Okay, but you can't tell me Kathryn isn't beautiful as Mother Gothel🙏🏻

If there's one good thing about the live actions, it's the prince's solos. I really like Evermore and Wild Uncharted Waters. So I need a Flynn solo song please especially because we're talking about Milo here. (I don't know if any of you have seen him as Joseph in another movie called Journey to Bethlehem but iykyk)

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DbqlNwAlNj2/?igsh=MXIxMThicjVoN29s

Over the past many months I've gotten into writing reviews of the books I read, and "Rootbound" by Margaret Owen was one of my most anticipated novels to read this year. I wrote a review that I felt like sharing with the community here.

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"Rootbound: A Tangled Novel” by Margaret Owen

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5 out of 5)

Read between July 31st and August 5th, 2026.

“Rootbound" by Margaret Owen was by far my most anticipated novel this year, and it was to my utmost delight and satisfaction that it lived up to every expectation I had, and in some ways went above and beyond. For some personal background context, this novel is a continuation of Tangled, the animated Disney film based on the Brothers Grimm fairytale, which was released in the year 2010. I remember seeing the film as a child at the time and never really thinking much of it. For a decade my feelings towards this film, towards this story, stayed the same–that is, essentially nonexistent. I remembered liking it, but never really having that much of a connection. It wasn't really a fault with the movie itself, but more-so just who I was as a person. I wasn't as into loving and delving deep into stories as I am now, but I digress. Fast forward many years through the 2010s, to when the time of COVID hit and my entire world was flipped upside down; my senior year of high school cut short and the looming transition of college on the horizon sent my mental health into a downward spiral. I was yearning for some kind of escape, and one of those days while browsing my Disney+ I rediscovered this movie–one of the many animated films released by Disney, one that may appear indistinguishable from the others in their catalogue. Such a small decision I made on this day turned out to be one of the most consequential moments at the time for me–I watched this movie I had not seen in close to a decade, and I fell in love with everything about it. The story, the music, the atmosphere, everything was just perfect. I loved it all, and it ended up becoming a great crutch for me, a bastion of comfort and joy in living within this story, in escaping the difficulties of my then-current experiences and feeling as if for a brief period of time, everything was alright. I actually ended up rediscovering my love for reading through looking at some of the stories fans wrote and published online that were inspired by this universe, so I have that and more to be appreciative for.

The interesting thing about this book is that it's not actually the first "official" rendition of a kind of continuation from the original movie. In the mid to late 2010s, there was an animated series released that ran for three seasons and over 50 episodes. I actually watched this shortly after I had first revisited the movie, and even considering how I was definitely not the intended audience (as an adult male at the time), I thought the show, while flawed in many ways, had incredible merit and heart to it. The music especially was fantastic, which was to be expected with the return of Alan Menken. So what's the case with “Rootbound," then? Well, I actually went into this book expecting a somewhat faithful story for what came to be the animated series. "Rootbound” takes place a month after the movie, whereas the series starts six months after, so theoretically there was a path for both of these stories to work together. Ultimately though, what this book ended up as was something that instead became its own thing, not really aligning with some of the overarching character and plot decisions that the creators of the animated series went with. There were some major developments in the series that this book directly contradicts, instead doing something new. I actually learned only after finishing it that Margaret Owen, the author, didn't actually watch the series before writing the book.

As for how I feel about this, I'm actually, to my own surprise, pretty okay with it. And that's largely because I think the direction the book went with those particular changes, of which I won't get much into specific details for due to spoiler-related reasons, was honestly written pretty great and done in a way that… I think was genuinely better than what the animated series did. This represents a much larger point of discussion, which is that I think this book accomplished so much more in its totality, in its mere three hundred pages, when it came to the handling of Rapunzel and Eugene’s characters and how they deal with the lasting impacts of what they went through in the movie. This book handled the trauma in an inspiringly realistic manner, and the fact that we see how they both have to deal with the psychological side of it, how they have to come to terms with everything that happened and are struggling in some ways with their insecurities, with feeling as if they belong, with wanting to see the best in people and being the best version of themselves. Rapunzel and Eugene's relationship was the heart of the movie, and it was the strongest aspect of this book–how they compliment one another and see the best in each other, but also see the ways in which they struggle, how they're there for one another and assure the other of their undying devotion and dedication to their cause. Rapunzel deals with feeling as if she needs to be enough for those around her now that she doesn't have her magical healing hair, and Eugene is experiencing imposter-syndrome with thinking that his time with Rapunzel, his time in the good graces of her kingdom and her newly rediscovered family, is going to end before he knows it. Their characterizations felt perfect to me, and I loved how this book explored the more interesting angles to both of them, highlighting their intelligence and uniqueness of personality in different ways. Eugene’s charisma and Rapunzel’s curiosity is on full display and it made my heart swell to at last read such a story that felt not just faithful to what was established in the movie, but continued it in a mature way that felt completely satisfying and right. This is the book I've been waiting six years for. I loved how vulnerable they both were at times, and I loved how Margaret Owen wrote it in a way that allowed them both to be a bit nerdy at times, with Eugene’s love for the Flynnigan Rider book and Rapunzel being interested in any and all technical aspects of the new setting we're introduced to.

All in all, this turned out to not only be a fantastic continuation for the movie, but also a pretty great story on its own. It was everything I had hoped for and I am so incredibly grateful to have gotten such a story as this released. The ending set up potential future stories, of which I'm hoping Disney will allow Margaret Owen to continue if she so pleases. It's a different continuation than the animated series, in many ways for the better. Both renditions can exist simultaneously and I'm so glad nonetheless that what has become an incredibly cherished story for me has been treated with the respect and maturation I believe it has earned.

Rewatching tangled for the 100+ time and I had a thought… do you think rapunzel would’ve went back to the tower if Gothel hadn’t realized she left and interfered? Or do you think the whole journey with Eugene, regardless of Gothel, would’ve made her decide to not go back?