a truly deranged recap of twisted love

hi welcome if you're new here my name is Lexi and I have this winning combination of absolutely no self-respect and a willingness to over commit to every single bit that I've ever done in my life so I've read this book and we're here today to do in the style of my esteemed forefathers Mike's Mike Carrie can read there are many more the service of explaining to you the incredibly bizarre and convoluted plot of this book which on the surface probably seems like your average grumpy Sunshine brother's best friend romance novel but is in reality just entirely unhinged if you're a romance reader in this decade and you haven't heard of Twisted love I regret to inform you that you're living under a rock and if you're not a romance reader you're in for a treat okay let me tell you what the girls are up to these days now I know what you're thinking okay you're thinking what a joke this book is barely 300 pages long there's no fantasy there's no magic system there's no lore to be seen what could possibly happen in this book that would justify a video with this kind of run time laughs cute you have much to learn about the world some backgrounds Twisted love is the first in a four book series that was released by Anna Huang it was I think initially self-published and then picked up by a publisher the very basic premise of this book is that it follows a young photographer Who falls in love with a genius billionaire and it tracks kind of their romance but also the way that they deal with their respective pasts and if you think you know where it's going based off of that description you're wrong sorry after this book was re-released with a cool discrete cover that you can see right here um the old cover was kind of criminal it has just blown up I mean as of recording this this book is still in the top 10 of the New York Times paperback bestsellers list which is super competitive books on that list are selling like a disgusting amount of copies and in terms of sub-genre it's what I would describe as a dark romance nobody really knows for sure what the line is for dark romance versus normal romance it's kind of just all Vibes and there are definitely other popular books that are crazier Wilder more Fringe than this one but for reasons you will see I think that it fits that description and I just want to say up front that was this book atrocious absolutely but I have never really had such a good time reading something that was this bad and I'm here to tell you about it so you don't have to read it or so if you have already read it you can relive that wonderful experience with me in my handy dandy wall of royalty free stock photos so yeah that's the plan one more important disclaimer before I start I just want to say that if you like this book that's okay you don't need my permission for the record but in case you wanted it you're allowed to like things in this video I'm going to be making some jokes and pointing out some significant flaws and red flags that I found in my personal experience reading this story as we go through the plot together that's what I'm going to do here but this is fiction all right it's not real life and it's okay to like things in fiction that you wouldn't like in the real world there's nothing shameful about having a good time reading the story or liking this book I just don't want anyone to see anything that I'm saying in this video through a lens that makes it seem like I'm looking down on other readers other women this author anything like that okay because that's not true genuinely that could not be further from reality so instead of leaving comments about how I'm misogynistic because I thought this book was a train wreck and trying to bait me into arguing with you let's just not and say we did alright wonderful let's get started before we're even getting into the juice of the story the book opens with the following dead education to my mom for all her support and encouragement over the years mom if you're reading this turn back immediately there are scenes in here that will scar you for life which should really tell you everything you need to know about where we're going together today we also get a Content warning about a very possessive morally gray lead as well as a playlist that includes such bangers as stronger What Doesn't Kill You by Kelly Clarkson and you saying to me by Marc Anthony music that surely will have nothing to do with the eventual events of this book and just can't possibly be entirely literal to the story anyways jumping right in who's who of Twisted love we're going to explore like most of these people as they're introduced but right now there are only three characters that you really need to know about before we dive into the story and those are Ava Alex and Josh Ava is the girl main character of this book and she is a college senior that's majoring in photography she's characterized as being very kind vaguely feisty and super naively optimistic but in that cute romance girly way that reminds the men in her life that there is good in the world you know how it is she also has this Whisper of like General repressed torturedness about her which enables her well to connect with our male lead Alex Alex is characterized as being somewhat psychopathic very tortured very repressed and also this incredibly wealthy Super Genius who of course is also very sexy because I swear to God if he wasn't than half of the things that he does in this book would land him in literal prison I just want to drive that home an ugly man could not do any of the things that Alex does in this book and get away with it in the hearts and minds of the girls and to represent the discrepancy between Alex's attractiveness and his generally rancid Vibes I have amassed this collection of red flags I could have easily picked more but I tried to kind of group it together into more General qualities as opposed to specific things and we're going to ceremoniously reveal these as we go through the story and unpack this together more on that soon in last of the three important characters to kind of know before we dive in we have Josh who is Ava's older brother he's also Alex's best friend that's how they're connected and Josh is really just the Classic overprotective older brother he's generally kind of unreasonable but he's also loyal he's smart he's sassy he's either in or has just graduated from med school it's kind of unclear nobody really knows for sure much about this man but he gets his own book down the road so I imagine we would learn there generally speaking this book is also dual point of view which means that about half of the chapter are from Ava's perspective and the other half of the chapters are from Alex's perspective if for some reason you're worried about not being able to tell the difference between the two of them when I'm reading quotes from this book I promise you it's fairly obvious so you're gonna be fine okay that's all you really need for entry level Intel so let's get started so we're first introduced to our main character Ava when she is stranded in a rainstorm following the completion of some kind of like engagement photo shoot for a couple because of the weather she's having trouble finding an Uber to drive her home and all of her friends are just really busy I guess so she ends up in her desperation calling her older brother Josh and this man being the wonderful overprotective brother that he is picks up the phone literally instantly despite being in the middle of smashing a girl in the background of the call we're on like page six of this book and this unnamed woman is just moaning audibly on the phone which really is a statement on both Josh's priorities and also on how the reading experience will go I think for us as the audience anyways obviously he's busy so he ends up sending Alex his best friend instead to go and pick Ava up and it's how she's waiting for Alex that we get our first glimmer of lore because we learned that Josh has only been so overproductive of her ever since what Ava refers to as the incident we don't know at this point what the incidence actually was just that it was in some capacity life-changing for the two of them Ava also alludes here to a fear that she has of large bodies of water which could that be connected in some capacity to the incidents I don't know who's to say let's just say the foreshadowing in this book is not very very subtle so Alex shows up he rolls down the window he hits her with the kind of angry kitten and it is immediately established that he is not like other boys okay he's cold and mean and not into such beta Behavior as making polite conversations with the women in his car Ava also does us the favor here of giving us two paragraphs of exposition On this man's background that I feel do a funnier and more accurate job at describing this man's character than any joke I could possibly make so here you go he was the exact opposite of Josh and I still marveled at the fact that they were best friends personally I thought Alex was normal I was sure he had his reasons some kind of psychological trauma that shaped him into the unfeeling robot he was today based on the Snippets I'd gleans from Josh Alex's childhood had been even worse than ours though I'd never managed to pull the details out of my brother all I knew was Alex's parents had died when he was young and left him a pile of money he quadrupled in value when he came into his inheritance at age 18. not that he needed it because he'd invented a new Financial modeling software in high school that made him a multi-millionaire