice that she would rather be helpful than rich, but you need some kind of funding to run that kind of business! Even if she did want to keep her services free, she needs some kind of plan on getting money, even if it's just donations. She expected Blake to keep her and her friends on the payroll out of the goodness of his heart, but only when that failed, did it even dawn on her that she should have had a proposal in place for their meeting. She also blames her lack of success on the fact that she didn't finish her degree, rather than on her lack of organization. Seriously.

Tangling with the CEO also just had way too many kids. When Ana shows up at Blake's house for their meeting, his sister immediately shows up and drops off a zoo. I get that it was an emergency, but I was highly irritated on Blake and Ana's behalf at suddenly having 5 kids, 2 cats, and a dog to deal with. The first half of the book is just them dealing with that chaos, and not getting a chance to talk, which led Blake to believe that Ana was keeping something from him. Well, she's been trying to tell you for two days! Then after that, they don't really spend any time together, until one of those kids goes missing and Ana offers to help. I really don't care! I'm here for the enemies-to-lovers and second chance romance!

There were two more, less minor but still annoying, things about Tangling with the CEO. I was immediately annoyed with Blake because he assumed Ana dropped out of college (during her senior year!) and moved away because of him. That's extremely self-centered and frankly, stupid. Obviously something major happened that caused her to pack up and leave without saying goodbye to anyone. Then there's the matter of Ana losing her job because of him. There's a simple solution: run your own business! Her restoration business is HER business within the hardware store business. She can do it on her own. Sure, she won't get the special discount on supplies, but like I said earlier, she's not concerned over the financial aspect of her business to begin with.

Clearly, Tangling with the CEO just did not work for me. Nothing about the characters made much sense, which made it hard for me to care about them. Then nearly the entire romance is condensed into the two page epilogue. What is that?

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.