Twisted Love

One of the worst books I've had the displeasure of reading.

The male lead, Alex, is an overly emotional, stupidly edgy, emotionally unstable, cruelly controlling, callously criminal parody of himself. He growls and prowls and snarls and shouts like a child's idea of ‘cool edgy genius'. This is not how real people are.

He falls in love with the female lead on the flimsiest of grounds. He acts so stupid the entire book, one wonders if his claimed 160 IQ is actually even in the triple digits. He doesn't like art because boohoo, my life is so sad.

The backstories of the two main characters are needlessly complicated for the sake of unnecessary drama. The female lead, Ava, is the product of cheating by her mother. Husband of said mother tried to kill Ava (twice), thought better, and she conveniently lost her memory.

One of the side characters is a princess for no real reason.

All through the book, most women are treated merely as shells who chase after Alex because he's so hot. They have no personality except for wanting to fuck him. I did not remember to apply the Bechdel test but this book almost certainly fails it.

Part of the book is wasted pretending to be a thriller, with kidnappings and espionage and murder happening willy-nilly. There are secret fixer groups, hackers, black market poisons, all used as if every CEO in the world has also worked in the special forces. Stupid.

The sorry excuse of a romance has no basis, no progression, and no joy in it whatsoever. It starts on a whim, contains no emotional intimacy, consists entirely of sex and breaks up based on a justification which reads more like a joke. Then Alex spends an year basically stalking Ava, almost the entirety of which is timeskipped and where most of the reconciliation happens. Disgusting.

The sex scenes are boring, the prose is purple, and the eyes are described like the worst fanfiction. Emerald orbs and jade rings? I'll vomit. Ava makes a new friend, and the way we find out about how close they are is that Ava tells us they're close. Incredible. I don't think a single relationship in this book has on-screen growth.

Perhaps the only thing about this book which isn't worthy of the most assiduous attacks is Ava's friendship with her friends. This seems to be the only healthy relationship in this book.

I listened to the audiobook at 3x and it was still too excruciating. Do not read this.