I did not think I would like this book as much as I really did. After Twisted Hate, I thought Josh Chen was IT as far as Ana Huang's male love interests were in the Twisted series. But then Christian Harper came into the fold, and the more I knew about him and his morally gray ass, the more I loved it. The chokehold he had on me had me spiraling into the gray abyss. I felt like every time he said or did something ridiculous (which, not gonna lie, was every other scene), I cheered him on. This was a stark difference from my stance on Alex Volkov, who I thought was certifiable. But Christian? Absolutely unhinged.

Stella herself was also quite charming in that shy, manic, anxiety-driven kinda way. She definitely seemed more like a mess mentally than Jules and Ava ever were in their stories, yet I found myself actually invested in her plot line as well as Christian's. The fake dating trope definitely helped, as did the fact that Christian was a billionaire who happens to also be brilliant and verse in weaponry. He was practically Batman. With a weakness for a particular butterfly named Stella.

Another thing going for this book was that the third act break up that I had been dreading over wasn't as bad as the previous book, and the resolution didn't take so long chronologically as well. Those were mostly my caveats for the previous books I read in the Twisted series, because a lot of the groveling was dragged out way too long for some of the men *coughAlexcough*. The last few chapters were practically wild in this book, and while I could have done without the epilogues, it was cute to see more scenes with the entire Twisted group. I love the interactions between the ladies and the relationship with their significant others (I definitely ATE UP the Josh and Christian and Alex dynamic, as well as the Rhys and Christian bromance) and I'm glad that they all got their happy endings. In more ways than one.

But yeah. Absolutely loved this, I don't even know if going back to read Twisted Games will change my ranking of this series, but we'll see!