before he could vote with an IQ of 160 Alex volkov was a genius or close to it he was the only person in Thayer's history to complete its five-year joint undergrad MBA program in three years and at age 26 he was the CEO of one of the most successful real estate development companies in the country he was a legend and he knew it so yeah kind of like Christian Gray but in a different font if you catch my drift God I'm sorry it's just so unserious why does she know his IQ anyways Alex has been best friends with Josh for about eight years so since the beginning of undergrad when they were roommates they were roommates one bed what and given the fact that per the lore his parents are dead he ends up spending basically every Thanksgiving and Christmas during this time with Ava Josh and their dad Michael Chen and he's kind of like an unofficial fourth member of the family since Ava's mom who is never named in this book is dead but it's like Ava knows nothing about this man other than that basic backgrounds at all of these holidays those thanksgivings those Christmases he apparently just like never talks to her they've canonically not had a complete conversation ever before the events of this book over the course of again eight years and Alex is also nagging her during this drive home every time she tries to talk to him because you know he's just such a Charming guy and during her attempts to converse with this man who functional is a brick wall Ava ends up realizing that she forgot to pick up a cake for Josh and she's like Alex I'm so sorry to be a bother but can we make us off at this Bakery real quick and he responds basically by saying if I take you there will you shut up and she's like yeah absolutely I will which you know really great conversation anyway so they grabbed this cake and Alex tries not to look at her too because that's his best friend's sister and he would never do such a thing he would never stoop to such a level as that and they end up going to this party that Josh is having now some girls have the audacity to hit on Alex at this party and through this we learned that Alex is a man's man he's Rough and Tumble okay during sex he is not only anti-kissing but also anti-eye contact these are things that are just too soft for our man and to prove how hardcore he is he turns down a threesome with two beautiful women most guys would have jumped at the opportunity but I was already bored with the conversation nothing turned me off more than desperation which reeked stronger than their perfume now Josh has just graduated from med school I think I mean it's not really clear but the party is happening because he's taking some kind of like Gap year or time abroad to do some volunteer medicine in Central America country unknown they never tell us where he goes why would we want to know so he's kind of doing this like Doctors Without Borders type thing but God forbid this man leaves his 22 year old growing sister alone for that amount of time Josh would never okay this is not tenable so he goes up to his incredibly busy important gajillionaire best friend and Josh is like hey buddy what if you like derailed your entire life for a year and moved into my house which he lives next door to Ava because of course he does and what if you just watched her for me until I get back from Central America country unowned could you please forgo literally all of your responsibilities and do that for me for no reason at all behind the back of my younger sister without asking her it'd be so cool of you it'd be so hip you'd be such a real one and because of course he agrees Alex is like sure yeah I can uproot my entire life and move move here and watch Ava and do nothing else with my time and he agrees to this not to be like one centimeter more fair we do learn here about Liam who is Ava's crazy ex-boyfriend that she broke up with somewhat recently after he cheated on her we're told that Liam apparently wants Ava back but he hasn't really done anything at this point that is too out of pocket Josh just gets kind of bad energy and I think that he just wants somebody around to beat him up if necessary since he won't be able to so fortunately Alex is up to the job we also around this time get our very first Alex flashback now Alex has this incredibly obnoxious condition called highly Superior autobiographical memory referred to in the rest of the book as H Sam it's kind of like photographic memory but only for the events in your life and so when Alex experiences flashbacks in the book he's like literally playing a videotape in his brain as if it's happening to him in that moment and he can see everything that's occurring in extreme detail which is very convenient for the author as you can probably imagine for the clarity of flashback lore sections but also probably sucks for him I mean he's clearly like a very tortured man I did look this condition up for this video and unfortunately it is a real thing in the world it's not made of 62 people in the world apparently have this and and Alex is one of them anyways so the vast majority of flashbacks that we're going to get from Alex in the story revolve around a singular traumatic event from his childhood slowly we will learn more about this as the book goes on but right now all that we know is that it involves three very gruesomely murdered dead people just chilling in his living room in front of him when he's like 12. not a good time you know not a good thing to see every time you close your eyes Alex also gets a call on the scene from new character his Uncle Ivan where we learned that Alex and Ivan have single-mindedly been working together to avenge Alex's dead parents for the last however many years ever since he was a kid when it initially happens now is this related to the flashback could this possibly be related to the event I don't know Bessie the foreshadowing in this book is not subtle but outside of the contextualization this call in the modern day is really just a check-in nothing has happened yet in the Revenge plot it's just something now that we know that they're doing expanded Ivan background is that he's the one who adopted Alex after his parents died and he's also the on paper CEO of Alex's Fortune 500 company that he had his uncle found for him I guess when he was a minor because his business sense was just that unbelievable this man could not be stopped from pulling himself up by his bootstraps not even when he was 14 okay he's too smart and Alex apparently already is the de facto leader of the company he can like take control of it whenever he wants but he has chosen to run it from the shadow position of CEO I guess because it allows him to Batman his Vengeance more effectively gives him more flexibility who knows anyways sudden Flash Forward the first of many sudden flash forwards in this book the day that Alex is now moving into this house next door to Ava we meet Jules now Jules is a Ava's best friend and Josh's sworn enemy they're the leads of the third book in the series so take that as you will and jules's personality is best described as chaotic sassy and Brash this woman is going to school to be a lawyer and she she presents that energy in my opinion and she's also Ava's roommate in her house next to Josh turned Alex because again Alex is moving in at this point and just nobody has told Ava about this development nobody is thought to update her and Eva is kind of bad Josh as I think anybody would be in this situation I mean what's happening is honestly a little bit deranged and she goes to him and she's like why would you do this like I'm an adult woman I don't need a bodyguard and Josh responds to this completely reasonable complaints by saying something along the lines of yes but I'm your brother and I reserve the right to appoint a new brother in my absence and Alex is now your new brother so say hello congratulations to which Ava I guess is convinced because she's like so true you're so wise goodbye brother enjoy your time in Central America country unknown and to prove how just furious she is about the situation and about these adult men questioning her ability to handle herself she bakes Alex a bunch of cookies and hand delivers them to his house a couple of days later so yeah she gets over that pretty quickly Alex's take on looking after Ava is pretty like immediately insane he installs an entire like super expensive alarm system at her house without telling her or presumably also this other person that she lives with he has started running these extensive background checks on everybody that she hangs out with or works with and only one week into this nonsense he has his first actual breakdown this man is training at this Krav Maga gym that he goes to all of the time and he has an idea that Ava would be better protected if she took self-defense classes and he sends her a text on this topic now Ava doesn't respond to him for one hour a [ __ ] could be napping and he calls her and she doesn't pick up so he's immediate thought is she must be dead right like this woman I did not give a single about one week ago she's perished she's gone goodbye I failed so he storms from his Krav Maga gym to Ava's house and she's not there and he absolutely grills Jewels about it threatening to literally Blacklist her from every law firm in the greater DC area because apparently this man has a web of mysterious connections that he will use for the rest of this book to accomplish whatever it is that he wants to do at any point in the plot and this is one example of that you know just like toy with this poor woman's future because your best