The Tied in Two Ending I'm Still Not Over

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Tied in Two landed on my radar after I received an email from Ever After PR. It sounded interesting/ A why choose with dark, small-town secrets, two love interests carrying years of weight, and a heroine running from a past that won’t stay buried.

On paper, it was everything I could ever want. Shayla Fanning’s synopsis alone had me hooked: Savannah fled Oakhaven fifteen years ago after one night changed everything, leaving behind the two boys she loved and the darkness that bound all three of them.

Now she’s back in town, secrets are resurfacing, and the men she left behind are waiting. I went in expecting to be obsessed. What I got was way more complicated than that, and that’s exactly what I want to talk about.

Title: Tied in Two

Author: Shayla Fanning

Publisher: Independently Published

Format: eARC

Genre: Romance, Why Choose, Romantic Thriller

Release Date: August 1, 2026

Pages: 282

Star Rating: 4 stars

Spice Rating: 2 chili peppers

I Have Feelings and They Are Complicated

I am torn when it comes to Tied in Two.

For the better part of this book, I felt like it was talking at me rather than to me. I was being told what was happening instead of experiencing it alongside Savannah, and that distance is hard to shake.

The descriptions feel bare-bones. We get some sense of Luka, but Riley and Luka are twins who supposedly don’t look alike, so who is Riley as an adult? And beyond knowing that Savannah has long, flowing brown hair, I couldn’t fully picture her either. This book, to its core, is character-driven, but the lack of grounding makes it hard to settle into and enjoy.

The past and present structure is…fine — I actually think I like the framework of it all — but Tied in Two is marketed with thriller energy, and for most of the book, it doesn’t deliver on that. There’s no edge-of-your-seat, gasping, shock-and-awe quality. No real darkness creeping in the way a thriller should make you feel.

We get backstory (which is highly appreciated), but the secrets that are supposedly simmering beneath the surface disappear almost as quickly as they appear. Mr. Miller keeps breaking into Savannah’s house as a reminder that the secret exists, but that’s not the same as feeling it build as the tension grows. If these “revelations” are going to land with any weight, they need to be woven throughout. Glimpses, threads, something to lay the foundation. The execution here is severely lacking.

Chaotic. Flawed. I Finished It in One Sitting.

I’ll be honest with you: I put Tied in Two down for about an hour and came back with fresh eyes because I was starting to lose interest. Chapter 8 was the turning point. Something finally clicked (maybe because it was a Riley chapter); my interest was piqued. But I shouldn’t have needed fresh eyes to get there.

The best way I can describe Tied in Two is a popcorn read: not technically a good book, but one you finish and enjoy anyway. There are also enough grammatical errors that I found myself wondering whether it was even passed through an editor. I read an ARC, so I’m hoping the final copy addresses this; because “slits” appearing in the plural, consistently (because how many does she have?) as though it were intentional, is the kind of thing that pulls you completely out of the story. The one instance it appeared correctly almost felt like an accident.

And Then. THAT Ending.

Soooo I’m torn. I’m torn because the execution was severely lacking. The more I read, the more I wanted to yeet the iPad across the room. But the ending. *sigh* The ending made me warm and sad and heartbroken all at once, and it alone — which definitely shouldn’t be enough — was enough to erase some of what I hated about Tied in Two.

Not all of it.

Some (actually a great deal).

And now that it’s over, I cannot stop thinking about it. I want to go back to the beginning and read the whole thing again, which is a strange, strange thing to say about a book that annoyed me as much as Tied in Two did. That ending broke something in me, and I’m not entirely sure I’ve recovered in a way that I will easily be able to move on from.

One more thing I need to address: the why choose classification. I’m not sure that Tied in Two qualifies. Savannah sleeps with both Riley and Luka, yes, but she ends up with only one of them. A why choose is only a why choose because you don’t have to choose. You get all of them. That’s the whole point. If she walks away with one, that’s not a reverse harem…. I can’t tell you why without getting into spoiler territory, but even with context, it’s more like a love triangle with steps.

The Verdict (It’s Complicated)

*sigh* So where does that leave me? Definitely frustrated, severely heartbroken, and yet somehow already thinking about rereading a book I wanted to throw across the room. Tied in Two is not a perfect book (by any means). But I have to admit that Shayla Fanning built something in that ending that I wasn’t expecting, and I haven’t been able to shake it since I read it.

It’s the contradiction I am currently sitting with. The execution let me down, but the story got under my skin anyway. If you go in knowing that it will be messy and imperfect (and occasionally maddening), you might find yourself in the exact space I’m currently occupying: finished, torn, and thinking about it more than you’d like to admit.

If you’ve read it, you know. And if you haven’t…well, pick up a copy from Bookshop.org and support a local indie bookstore while supporting an independent author. Or shop Amazon (it’s available on KU); either way, Shayla deserves your support. And the ending alone might just be worth it for you.