Introduction
Twisted Love by Ana Huang is the first book in the Twisted series, first published in 2021 it is 343 pages of pure grumpy sunshine, romance bliss. Loved by many having a well established fan base from release, this book paved the way and set the tone perfectly, having three more books following along.
Storyline/ plot
In this book we follow Ava Chen at Thayer university, with a passion for photography giving her a bright looking future on her own as her brother Josh Chen is leaving to work abroad providing medical services for a year leaving Ava to live freely away from the over protective big brother. Ava is happy, bright, bubbly, with a pure, kind heart and a sparkly view on the real world, no matter how much her childhood haunts her.
Alex Volkov could not be more different than Ava, with an icy cold expression: Always, and a pessimistic outlook on pretty much every aspect of life, Alex doesn’t care about love, doesn’t have time for love and will never put anything over his need for revenge. After a tragic event within his childhood Alex has always been emotionally closed and keeps a small circle, apart from best friend Josh Chen.
When a desperate Josh asks Alex to keep watch of Ava while he is working away, both are pretty reluctant to the idea, even more so when Alex decides to move into Josh’s vacant house for the duration. Right next door to Ava.
Overtime Ava realizes there is no getting rid of Alex so she and her friends decide to have a little fun navigating Alex and his unknown emotions. Each phase of their plan was formed to trigger a different emotion within Alex but, the only person triggering emotions was Ava …
As their relationship heats up Alex becomes distracted on his plan for revenge allowing space for interference with him and Ava, leaving Alex to decide if putting Ava’s life at risk was worth revenge on the person who took his parents and sister?
Writing style
Ana Huang uses her contrasting characters to create a world where everything is constantly so intense and interesting you feel like you have to keep reading to know what happens. All of her books are at a really nice pace so everything flows and connects really well. The dual POV we get a switch in atmosphere from each character, we get the happy, cute, sweet, optimism of Ava with the more dark, grumpy view from Alex which separates the book really nicely.
Pros/ cons
The pros would be the contrast and the pacing with this book,as well as the character development throughout the story. It was a really nice fun read with the perfect balance of romance and suspense, it was borderline forbidden love with brothers best friend which are really fun tropes to read. I thought the storyline was really nice. It flowed well, it was easy to comprehend the whole way through and it was all explained really well. The only con i would suggest is that we do get introduced to a lot of characters very quickly in the beginning but that is because they all tie in together throughout the rest of the series.
Conclusion
Overall I rated Twisted Love four stars, it thought this was such a good introduction into the Twisted series and sets the tone perfectly for the other books.I really enjoyed the plot of this book even with all of the twists and turns I found it such a gripping story with a lovely romance and a good amount of drama.