friend's younger sister doesn't respond to your text for an hour so obviously she caves because that is an insane thing to threaten somebody with and he drives out with her to this location rajul says that Ava's with a friend this man enraged storms into the house and bypasses a poor roommate bystander who's just trying to hold down the fort hey you can't go up there he yelled they're in the middle of something that if Ava was having sex a dangerous Rhythm pulsed behind my temple of the thought that was all the more reason for an interruption horny college guys were some of the most dangerous creatures in existence I wondered if she'd gotten back together with her ex Josh mentioned the weasel had cheated on her and she didn't seem like the type you'd crawl back to somebody after they treated her terribly but I wouldn't put anything past Miss Sunshine and roses that bleeding hard of hers would land her in a heap of trouble one day yeah so just a really cool thing I think for this man who has only lived next to her for one week to be concerned about Ava enjoying possibly a dollop of casual sex as a treat God forbid you know don't tell Mom but it ends up not even being that because he just walks in on Ava looking at the results of a Boudoir photo shoot that she did for one of her friends portfolios and obviously she's dressed in just gorgeous lingerie she's feeling herself she's laughing she's having a good time and Alex seeing again a 22 year old woman in lingerie possibly has never been more Furious in his entire life and he responds to this situation in the least well-adjusted way possible by yanking the camera out of this poor man's hand and one by one going through and deleting every single picture from the photo shoot obviously Ava and her friend do not want to let this happen so they're like yelling at him it gets to the point where Ava threatens to go outside in her current fit and just let the world see her in lingerie I guess which pisses off Alex even more because he ends up responding with the soon to be classic threat of I will use my mysterious influence to Bar your friends from ever doing anything that he could possibly want to do in the world of Photography ever again he will in fact be destitute like is that what you want right now so obviously Ava just has to give in and let him finish deleting all the photos to her credit she's upset on the way home as one would be I think and Alex just ends up hitting her with the it was for your own good so yeah just very fun behavior from from the middle lead once again one week into this living near each other experiment and that's really the appearance of Alex's first I think tremendous red flag that will carry him through the rest of this book which is boundaries are imaginary unless they are his this is a big one you know it's a personal favorite I think most of this book really does come down to this red flag you're going to see it come up time and time again Alex just really needs to be the only person he's around that has any kind of agency at all over what happens to them more on this soon so next chapter Ava is at lunch with Jules and also her two other best friends new characters Stella and Bridget Stella is an Instagram fashion influencer who is honestly kind of inconsequential to at least this book and seems kind of to be the shy down to earth voice of reason kind of type person in the group and Bridget meanwhile is the [ __ ] princess of a small fictional European nation it's kind of giving Luxembourg sounds like I missed an interesting time Bridget's side all the fun stuff happens while I'm away Bridget had been attending an event at eldora's New York consulate as was required of the princess of Eldora that's right she was an honest to God real life Princess second in line to the throne of a small but wealthy European country what what is going on because that wasn't enough she also has her bodyguard with her who is this guy that's retiring kind of soon named Booth he seems all right you know as chill as you can be when you're defending the [ __ ] princess of a small fictional European nation well she attends like frat parties and Raves with her besties in America anyways apparently she's like hella down to earth and cool and approachable which again what Ava's friends are all talking about the altercation that Jules witnessed between Alex and Ava and her photographer friends once again Jules went with Alex to get her so she saw all of this firsthand genuinely I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone reading this because all of her friends are like wow so funny he sure did get crazy you know what a fun time that must have been I really wish I was there bestie which is insane genuinely they all deserve like worst Friends of the Year Awards for for not raising any kind of red flag around this Behavior not even Jules who was herself actively threatened thought it was a big deal in poor Eva in this situation even says like I was humiliated actually she's clearly uncomfortable and Jules just stays with the mindset of but it was a really funny time which is wild but anyways the three of them come together and decide for Ava that since Alex has proven himself capable of anger which is an understatement they should run [ __ ] experiments to see what other emotions he might be capable of feeling Ava somehow gets under Alex's skin Jules said we should see how far it goes how much can she make him feel oh my God you know just the Classic thing to do with someone who has proven themselves capable of acting upon deranged and violent threats let's just push them even more you know that's the right thing to do here that's the safe thing Ava clearly doesn't want to do this but because her friends are just so cool and good and wonderful that they convince her to do it anyways and altogether they pick four emotions that she is going to try to make Alex feel over the course of approximately the next week sadness discussed happiness and fear and if I had someone from this lunch thinking about how stupid this plant is but also still planning to do it anyways for some reason I shuddered thinking of how he'd retaliate if he found out what we were up to and thoughts of being flayed alive consumed me until I fell into a light fitful sleep just you know really giving the reader full confidence that this is a great idea when Ava falls asleep there she ends up having a nightmare that is apparently recurring that involves her drowning in a large body of water and screaming to her mother to go and help her could this possibly be connected to the incidents could this possibly be connected to our fear of water nobody knows anyways this poor woman wakes up like screaming in the middle of the night which apparently happens pretty regularly which is unfortunate for her and it's like the wee hours of the morning but Jewel still ends up coming into her room and bringing her tea just to kind of sit with her until she feels better which is honestly really nice of her especially considering the fact that this apparently happens all the time we also learn here about what Ava calls the blackout which references the fact that she has absolutely no early childhood memories from before the incident and then we move on meanwhile the next day Alex is at work and we get a bit of him playing the cool but ruthless businessman it's just really important that we don't forget that he's absurdly wealthy I checked my Patek Philippe Watch am I pronouncing that right no one knows limited edition her medically sealed and waterproof the stainless steel timepiece had set me back a cool 20 grand I bought it after I sold my financial modeling software for eight figures one month after my 14th birthday oh you thought earlier that he was like an older teen when he did his teenage gajillionaire thing yeah no he was barely 14. what who does this author think this man is anyway so his work day is firing a couple of people because they're incompetent it's constantly taking over a competitor and then having a flashback where he thinks about a moment less than a year after the event where he swears Revenge at 12 on all who have wronged him I think this is Alex's version of the granola girlies like yoga visualization this is how he Hypes himself up to do hard things later seemingly on the same day Ava ends up knocking on Alex's door trying to bait him into watching sad movies with her she brings A Walk to Remember and Marley and Me to make him cry because apparently any other method is too mean in her opinion and this is also the first time that she's spoken to him at all since the altercation with her friends but she has decided at this point that the pass is the past we move on in this house okay don't worry about it Alex opens the door for her and he is just clearly dressed for a date and he's also honestly justifiably confused about like why she's there and trying this [ __ ] for seemingly no reason and Ava backpedaling is like oh my God I'm so sorry I didn't mean to interrupt like we can totally do this another night like go out on your day go enjoy your life whatever but obviously he cancels his date on the spot for her and she comes in and they ends up watching the movies and of course he doesn't cry because he's like above the feelings of mere mortals how are you not crying I demanded brushing away my tears with the back of my hands after the ad credits rolled this movie is so sad it's fiction Alex grimaced stop crying I can't stop when I feel like it it's a biological reaction biological reactions can be mastered biological reactions can be mastered okay