Twisted Games — Twisted, Book 2

Twisted Games Review

Ana Huang’s second Twisted novel takes on the bodyguard romance — one of the genre’s most structurally interesting premises — and handles it with more care than its reputation might suggest. The power dynamic between Rhys Larsen and Princess Bridget of Eldorra is not ignored but examined: Rhys’s professional mandate to protect Bridget puts him in a position of authority over her safety that complicates any attraction, and Huang builds the tension from that complication rather than despite it.

Bridget is a princess constrained by an institution with very specific opinions about who is appropriate for her to love. Rhys is a bodyguard with a professional code that includes one inviolable rule. They are in close proximity, constantly. The inevitable result is not treated as inevitable by either character, which is what gives the novel its particular tension.

Reading Order

Twisted Games is the second book in Ana Huang’s Twisted series and should be read after Twisted Love. While it functions as a standalone romance, character context from the first book enriches the reading experience. The series continues with Twisted Hate and Twisted Lies.

Bridget

What makes Bridget more interesting than many romance heroines in royal settings is that she is not chafing against her position in search of freedom — she takes her duties seriously and understands the real obligations they represent. Her conflict is not between duty and desire in the simple sense but between two things she actually values. This makes the romance feel higher-stakes than if she were simply waiting to be liberated.

The Writing Development

Readers who found Twisted Love compelling but noticed rough patches in the prose will find Twisted Games noticeably smoother. Huang’s command of pacing and character interiority has developed, and the result is the most consistently well-executed book in the early Twisted series.

The Bodyguard Trope, Done Thoughtfully

The bodyguard romance lives or dies on its handling of power, and Huang is unusually alert to the problem. Rhys Larsen is not a brooding alpha who simply overpowers the heroine; he is a consummate professional whose entire identity is built on discipline and the rule that he must never become involved with a principal. That makes the slow erosion of his restraint meaningful — the rule matters precisely because he genuinely had it and genuinely tried to keep it. Huang lets the attraction build through proximity, competence, and restraint rather than aggression, and she keeps both characters aware of the ethical weight of a relationship in which one party is responsible for the other’s life. The “twisted” intensity the series is known for is present, but it is channelled through Rhys’s iron control rather than against Bridget’s will, which is what makes the dynamic work.

Eldorra and the Weight of a Crown

The royal setting does more than supply glamour; it supplies the external stakes the romance needs. As a princess of the fictional kingdom of Eldorra, and eventually heir to its throne, Bridget is bound by an institution with firm views about whom she may love and how she must live. Her conflict is genuinely constraining: a bodyguard is, by the monarchy’s logic, an impossible match, and choosing him could cost her the duty she has spent her life preparing to shoulder. Huang’s worldbuilding around Eldorra is admittedly thin — it functions more as a set of rules than a richly imagined place — but the central tension it generates is real, and it lifts the romance above the simpler “will they/won’t they” of pure forced proximity into something with institutional consequences.

Stakes Beyond the Romance

What gives Twisted Games its momentum is that Huang braids a genuine plot through the love story. Threats to Bridget’s safety, royal-succession intrigue, and the looming machinery of the monarchy keep Rhys’s professional role consequential rather than decorative, so that his protectiveness is constantly tested by events rather than merely declared. The book is not flawless on this front — several obstacles in the back half feel manufactured to delay the inevitable rather than arising organically from character — but even the contrived complications keep the stakes elevated. The result is a romance with a spine of suspense, which is exactly what the bodyguard premise promises and what so many examples of it fail to deliver.

Love Without Possession

Beneath the swoon, Twisted Games quietly argues for a particular idea of love, and it is a more generous one than the genre sometimes offers. Rhys’s devotion is expressed not as a demand that Bridget choose him over her crown, but as a willingness to protect the whole of her — including the duty and identity that make a relationship with him so costly. Huang draws a clear line between love and ownership: a love that would require Bridget to surrender who she is would be possession dressed up as romance, and the novel refuses it. That the resolution honours Bridget’s agency and her obligations, rather than forcing a choice between the man and the throne in which the throne simply loses, is part of why the book feels more mature than its trope-forward packaging suggests. It takes its heroine’s selfhood seriously.

The Series Standout

Among Ana Huang’s wildly popular Twisted quartet, Twisted Games is the one most readers and reviewers single out as the strongest, and the reasons are structural. Its central premise generates conflict that is built into the situation rather than imposed on it; its hero’s defining trait — discipline — makes his fall genuinely earned; and its heroine’s dilemma pits two things she values against each other rather than simply trapping her until rescue arrives. Add Huang’s visibly improved prose and pacing, and the book becomes the series’ high-water mark. For newcomers curious about the BookTok romance phenomenon Huang helped define, it is arguably the best single entry point, even though the connected friend group rewards reading Twisted Love first.

Our rating: 4.4/5 — The best book in the Twisted series and one of the more structurally thoughtful bodyguard romances available: the power dynamic is built into the tension rather than papered over.

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