Twisted Games

Twisted Games makes a better argument for abolishing the monarchy than most political essays, and a terrible argument for maintaining professional boundaries.

I am susceptible to a competent man with an inconvenient job description. Ana Huang knows this weakness, puts Rhys Larsen within reach of a princess, and proceeds to charge interest. I liked this romance most when its attraction felt like a practical problem: the person responsible for keeping Bridget safe might also be the person who makes her prescribed life impossible.

The royal packaging did less for me. Give me the friction between duty and desire; I can supply the imaginary marble myself. But beneath the luxury and the growling, Huang has found a pairing with an actual reason to resist each other. That buys a great deal of patience. Occasionally, more than she deserves.

The premise (no spoilers past Bridget's changed royal duties)

First published in 2021, Twisted Games is the second novel in Ana Huang's Twisted series. It can be read independently, although Huang recommends reading the series in order because later books can reveal things about earlier ones.

Princess Bridget von Ascheberg belongs to Eldorra's royal family. She wants the freedom to choose her own life and partner. Rhys Larsen is her bodyguard, a man whose professional rules require vigilance and emotional distance. Keeping those two obligations together becomes increasingly difficult.

Then Bridget's brother abdicates, putting an unwanted throne and the possibility of a politically useful marriage in her path. Her attraction to Rhys now runs against more than his terms of employment. The prospect of governing a kingdom brings an entire institution into a relationship that was already inconvenient. There is your problem. It wears a crown.

What works

The bodyguard premise gives proximity a purpose. Rhys does not need a succession of elaborate coincidences to remain in Bridget's orbit; being near her is his work. Huang can let irritation, familiarity and attraction accumulate inside that arrangement. I find this much more convincing than desire announced at maximum volume before two people have had a reason to notice anything about each other beyond their cheekbones.

The dual first person narration makes restraint the source of suspense. We can hear what each person wants while watching the gap between wanting something and allowing it. The question is less whether attraction exists than what admitting it would cost. That is a useful distinction in a romance with this much insistence on possession. Knowing someone's desire does not remove the pleasure of waiting for them to act honestly about it.

Huang also gives the obstacle two different scales. Rhys has professional rules; Bridget has royal obligations. His resistance can look rigid and personal, while hers has consequences beyond her own happiness. Those pressures do not feel interchangeable. They make the same romance look different from either side, which gives the alternating voices a reason to exist beyond offering two views of the same handsome man.

The prose is blunt about its intentions. Short declarations land hard, and the narration rarely leaves an emotional point coyly unfinished. At its best, that directness keeps the longing readable through all the royal fuss. I do not need a man to discover a new metaphor for desire every chapter. Sometimes I need him to stop pretending his job is the only reason he cares.

What's polarising

Sometimes I also need him to stop explaining how much he cares. The possessive register is emphatic, and emphasis loses force when it becomes the default. I wanted more confidence in the relationship to carry its own intensity. Once I understand that Rhys is dangerously attached, further declarations of attachment start to feel like a man repeatedly checking that I received his first declaration. Yes, Rhys. Signed for it myself.

The slow to medium burn is part of the attraction, but the distinction between productive restraint and prolonged refusal can become thin. I enjoy waiting when each return to the obstacle exposes something new. I get impatient when the emotional position feels familiar even though the wording has changed. This book sometimes asks the sheer force of wanting to do work that a sharper cut could have done more efficiently.

The royal setting also requires a particular appetite. I enjoyed it as a source of pressure and spectacle, but I was less persuaded whenever I wanted a fuller sense of the country beyond what it means for Bridget. Readers who want political institutions to feel as carefully developed as the central attraction may find themselves looking for a door the novel has no interest in opening. The palace is lavish. My questions about it were not invited to dinner.

The Bridget of it

Rhys gets the obvious sales pitch, but Bridget is why the situation matters to me. A princess who wants freedom can easily become an expensive version of a woman waiting to be rescued. What interests me here is the collision between a public role and a private wish. Wanting Rhys is tangled up with wanting a say in her own future.

That gives her stubbornness a purpose. It also makes the protective dynamic worth questioning. Protection is attractive when it recognises the person being protected; it becomes exhausting when it assumes her choices are merely hazards to be managed. My enjoyment depends on that distinction. I want the man capable of standing beside her, and I get impatient with the fantasy that standing in front of her is always the same thing.

I would have welcomed even more space for that tension. It is richer than another reminder that a formidable man has become possessive. A woman negotiating how much of herself duty can reasonably demand is a heroine I will follow through a fair amount of brooding.

Spice and heat

Four out of five for heat: explicit open door, with adult leads and a gradual build towards the physical relationship. The heat is a substantial part of the appeal. Readers looking for a discreet royal courtship should choose another palace.

The possessive tone belongs in the description of the reading experience too. It will work for readers who enjoy commanding romantic heroes; others will find it crowding out the tenderness. That is an appetite question, and enthusiasm for the bodyguard trope does not automatically answer it.

Content notes: gun violence, plus mentions of child abuse, death and drug overdose. Huang lists these on her own content notes page. The book also contains explicit sexual content and profanity.

Who it's for

You want forbidden attraction with a structural reason to be forbidden. You enjoy watching a controlled person discover that control is becoming an increasingly theoretical achievement. You can tolerate some repetition if the central couple gives you enough reason to care.

You may bounce off this if possessive declarations make you immediately want to retain a solicitor, or if royal romance only works for you when the politics withstand close inspection. I would hand it to the reader who wants the bodyguard's composure tested and the princess's freedom taken seriously. Preferably in the same paragraph.

Books like Twisted Games

• Dearest Rogue by Elizabeth Hoyt: a historical bodyguard romance whose heroine's desire for independence makes protection a point of friction. My backlist pick for the reader more interested in that argument than in the crown.
• The Bodyguard by Katherine Center: a female bodyguard protects a famous actor, giving the attraction between protector and client a different balance and a warmer comic flavour.
• The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan: royal romance for readers interested in what a public role demands of a private relationship, with an American heroine drawn into a prince's world.

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