shut up anyways Ava here moves closer to him on the couch and starts like stroking his back as a joke question mark question mark pretending to like look for his control panel since he must be a robot if he's not crying to sad movies and he like snaps her hand away he looks at her with darkened eyes and he goes I'm not a toy Ava Alex said his voice lethally soft don't play with me unless you want to get hurt I swallowed my fear you wouldn't hurt me this is why Josh was so worried about you you're trusting to a fault don't try to humanize me I'm not a tortured hero from one of your romantic fantasies you have no idea what I'm capable of and just because I promised Josh I'd look after you doesn't mean I can protect you from yourself and your bleeding heart which is just a wild thing to say in this setting and Ava for a second much like myself is like where am I what is going on you know like Freeze Frame record scratch how did I end up here and the two of them ends up answering a bit more he calls her sunshine line for the first time that is his nickname for Ava for the rest of the book and it just obviously alludes to the grumpy Sunshine Dynamic that that they have that is just being thrown into our face and Ava ultimately ends up falling asleep on the couch now this man goes and thinks to himself well I can't leave her there she's going to be uncomfortable but I'm also a massive app so there's no chance that I'm going to be uncomfortable and sleep on the couch so I guess we have to share my bed and there's only one Alex then falls asleep to the H Sam memory of meeting Ava for the first time when Ava was like 14 by the way and thinking about how easy it would be for him to like Crush her tiny delicate hands in his grip which whoa and yeah they have like a subtly awkward morning after but nothing really comes from it the next phases of Ava's plan do not go well either in terms of making him feel the targeted emotions she bakes him these super gross asparagus garlic brittle raisin cookies and forces him to eat one of them in her presence to try to make him seem disgusted and he pretends to like them for her instead and she's like oh my God crazy like he truly is a robot when obviously this book is just trying to give him like a soft boy moment then when she's trying to make him feel happiness she takes someone a picnic and the dog ends up peeing on his shoes so that one doesn't work either and she calls Josh in Central America a country unknown for help I'm trying to figure out what scares Alex only defies that in the eight years that Josh has been Alex's best friend he has never once seen Alex scared of anything including a bear that was apparently threatening to Maul him on a hike which Alex apparently responded to with like blank discontent which is classic truly just exactly what you would expect of this man so Ava meets again with her friends after all of the trials are done and she's like sorry guys like we failed this is so unfortunate and her friends again so wonderful so good and fun are like you've forgotten about the hidden fifth phase jealousy in Ava goes we didn't agree to that and her friends are like two bad because again they're just so normal they're just doing things in her best interest at all times it's their favorite thing in the world but anyways when she's at lunch with her friends she ends up getting pulled away by her creepy ex Liam who just appears out of nowhere to come and harass Ava and this man's like please babe date me again I swear I miss you I won't cheat on you again and Ava's like no actually like I'm good I'll pass and because Liam as well is just such a stand-up dude he responds by saying actually you're if you don't want to date me after I cheated on you there must be another man who is it grabs Ava's wrist and she retaliates by kicking him in the groin like a baddie and she leaves him there just kind of keeled over and thinks to herself you think you know someone until something happens that proves you never really knew them at all which just definitely won't be a feeling that she ever feels again in this very book so some amount of time later no one knows how long there is this donor Gala that's happening in Avis University and we enter the scene with Alex as he's preparing to go and manipulate everybody at this Gala for information and power just as rich people do at these events we can assume as the audience that this is his equivalence to time in the Minds when it comes to building his all-powerful network of influence that he uses to do literally anything that he wants for this entire book but for some reason even though she's a current student Ava is there and she's looking fabulous and she's talking with men and dancing with them just all things that make Alex absolutely Furious and so he sweeps over immediately to try to intercept Ava before she makes a terrible mistake however before he's able to get to Ava he's intercepted by a girl Madeline and that's the girl that Alex flaked on in order to watch movies with Ava a while ago when he was supposed to be out on a date Madeline is described as being rich and just generally pissed off at the world and very entitled in a kind of like old money way and remember she's not like officially Alex's girlfriend he doesn't do that okay and the only reason that they had a date to begin with apparently is because she likes to be wined and dines before they go to town something that makes him cringe by the way you know Alex hates that but she's mad at him for flaking on her and she kind of starts yelling at him a little bit but most importantly she's blocking the way from Alex to Ava so Alex immediately just breaks up with her on the spot so that he can carry on his merry Warpath towards Ava obviously this is kind of random and makes her even more Angry so to calm her down he just threatens her and we are not done not until I say so I'm Madeline in-house that's where you're wrong I'll give you a pass for your tone tonight given our history but don't contact me again or you'll find out the hard way how I earned my reputation for being ruthless I'm not above ruining women anyway so he just leaves her behind there in shock and he pumps away the pleb that had previously been dancing with Ava to take her in for a dance instead and the two of them have this hilarious conversation that is unbelievably what Pad but also is the type of cringe that has just burrowed its way so deeply into my heart that I kind of can't help but enjoy it like in a different book where anything else happens I'd be like oh but Alex is trying to get Ava to leave this Gala right and Ava responds to that by saying you don't know anything about me you know I'm an adult you can't make me leave and Alex is like no actually I know everything about you so Ava goes on to just hit him with a bunch of random questions about her favorite color and her favorite ice cream flavor and when she hits him with the what's my favorite season this man goes summer because of the warmth and sunshine and Greenery but secretly winter fascinates you it speaks to the darkest parts of your soul the manifestations of your nightmares it's everything you fear and for that you love it because the fear makes you feel alive oh God I can't lie okay like is this completely ridiculous absolutely but it's also a little bit Riz but then this conversation between them just veers into the territory of like where am I how did we end up here given the fact that you've had an amount of positive conversations with this man that I can count on one hand because Ava responds to this by saying like wow like how do you know me so well how did you know all of those things about me that's so specific and Alex is insufferable so he's like I observe I know things it's what I do ask me something real sunshine and this woman is like what do I want and he goes love deep abiding unconditional love you want it so much you're willing to live for it you want it so much you'd say yes to anything believe in anyone one more favor one more kind gesture and maybe just maybe they'll give you the love you want so desperately you talk yourself out for it and obviously if it has to read him right back here and give him her romance monologue moment because why wouldn't she are you talking about me or are you talking about yourself you must have me confused with someone else sunshine I don't think I do you don't fool me anymore Alex falkov I've been thinking about it the way you noticed all those things about me how you agreed to look after me even though you could have said no how you stayed in to watch movies with me when you thought I was upset and let me stay the night in your bed after I fell asleep and I've come to a conclusion you want the world to think you have no heart when in reality you have a multi-layered one a heart of gold encased in a heart of ice and the one thing all hearts of gold have in common they crave love and again I just feel the need to drive home that up to this point they've had two possibly three non-hostile conversations in which Ava has learned essentially nothing about this man every single other interaction that these two people have had has been either vaguely antagonistic somewhat stalkerish or like completely disinterested I don't believe for a second that Ava has any reason to believe that this man has a heart of gold but we take what we're given anyways Ava still refuses to leave the gala after this point but with the seeming compromise that for the rest of the night Alex won't see her doing anything too risque with another man like talking to them or interacting