Twisted Love

Twisted, Book #1

By Ana Huang

ISBN# 9781728274867

Author’s Website:  https://anahuang.com/

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi

Alex Volkov witnessed his entire family being murdered when he was just a child.  He was taken in by his Uncle Ivan.  However, since that horrible day, Alex has only cared about one thing – revenge.  He’s planned ruining the person responsible for his family’s deaths all these years and he is so close to his goal he can taste it.

Ava Chen can’t remember her childhood.  Her mother tried to drown her when she was a child, and Ava lost all her memories due to that trauma.  They manifest in her nightmares though.

Her mother later committed suicide, and she was never close to her father.  Her older brother, Josh, has been her lifeline.  Now Josh will be gone for a year doing some medical volunteer work in Central America.  And, to Ava’s horror, Josh has asked his best friend, Alex, to look over her.  Not only that, but Alex is moving into Josh’s house next door for the year to help with that goal.  Alex is rich and egotistical and Ava dreads having to see him every day for the next year.

However, after spending time with Alex, she realizes he isn’t as bad as she always thought.  The two have an attraction that they never saw coming.  He also helped with her ex-boyfriend problem too.  And, when her memories come crashing back, it’s Alex that is there to pick up the pieces and put her back together.

“Tell me who or what I need to kill,”

But nobody had a clue how closely tied the Chens were to Alex’s revenge plan.  Did Ava and Josh truly mean nothing to him?  Were they just pawns in his sick game?  And, can Ava ever trust her heart again?

“Because I love her!” I slammed my hands on the table. “There, happy? I love her so much I would rather give her up than hurt her. But if you think I’m letting her go to another country alone, with no protection, you’ve got another think coming.

This book started out really slow, and it took me awhile to connect to the story.  Once Alex and Ava started dating the novel was much better.  I really enjoyed Alex.  Powerful, rich, smart, and he can get away with anything.  That’s always my kind of character.  I loved his protective and possessive side.

“I hated how much I wanted her, and I hated that she wasn’t smart enough to run away from me while she still had a chance.

Though let’s be honest, it was already too late.

She was mine. She just didn’t know it yet.”

I found both Ava and Alex finding out about the betrayals in their own families at nearly the same time to be too unbelievable though.  I thought maybe they were even connected, but that didn’t appear to be the case so I went back to being too unrealistic to be believed.

I’m glad to see that Ava didn’t just give in when Alex finally tried to fix things.  She made him work for it, which I appreciated.

However, I found the end of this story to be a bit lacking.  It seemed the segue into the next book was more important than leaving me with the warm and fuzzies I was craving.  We got a little sweetness at the end, but it could have been so much more… overall the book felt a bit one-dimensional and the romance fell a bit flat.