Twisted Love by Ana Huang

Ever wondered what the hell did I just read?

buckle it up because this was one dumpster fire of a book

    Sometimes I think to myself, damn Emma you should really read this book everyone is reading. I am a strong believer in NOT having a whole "I'm not like other girls" complex and therefore do whatever I want, which typically means moving the most popular books up on my tbr because they have to be good, right? Wrong. Sometimes my thinking is very wrong, and all of a sudden I have purchased this crazy-ass book which was a chaotic mess and a half, and also I have a slight distrust for the bookstagram/booktok community who almost NEVER steer me wrong. For real, purchasing then reading this book made me wish I did have an "I'm not like other girls" complex so I could have avoided this mess I have found myself in, but alas I am in too deep because I was very trusting and just when ahead and purchased the next two books as well. I don't even know what to expect from them anymore. 

    At this point, you must be wondering to yourself, Emma when are you actually going to get to the point? Now. The dumpster fire book in question is none other than Twisted Love by Ana Huang. Now, I am an avid romance reader. When I heard this book was my brother's best friend's trope I was all like "sick, this will be fun" *SPOILERS* Let me tell you, this was barely that. I mean typically when you have the whole brother's best friend thing going on, you usually have some conflict surrounding, you know, the BROTHER. Yet this book really said no, instead let's have the brother be vaguely suspicious, but then be totally chill, and instead, let's include a whole other plot line including the interconnection of our Heroine's (if you can even call her that) father, our Hero's (again, is he really a hero? NO) uncle, and multiple attempts from both to kill off our main characters when they were children. Is there trauma? Sure, but we are not even going to deal with that in an appropriate way.

    I knew this was not going to be the vibe when it started when the brother of our main character, Ava, asks his dark and broody bestie Alex to "watch his little sister when he is away." In fact this clearly very chill brother, Josh, lives next door to Ava so he can keep an eye on her. In fact, no one in this book ever leaves her alone because they all seem to think she is too "fragile, optimistic, and naive" and therefore cannot live by or do anything herself as a grown-ass woman. I am physically sick. To really show you Ava can't possibly be left on her own, she misses her bus in the rain and calls her brother to pick her up, and he answers because he needs to you know watch and protects her in that creepy little way of his, but he is IN THE MIDDLE OF HAVING SEX and therefore cannot pick her up, so he sends his icy little bestie to pick her up and thus starts one of the most toxic relationships I have ever read about, and I have read Normal People so like keep that in mind. 

    I mean you think it's weird this chick's brother lives next door, when he leaves to do work in South America he forces his bestie to move in to WATCH his sister like that's totally normal. He is all "yeah man like I need you to watch her she can't live by herself and her best friend (who I am totally in love with and who I will make an appearance within the third book) is no good either and I just need you to protect her." A rational person would say, Woah dude maybe you should back off. Alex is not a rational person. He is like ok, I will, and then proceeds to be ten times more overbearing than her brother ever was. I mean he had bodyguards FOLLOWING her all throughout this book. What the actual fuck. I am speechless. 

    Both Ava and Alex have little to no personality, besides the fact that they have a boatload of emotional trauma that is inappropriately dealt with and which they like to dump on each other. Besides that, apparently, Alex is a high IQ genius who is moody, cold, and dangerous, and when I say that I mean literally this man actually kills someone, and no one bats an eye. Ava on the other hand only has sunshine and rainbows going for her. Oh, she also likes art. That's it. They start to fall for each other when Ava's friends propose this stupid scheme to get Alex to "feel" by harassing and provoking him in all sorts of ways. This lasts about 20 pages, and then there is some "touch her and I will kill you"shit that happens when really a simple, "We are dating" would have sufficed. Ugh, I hate these two. 

    As their crazy-ass toxic relationship progresses, we find out that Alex has some weird photographic memory thing going on in which he can remember every emotion and every single day of his life and thus relives the day his parents and sister were brutally murdered when he was 10 every night when he can't sleep. Ava on the other hand has no childhood memories. All she knows about her past is that her mother pushed her into a lake as a child, she almost drowned when her father saved her and that her mother tragically took her own life soon after. These are some heavy topics here, and they were totally handled insensitively. Major content warning. Neither has received any help for these very real and serious traumatic events they have experienced and instead use their relationship as a sort of pseudo-therapy. 

    There is so much going on in this book that it's hard to keep track. Meanwhile, it's all only loosely related. The big conflict here is that Ava's father was the man who sent people to kill Alex's family, and the entire time he has known her and her brother he has been plotting to bring down and kill her father, which conveniently is taken care of when they realize he was the one who drowned Ava and almost killed her a second time. Yet, he still lies when he realizes his uncle was actually behind their deaths. His whole thing is like, "I can't say I love you because I'm not good for you, you can't trust me." It is all very toxic.

    In the pivotal scene, Alex's crazy murder uncle kidnaps Ava as a threat to Alex. Alex ends up killing the uncle in front of Ava and then stabbing someone to death soon after. He uses his crazy connections as a rich white man in D.C. to cover everything up and pretends all his feelings were a lie to "protect" Ava and send her away. Yet, does he stay away? No, of course not. 

    Soon later he follows her to London where he STALKS her for a solid year as a way to "earn her trust" back while also threatening any man who goes near her and never leaving her alone. Then in his true "I never lied about loving you" moment he randomly sings for her at her big gallery auction. WTF. This made no sense to the plot, we talked about singing one other time, and it had nothing to do with the story. Of course, she forgives him even though he manipulated her family for years and KILLED someone in front of her and they live happily ever after in their toxic little bubble of ice and sunshine. I don't even know what else to say at this point except for two words. DUMPSTER FIRE. 

    The book ends with terrible foreshadowing into the next novel of the series about Ava's friend Bridgett who is seen by Ava and Alex on the news with her bodyguard. In this scene, Alex sees the two exchange a look and proceeds to think to himself about the implications of this look and what it means, implying that they are obviously in love. What does this psychopath take from this? Oh, he is going to use this against them if they ever threaten Ava, never mind if she is her best friend. Then it ends. I wish I was joking. That is the ending though. 

    I mean, there were just so many negative messages in this book. Like all of a sudden lying and manipulation for like 8 years can be overlooked if you stalk a girl for the year and then randomly sing to her. Ugh, I hated them, their relationship, and this weird family murder sub-plot we had going on. Alex is the biggest self-pitier there is, and his entire hang-up is that he lied to Ava and is not good enough for her, which honestly he is not. She is clearly not perfect for accepting this behavior, but like he killed someone in front of her and she was like it's chill, let's just have more sex. What? Not to mention there is this whole scene when they almost have sex at their older friend's dining room table. Terribly inappropriate. They have no boundaries. 

    Overall this was a hot burning mess of trash and toxicity. If you want one of the most absurd and twisted romances you have ever read, maybe this is for you, but I highly warn against it. No one needs this amount of unrealistic, toxic bullshit in their lives. I can think of 1000 other books that would be a better use of your time. Stay tuned until next time when I follow along with the aforementioned bodyguard plot line book. I sense more burning trash in my future, and I can safely conclude this was $15 not well spent.