with them in any way or God forbid dancing with them but eventually she disappears and Alex is on his way out anyway so he just plans to like chicken with her when he gets home when right outside of the doors of the Scala he overhears Ava telling somebody to get off her and it turns out that Liam has once again crashed the scene Liam is holding her against the wall with her wrists above her head and kind of just like blubbering misogynistic nonsense at her and Ava warns him she's like let me go immediately or I'm going to hurt you and Liam being stupid and also evil does not take her seriously so she ends up head-bunning him straight in the face and breaking his nose kind of like backpedals it a little bit and he's really pissed off obviously but before he can do anything in sweeps Alex with a punch just directly to his gut then a punch to the face then a punch to the broken nose and Alex goes on to just continue hitting this guy over and over again long after he's literally unconscious and is functionally a bloody mass on the ground Alex Stop you'll kill him I adjusted my shirt sleeves breathing hard is that supposed to deter me anyways Ava's able to convince him not to kill Liam and as the two of them are leaving Ava's like we should call 9-1-1 for this guy I mean he's clearly in Dire Straits and Alex responds to this by saying nah we don't have to you know I Giga brained every single one of my punches to only hit non-vital organs so don't worry the guy's gonna live for sure like I'm an expert in this kind of thing which is a lot to unpack but Ava's like no like we should still call an ambulance actually so the two of them do and then they just drive home now this is a great example of another red flag that Alex has throughout this book which is his tendency towards displays of gratuitous violence I feel like this one almost speaks for itself given what you just witnessed more on that soon so the two of them are driving home I guess from Alex almost beating that man to death and In This Moment Ava has a random waking nightmare which is something that she's never had before normally it's only when she's asleep and we learn together during this flashback as the audience that at the time of the incident Ava's parents had recently gotten a divorce and Ava's dad had taken Josh while Ava stayed with her mom who was just not doing very well psychologically and young Ava is just thinking about all of this and trying to kind of understand her new reality now she sits on the pier and skips some Stones when suddenly she smells her mother's perfume and her mother just goes behind her and pushes her into the lake a new bit of lore it was her mom who pushed her anyways after this terrible flashback I guess just with everything going on at this point it's here that Ava decides that she likes Alex I realized that I wanted Alex Falcon to care very much I wanted him to care because of me not because of a promise he'd made to my brother talk about his terrible time to come to such a realization I was a freaking mess and he just beat The Living Daylights out of my ex-boyfriends like at least she's self-aware about how crazy this entire thing is and Alex sees her crying after the flashback and is like dude if Liam made you cry like this it's over for him I will destroy him Alex's words sliced through the air like lethal Blades of ice Goosebumps blossoms on my skin and I shivered my teeth chattering from the cold everything he has ever touched everyone he has ever loved I will ruin them until they're nothing more than a pile of Ashes at your feet just rizz for her I guess but it's not why she's crying it's because of her flashback but she's not really ready to talk about it with Alex so they end up going to a diner together and obviously he convinces her to talk about it anyways so Ava tells him everything and underlines the fact that she has a really complicated relationship with love and feeling like she's deserving of it especially given the fact that again her mom tried to kill her her dad apparently like never pays attention to her and she says that Liam cheating on her kind of just felt like another example of somebody who was supposed to love her not actually doing so possibly to her because she is in some way just fundamentally unlovable Alex hits her here with a lines I think is actually pretty good especially if it were coming from literally any other male lead but again credit where credit is due Liam is an idiot and an [ __ ] Alex said flatly if you let lesser people determine your self-worth you'll never reach higher than their limited imagination he leans forward his expression intense you don't have to work overtime to get people to love you Ava love isn't earned it's given which is really nice but then it's instantly ruined by Ava being like but you don't believe in love and Alex says personally no but love is like money it's worth is determined by those who believe in it and you obviously do and I hate that anyways Alexander this journey by revisiting the fact that he wants Ava to be taking Krav Maga lessons and if it's like sure I'll do that for you but only if you sit for portraits for me for my portfolio kind of like a quid pro quo if you will and instantly next chapter he does he comes into the photo shoot just looking like a snack and they shoot a bunch of photos the entire shoot is just riddled with sexual tension and banter but nothing really happens and then random time skip again and Alex is at work talking with his uncle when randomly he gets a social media notification and for reasons that are completely unclear to me just like decides to look because somebody so happens to randomly be live streaming in arguments that Ava's just randomly having at this party with Madeline who again is Alex's old money Rich entitled ex-girlfriends but kind of not really and it turns out that Madeline saw the two of them dancing and talking at that Gala after Alex nagged her and she is just absolutely Furious just a big girl rage moment you know you just love to see a catty woman who exists only to be a catty woman and nothing else in a romance novel it's just so cool and fun as a Trope anyways Madeline says to Ava Alex will never go for you okay you can't handle him you can't handle the truth and Ava's like what what do you mean and Madeline says he likes it rough he's anti-kissing and anti-eye contact take that Checkmate into Ava on the inside is just like oh what if I like that just down bad but on the outside she makes kind of the girl boss decision to just lie out her to make this girl mad and she tells Madeline that Alex is just different with her you know like he looks at her he kisses her he probably just never really likes Madeline to begin with that's probably what that was which again kind of a sleigh and blah blah they argue this obviously makes Madeline more mad and for some reason they're doing this entire stick like one foot away from this massive indoor pool despite the fact that Ava again is apparently terrified of large bodies of water I didn't really know why she's that close to the pool to begin with but whatever it gets to the point where Madeline is so mad that she ends up pushing Ava into this pool that just happens to be right next to them not knowing that Ava can swim so Alex sees all of this again on this just random Instagram live that he happened to be scrolling while at work on important calls and he drives over in this furious rage as you'd probably expect by this point and he gives his classic I will ruin you or else threat to Madeline to try to barter with her for information on where Ava has gone ever since he saw the live and he even though she gives him set information in his internal monologue he's still like would have told Madeline earlier she put a huge Target on her family's back and I wouldn't rest until house Industries was no more than a footnote in corporate history so rest in peace her and her entire family I guess you know like enjoy poverty but Alex finds Ava and they talk a little bit about how frustrated Ava's fear of water makes her especially in situations like that but also because she wants to travel eventually but she can't stomach the thought of flying in a plane above that big of an ocean and she ends up asking Alex to help her work through this phobia and ultimately to teach her how to swim and that's exactly what the two of them do starting with like meditations and visualizations working herself up to being able to actually get into a pool and let me tell you his patience when he's helping her out with this just raises her the rest of the way back up and this woman is now obsessed with him all previous sins are forgotten okay they don't exist this is the perfect man and random time skip again Ava ends up planning him this surprise birthday party that has the sole ulterior motive of seducing him and she's successful because the two of them end up finally having a sloppy makeout in the kitchen before he pulls away and starts like acting all weird and he hits her with the I'm trying to save you Ava He said Out of Nowhere right as we finished all the dishes and I prepared to flee from what I refused to look at him but I could see him watching me out of the corner of my eye from me really respectful again of Ava's agency and her ability to make her own choices you know how it is and Alex is like supremely at odds with himself by the way and his entire internal monologue up to this point in the book because on one hand he's already decided that Ava's his apparently like she's never to look at another man ever again but at the same