Twisted Love by Ana Huang
Genre: NA Realistic Fiction/Romance
Blurb (on back of book): He has a heart of ice...but for her, he'd burn the world.
Alex Volkov is a devil blessed with the face of an angel and cursed with a past he can't escape. Driven by a tragedy that has haunted him for most of his life, his ruthless pursuits for success and vengeance leave little room for matters of the heart.
But when he's forced to look after his best friend's sister, he starts to feel something in his chest:
A crack.
A melt.
A fire that could end his world as he knew it.
***
Ava Chen is a free spirit trapped by nightmares of a childhood she can't remember.
But despite her broken past, she's never stopped seeing the beauty in the world...including the heart beneath the icy exterior of a man she shouldn't want.
Her brother's best friend.
Her neighbor.
Her savior and her downfall.
Theirs is a love that was never supposed to happen-but when it does, it unleashes secrets that could destroy them both...and everything they hold dear.
MY OPINION: **
I've had these books downloaded on my phone for months but I haven't actually gotten around to reading them until recently. I had high expectations especially from everything I've heard but I do have to say this series had a rocky start. I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I had expected to and I found most of it unrealistic, ridiculous, and non-romantic. I didn't really like the characters and the plot itself was very outlandish.
Ava Chen (East Asian American rep!) has gone through a lot of childhood trauma but has grown stronger in spite of it. She's not the biggest fan of her brother's best friend, Alex Volkov, but soon they grow closer after he basically becomes her little "babysitter" watch-guard next-door neighbor kind of a guy after he brother leaves on some trip. I personally liked their relationship in the beginning before they got together and enjoyed the slow-burn moments leading up to them getting together. However, once they did finally get together, the whole thing kind of lost its spark for me and I just wasn't really feeling it anymore.
Ava's friends were very interesting and I loved the friendships in this story. It definitely made up for the lack of romance I felt in the love story. Bridget is an actual queen (very very outlandish but I looked it over), Jules is my favorite by far (fiery spitfire redhead), and Stella is an Instagram star (not my favorite but a good friend).
Alex is some genius, tech-y, god-like man who has his own fair share of demons. He's the typical broody, moody, no-emotion kind of man we always read about and he's uber-rich (which definitely helped). I personally didn't like Alex's character that much. I wasn't that appealed by his personality, his whole thing about killing whoever touches his girl, his horrific vendetta that he carried around with him, etc. I understand that he went through some extremely traumatic things (like, actually horrific) but it didn't excuse him treating Ava like his property. I personally cannot stand overly possessive men. I am fine with jealousy, a little envy, and all that but treating a woman like they're property and acting like they have no free will is honestly just not attractive to me at all. He needed therapy.
I liked that he taught Ava how to swim. It was a very wholesome moment to balance out the sheer absurdity of the rest of their relationship.
I liked their relationship and the little operations to try to get Alex to show emotions but once they actually ended up dating, his sudden about-face felt very unrealistic and fake to me. I did not see any chemistry between them, to be quite honest, and I didn't like how they treated each other. I liked their banter and reading about their dates but it felt very sudden and out of place with the characters we have come to know. Still, I persevered.
Then the second half of the book started and that's when I dropped my rating down from some stellar 4.5 stars to a 2.5-3 star type of thing. I was in shock reading what I was reading because of how utterly stupid and ridiculous it was. The trauma of Ava's past and the whole sinister plotting of Alex is revealed and I literally laughed at how unrealistic and outlandish it was. I was expecting this book to at least be semi-realistic and follow the typical contemporary romance tropes but no, this was so absurd.
It felt like reading a soap opera and I did not sign up for that. If I wanted to read something other than a sappy romance, then I would have picked up an actual thriller. We are just supposed to believe that the little villain moments at the end were real life... and not as if it came from a B-rated action movie??
The singing made me laugh. This was some Edward Cullen type of thing and I couldn't help cackling reading that. The one year of groveling... also very unreal but I appreciated the effort. It made their supposed love slightly more believable to me. I wouldn't have taken him back though.
I did really like the writing style and I found it fun, fast-paced, and easy to read, all of which I always love in a romance novel. It's dual POV which I always love. I finished this book in a day, which was nice. I think the writing style was good and the overall idea and tropes incorporated into this book were well-developed but the execution itself was not entirely there. It felt a little Wattpad-ish at times, and the plots were so convoluted that it didn't really feel like the most organized book.
I'm writing this review after finishing the whole series and I do have to say that this was probably my least favorite of them all. That being said, if you didn't like this one, definitely don't quit because I liked the later books way more. If you did like this one, then you're in for a treat with the rest of the series. I would recommend trying it out and at least getting to the second one before deciding if you're going to drop it or not, because I am glad I read the second and third books at least (not really the fourth...). If you liked the friendships in this one, definitely continue the series because it highlights each of the friends' love stories.
Main Character: Ava, Alex
Sidekick(s): Jules, Bridget, Stella, Josh, etc
Villain(s): Misunderstandings, murder, trauma, etc
Realistic Fiction Elements: This book was fairly real to life (it could happen, but it most likely does not.)
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