*Screaming-crying-throwing up!!!!!* I finished this book last night and can’t stop thinking about it and this review. I was so excited to start this book, and we’ll get into whether or not it lived up to my expectations, but reading it was also such an experience. I had so many “screaming into my pillow” moments, and then for the last 15% or so of the book, I filmed my reactions to the end of the book and the whole series. This wasn’t just the final story of the final friend in the girlfriend group; it was the end of the whole series and a “goodbye” to all these characters—fresh tears, agh!!!
Yeah, it was tough and sad to say goodbye to Ava, Alex, Bridget, Rhys, Jules, Josh, Stella, and Christian, but I had such a great experience and they will live on in my memories as an awesome series. Also, this book was a great closer, as I was still wrapped up in the personal stories of Christian and Stella, but I felt like I wasn’t going to miss what their lives were after the series ended. I knew already the dynamic they had, and their characters weren’t as unpredictable as, say Alex or Jules and Josh.
Also, I nearly cried at the end when we got soft scenes of them all grown up and married (not Josh and Jules though—they literally take forever!) and with their kids. I want Ana Huang to write another series with the Twisted second generation because I need to know the hawties those kids will be. That sounds so twisted (pun INTENDED), but I just mean I want more books with these characters and their dynamics.
Anyway, I completely did not give a book review, so let’s do that quickly. As I mentioned earlier, Twisted Lies follows the last friend in the friend group, Stella, and a guy we met a few books earlier as he has a connection to Rhys, Christian. Reading about Stella was an interesting experience because I’ve kind of been wondering the whole series what her POV would be like. She seems very innocent and calm, but she struggles a lot with anxiety. Similar to Ava, it seems the most sunshine-y of the friends deal with the most pain. Similarly, I have been fricking waiting for his book, because I loved the tidbits of him we got in Twisted Games and Twisted Hate, so I was soooo excited for his POV. Let me tell ya, he did not disappoint.
I love the full character arc of Christian we get, as well as the opening up on Stella throughout the story. You’d think that Christian would be the one who needed to let down his barriers, but it was actually Stella who had bottled all her problems and worries where no one could see them. She just needed to rely on someone a little bit more, and our man Christian had some heart wrenchingly soft moments of comforting and protecting her. He himself had a wonderful full-180º change, as he was a cold and calculating person before becoming obsessed with Stella.
I’m so obsessed and in love with this book, I can’t even give it a full review, but I don’t think that’s necessary, because it is the last book in a series, so if you’re as invested in the Twisted series as I was, you’ll already be getting the book without my synopsis of the story. Yeah, in general, I absolutely loved it, but now I’m a bit brain-dead because I don’t know what to read next! Stay tuned while I figure it out!
Genre: romance, fiction, dark romance, Y/A
Age: 15+
Rating: 10/10