time he's just like too spooked I guess to go all the way the only other thing by the way that we learn about during this party is that Alex is bad at singing when he refuses to do karaoke that can't possibly matter or come up later you know there's no way anyways five days pass after this and Ava apparently has still not texted Alex in this time so Alex responds to this Silence by just pulling up to her place of work which is a photo gallery with like a Brand's new top secret iPhone 18. and he hits her with the your current phone is clearly broken since I haven't received so much as a text from you in the past five days and obviously she's like no I don't know what you want me to say I kissed you you kissed me back then you said it was a mistake and we agreed never to do it again I thought you wanted space and I gave it to you I'm not one of those girls who chases after guys who don't want them and she explains herself and she says that she can even find a new swim instructor if Alex doesn't want to do that anymore and Alex is just like no the hell you will I snapped you asked me to teach you how to swim I'm the one who worked with you all these weeks if you think I'm going to let some swoop in and take what's mine you don't know me at all we're resuming lessons this weekend don't even think about trying to find someone else and I guess just to prove that he's serious about this or maybe deflects I mean nobody knows for sure he also decides in this moment to buy the most expensive photo in the gallery just dropping forty thousand dollars and giving her Commission on the purchase which is a weird thing to do but you know get your bag queen random time skip again immediately after this and the two of them are meeting at this hotel pool about a week afterwards and all is well again between the two of them and it's a big day because this time Eva's actually going to be getting into the pool and trying to swim around for the first time after all the profit the two of them did and she does she gets in she's swimming she's doing pretty well right up until she crosses into the deep end and she has to put her head underwater which instantly results in a trauma response and she ends up having a panic attack and then immediately after the panic attack she looks at Alex and she's like Kiss Me you coward and Alex is like whoa there you just had a panic attack and Ava's like I'm fine okay kiss me you coward again and Alex darkens and he's like you don't even know what you're getting yourself into and Dave was like but I do know Madeline told me and I like it which makes this man as horny possibly as he has ever been in his entire life up to this point and so he runs into the hotel and runs out the penthouse suite and they go up and they finally smash page 156 if you're curious anyways before they actually do the deed Alex is like you know what this means and Dave was like No And inside of his internal monologue Alex is like ahaha so innocent so naive and he gives her this monologue it means you're mine your mouth is mine's are mine this is mine and your it's mine every inch of you belongs to me and if you ever let another man touch you he'll end up in pieces and you'll end up tied to my bed in every until my name is the only one you remember do you understand and Ava I think very turned on in this moment and probably assuming that this is an exaggeration which is a fair assumption to make everyone there is horny you know sometimes you just say [ __ ] she's like yes I understand I belong to you not having the faintest idea of what is to come in her future and this is where Alex's last major red flag appears for the first time in this book which is dating him means he owns you and you're gonna see this evolve over time and some really fun and interesting ways also notable here is that not only does Alex kiss Ava he also makes eye contact with her these are big moves okay this is different for our man he's growing and that's really all there is to it I mean the scene really just serves as the entry point to the mid-book smut Montage which is where the vast majority of the explicit scenes for this entire book just happened one after another for about four chapters the two of them gone to smash like innumerable times in that hotel room both on page and implied and Ava bless her heart tries to have like a DTR to figure out what's going on between them during this montage and Alex is like well I mean you did agree to this you know like I've already told you what the rules are you can never sleep with another man in your life or I'll kill him so seems pretty exclusive to me and Dave is like oh so true also so hot and normal as Behavior the two notable things to happen during the SMUD Montage event wise and also General lunacy wise Alex takes a [ __ ] business call and starts like brokering a deal while also actively smashing Ava in the background really a full circle moment back to the beginning of this book with Josh and it's also just like one of those billionaire things that I feel like every book like this feels compelled to do to prove that the man is ambitious and a capitalist icon and then the other thing is that later the two of them ends up smashing in the student health center during this like fall festival thing that's happening at Ava's University which is crazy like in the health center excuse me anyways now you're disarmed just completely sold on how wonderful the relationship is going to be between the two of them forever now and it's at this point that the book decides to just have a ton of completely ridiculous events happen one after the other more happens in the next like approximately 60 pages of this book than in most Netflix original series why do you think I made this board okay like it was for this and when I was reading this I didn't really expect this book to have a plot that was relevant in any capacity to the story so let's just say that what we're about to experience together was a surprise random time skip again and suddenly Ava is having this just really bizarre interaction with her dad Michael it's their first on-page Contact in the book I think we've seen him described previous to this but we have not met him until this point and Ava has brought him a cake for his birthday and she's like trying to eat it with him and talk with him but it is just awkward Beyond hell they cannot hold a conversation to save their life and we learned through this that when Josh is not in Central America a country unknown he's typically the person who has brokered their relationship and made family gatherings actually livable because this is kind of grim like it's just clearly uncomfortable for both of them Ava's also Chinese so she theorizes that her dad might just love Josh more than her because of a deep-seated cultural preference for Sons of her daughters and just a general cultural alienation of parents from their children in terms of friendly and vulnerable relationships which is pretty interesting as a theme just randomly sauce in there but we're never going to revisit this again it's just a thought so we just move on all that you really need to know is that this conversation between the two of them was really weird because within 10 pages Ava's back with her dad again this time on Thanksgiving Alex is there and the two of them are like hahaha we can't tell my dad that we're together because he might tell Josh and Josh would murder us both if he forgotten he's a very protective older brother he would not stand for this absolute nonsense so the two of them for all of two pages are just comedically trying to hide the relationship but they kind of fail and then it kind of doesn't even really matter because all of a sudden Ava's having another nightmare but it's about something that isn't the lake that's weird possibly a second incident nobody knows for sure it's very blurry it's very unclear and Deva wakes up kind of rattled from this experience and she ends up going outside to think and her dad just happens to live right next to a lake not the original Lake but a lake nevertheless they just love lakes in this family and when she's on this walk her dad comes outside to go like exercise or do whatever old men do early in the morning and she has another memory that's bubbling up and get this Ava realizes in this moment that it was not her mom who pushed her into the lake when she was a kid it was her dad Michael Chen and obviously she starts panicking here and her dad kind of like runs over to try to comfort her not knowing obviously what is going on but fortunately Alex has woken up and he zooms out there to comfort her and then once they leave together is immediately hitting her with the like who we gotta kill who we gotta [ __ ] up what lakes do I gotta drain babe I'll drain every Lake in this world for you except he's being like dead serious because he's a crazy person and so Ava just goes on to Lord Dom's to him and also to us about everything that happens which is that her parents were in the middle of the divorce during the start of the incidents and Ava at the time was living with her mom when the two of them were like let's go play outside by the lake so they walk out there and Ava's mom realizes that she forgot sunscreen inside or something so she's just like stay here honey and watch the water while I run and get it and Ava's like okay cool I'm sick and her mom runs inside and then out of absolutely nowhere comes Michael Chan who just runs up and shoves her into the lake and Ava now knows for sure that it was him because the memory that she uncovered was seeing his Signet ring that has his initials on the hand when she was pushed so yeah not a good time for her it's literally the next page Ava's throwing up into a toilet thinking about how awful it is that this is just her life now when she suddenly remembers the second traumatic event which is in fact the incidents part two and we get another flashback section where we alert immediately all of the context behind what happens and what happened is that when Ava was in third grade she wrote an essay in class Under The Prompt who is your hero and why about how her dad was her hero because he saved her from drowning when she was young which is true by the way Michael is both the person who pushed her into the water and also the person who saved her life she writes an essay about how he saved her life and she gets this really good grade on it and she brings it back to show her dad and her dad just looks at this child and like seeds about how much she apparently looks like his ex-wife Ava's mom who Again by the way is just never named in this book and Michael decides just on the spot that he's going to kill her and suffocate her like right there and then in his office with a pillow again you know just not the greatest plan I'm not really sure like where his head was at on this or where exactly he expected this to go if it worked you could say the eyes were not dotted the t's were not crossed but yeah that's what happens between them he's like do you remember the lake and she's like no I don't but thanks for saving me and he's like well good maybe you won't remember this either and just start smothering her into the couch and she ends up not dying because young Josh chooses this exact moment in time to run upstairs and interrupt the entire thing which Ava Zed somehow covers this up and like everything's fine but because Ava is so like instantly traumatized from this experience in this moment she forgets literally all of her memories they're all gone that's the actual cause of the blackout which we have learned about earlier and the reason why Ava has no memories of her childhood and yeah if it becomes just like a fresh-faced baby in the world all the way up until the present day on page 197 of Twisted love when she is suddenly remembering all of these things again so yeah that's wild obviously and Alex and Ava knowing all of these things now have within one page of the actual book Again by the way since for Eva's dad to meet them at Alex's company claiming that there is just some kind of emergency that they need his help to handle so obviously Michael goes and he's like why the am I here like are you pregnant please don't be pregnant that would be unfortunate and Ava's like please babe let me speak to him alone okay like I want to handle this myself so Alex leaves the room and it's just Ava and her dad and David confronts him she's like so you tried to kill me and her dad's like what no I would never do that like I'm your dad you know like that doesn't sound like me and Ava's like but you tried to kill me twice and her dad's like what no and she goes but the essay from Mrs James's class you cannot trick me and Michael for some reason thinks that this is a good time to try the experimental strategy of Ava he said softly calmly like he didn't want to Spook me you never had a teacher named Mrs James which you know is a choice considering that it's about the easiest thing about this situation to factually confirm and of course Alex because For Better or For Worse he's a [ __ ] freak has done exactly that and Ava's kind of just reeling here from the fact that she has to cope now with the idea that her dad has just been actively gaslighting her forever so Alex chooses this moment to just strive back into the room he's like actually I investigated and I learned it all there were bruises all over her that you said were from a playground accident there was no playground accident was there Mr Chen and yeah Michael cracks at this point he literally says Bravo I almost had you and slope laps and then he delivers what can only be described as a villain monologue over approximately the next four pages that just describes his entire plan in detail that has now been foiled and most of this is just repetition and kind of another angle of all the things that we already know at this point but it turns out that all of this happens because Ava is not actually Michael's biological daughter it turns out that her unnamed dead mother cheated on Michael probably I mean she denies it and you don't even really know for sure like there are other things that theoretically could have been but Michael certainly thinks it's true and it's not like Ava's mom is alive to say anything on the matter so that's what we're going with Ava's an illegitimate daughter but unlike Ava Joshua says real son which is why Michael has always been able to talk to Josh like a normal person you know like that's his Heir that's his legacy just a very like feudal vibe in this family but apparently during the trial he couldn't tell the judge that his wife cheated on him in order to get custody of Josh because it would just Doom his reputation in his local diaspora community so instead he decides that the way that he's going to win custody is just by planting a ton of John inside of Ava's mom's house and apparently the day of the incident is when he's going to do that you have to imagine having done like absolutely zero research on when they're going to be out of the house so he can actually like sneak in and not be caught I don't really know what this man's plan was if he just like enters this house to plant the drugs and his ex-wife is like what are you doing here you know it was just a bad call but he doesn't run into his wife because before he goes in he sees this wonderful crime of opportunity with Ava just chilling on the dock by herself this man apparently thinks to himself you know what even drug addicts are able to get custody sometimes of the children but you know who won't get custody for sure a drug addict who also attempted to murder one of the kids that'll do it that's what I'll do and so he pushes Ava into this Lake but in his villain monologue he's like not even I am so evil to let a child die even though he hates her and will try to kill her again later and he fishes her out of the lake and just like immediately warps her memory he smirked it's quite easy to implant false memories especially in the minds of a confused traumatized child a few suggestions and leaning questions from me and you were convinced it was your mom said you smelled her perfume plus she was the only person that there so this is so successful about Ava is the one who ends up telling the cops that her mom pushed her in and lo and behold Michael wins full custody and yeah Ava's mom goes on to use the drugs apparently that Michael did plants at some point nobody knows exactly when he planted these and she ends up overdosing on them not too long after this custody hearing oh and also regarding the office Suffocation incidents number two Michael I shoot you not is like yeah that was a bit of an oopsie you know I was just really mad since you look so much like your terrible mom and so as a result I thought I would kill you you know how it is sometimes but then imagine that Josh came home and I had to let you live after all it was pretty cool though that you didn't remember anything that was just a really great coincidence you know and so I thought it was fine but decided that it would be too risky for me to attempt again so here we both are and you're alive anyways yeah so that's a lot that was his villain monologue Ava's having internally and existential crisis as one would in this situation honestly but in this moment of like Triumph for Michael I don't know exactly what this is I don't know exactly what he's feeling right now I don't know why he felt the need to spill his entire dark life story in this moment but Alex hits him with the DC has a one-party consent law for recordings and Ava consented before we started this conversation you're going to jail sucker and then Alex brings in the FBI who have just been waiting outside you know hanging out this entire time as they do genuinely to be as delusional as Michael Chen because this man goes I'll fight this you know that recording that you have of me confessing to literally everything I did alongside all of the receipts that you have painstakingly compiled like those won't hold up in court I'll get the best lawyer in the Galaxy okay you're not going to stand a chance and Alex responds by saying with what money I reported your tax evasion and corporate fraud to the FBI as well and now you have no assets so good luck getting that lawyer and Michael's like home hello and he recovers and goes for like a death rattle here Josh will never forgive you for this Michael's eyes burned he worships me who do you think he'll believe me his father or you a punk he met a few years ago but who do you think is outside of that room in this very moment you guessed it it's Josh back from Central America country just in time to punch his dad in the face and go I think I'll believe the punk and Josh goes on to just beat the [ __ ] out of his dad in front of again the FBI who are just like vibing right there until Alex is the one that pulls Josh off of him and then yeah Michael's off to jail quote bruised and bleeding but fortunately Alex has a friend's really high up in the FBI because of course he does so Josh doesn't get arrested for this it's like completely fine which is just insane basically everything in this part so far has happened within about 15 pages let's just say that so yeah good Michael but what's next because obviously there has to be more and more there is okay we're not done bestie we've barely begun to explore what the [ __ ] is going on in this book but before we get into any of that this book is like oh yes I remember now I'm a romance novel and is temporarily just completely normal for one chapter Ava talks with Josh about his commitment problems which surely is just like setting him up for his book we spent the next half hour talking about lighter topics his time in Central America what DC luxuries he indulge in before he returned to his volunteer program and his now dead relationship with the girl he told me about apparently he'd ended things immediately after she brought up marriage typical Josh typical Josh just chatting the day away your moments after beating the [ __ ] out of your dad what are you doing like how are you having this conversation right now Josh also obviously knows at this point about Ava and Alex and he ran to Ava for a second about how even he as Alex's best friend knows that Alex is kind of slimy and Ava's like no he's so protective and wonderful he taught me how to swim he brought me into the pool he saved me for my evil dad and he's the perfect man and I love him yeah it's during this conversation with Josh that Ava realizes that she loves Alex and it's chill after that with Josh you know like he accepts it good for him and later Alex brings her cupcakes when she's just hanging out with her friends and kind of thinking over the entire situation and in her internal monologue she hits the reader with the that old saying was true what doesn't kill you makes you stronger what doesn't kill you makes you Funk I'd almost died twice in my life that I knew of and I was still standing I'd continue to stand tall long after Michael rotted in jail our couple ends up having their I love you scene and it's actually pretty cute even though Alex doesn't like directly say it back I'm not an easy person to love good thing I never cared much about taking the easy Road you're cold and infuriating and I admit a little scary but you're also patient and supportive and brilliant Brilliance you inspire me to Chase my dreams and drive away my nightmares you are everything I didn't know I needed and you make me feel safer than anyone else on this planet what I'm trying to say again is I love you Alex volkov every part of you even the parts I want to slap a smile goes to his mouth that was quite the speech the smile faded as quickly as it had come and he dropped his forehead to mine his breath ragged you are the light to my dark Sunshine he said in a ravois his lips brushed against mine as he spoke without you I'm lost but it's just wild to me that this is happening right now I mean like the emotional Whiplash that you feel watching this video I felt when I was reading this tenfold and just like that after that small break blinking you miss it we're back to the plot okay Alex heads over to visit his uncle and he's checking in with his uncle because we learned that for the time being his revenge has been completed even though there are still like a few irons in the fire that he needs to kind of figure out most of it is done and to celebrate we finally get a full picture of the events which is told in first person as if he's actually 12. I was annoyed I'd never beaten Nina at Scrabble for kids even though she was two years younger than me and I had a quote unquote genius IQ according to my teachers and parents just because we can't forget for even a single second how smart Alex is and in that vein during this entire Saga apparently Alex was supposed to be at a camp for like super nerdy Super Genius children but apparently it was just too easy for him you know like his brain is just so big he went home early from the camp and he ends up witnessing like this entire thing Alex's family is just hanging out at home when suddenly some guys just start to try to break into the house and his parents are on that okay they're like Alex Nina go and hide in a secret passageway that we carved behind our fireplace you have to protect yourselves like this is dangerous and that's what they do but Alex's cat ends up jumping out of Nina's hands and just running out towards the closing fireplace door and because Nina's a literal child she runs after it and back into the living room so yeah it's just Alex now in this passage looking out into the living room using a peephole that's carved into the Secret Door and just watching as these two guys apparently just go on to slaughter his entire family in front of him they don't kill the cat which is nice if nowhere else this book draws the line in animal abuse I guess but the guys who kill Alex's family know for some reason that he's supposed to be at a sleep away camp so they don't look for him they just leave and yeah Alex I mean obviously that's a scarring experience for him to go through and it ends up kind of being his Batman moment and he swears Vengeance Justice Revenge whatever all of those nouns on the guys who ordered the hit so yeah back to the modern day Alex and Ivan are having this really weird conversation about him completing his revenge that just can't possibly be related in any way to the events of the story this far surely not but Alex also learns during this conversation that Ivan has been kind of like stalking Alex's work habits which really rubs him the wrong way with how much attention Ivan is giving him so after Ivan leaves Alex just decides to search his entire house he brings out this handy dandy Jammer that he just has with him all of the time I guess to jam the cameras in the house and he whips out his gloves and he just looks through everything and it seems completely futile until Alex realizes when he's looking through the library that the outlets are really weird those Outlets are closer than six feet apart which Alex being of course supremely intelligent knows is against the U.S national electrical regulations and so voila he knows one of them is fake and he's just exactly right he goes to this fake Outlet he gets some stuff out of it he reads it we don't know exactly what it is yet because tension or whatever even though everything is normally explained to us within five pages and this will be no different and his uncle like comes home as Alex is doing this but Alex is able to play it off like he's just grabbing The Count of Monte Cristo because he's just such a literate man and he heads home with this new Intel then there's this awkward dinner with Ava where Alex is just really distant and they're fighting because he's not telling her anything she justifiably has some Hang-Ups with that kind of behavior given the fact that her entire life story was actually a lie I don't know what you want me to tell you the truth I lured my voice when the diners at the next table shot me an alarm's look that's all I want please my Michael lied to me my entire life and I don't want you to start a shadow passed over Alex's face before it disappeared I won't lie unless the truth hurts you so yeah just really cute Behavior yet again where Alex has absolutely no respect for her agency or desires anyways obviously because this plot is just continuing to develop at an exponential rate we learned during Alex's next POV chapter that when the whole event went down it was Uncle Ivan who helped Alex dig into his parents staff I haven't agreed with him off the Jump that it wasn't just a simple home invasion which was what the police were trying to rule it as and apparently those burglars were also arrested but a hit was ordered for them to take them out in prison which you know that's suspicious and Ivan I guess was just the person who dug into all of that and found out that who ordered the hit on Alex's entire family Michael Chan yum it was my Michael and Alex has just done apparently a bunch of reprehensible she should try to destroy his life in the time since then except what Alex has now learned after searching that random Outlet in the library is that it was not Michael Chen after all who was responsible for the death of his family it was Uncle Ivan the whole time so yeah that's tough instantly after learning this Alex has mobilized like the entire Board of his company to usurp Ivan's position as CEO and he officially dethrones him which he knows is going to piss off Uncle Ivan so Alex is just vibing in his house like waiting for Uncle Ivan to show up and yell at him when Ava comes over wanting to talk about the relationship again because Alex is just being such a piece of [ __ ] to her but anyways as Alex predicted Ivan shows up at this point and because Ava's there they end up having this like really tense weird conversation and Ivan's Just Waxing poetic about how excited he is to retire when clearly he just wants to pound Alex's face into the pavement Alex makes him tea they do this over tea and then Ivan ends up dropping the fact that he's just a really paranoid old man you know life is really hard it can be dangerous and so he has cameras everywhere including the library which internally Alex is like I only use my handy dandy top of the line Jammer to block the bedroom and kitchen cameras of course how could I be so foolish which is just so ridiculous but whatever Ivan ends up leaving I mean it's tense like clearly Ivan knows that Alex knows what's going on there and then random time skip one page later two weeks have passed and Ivan has threatened Alex into visiting him which of course he does hello Uncle so you finally made it you little Uncle Ivan at this point is not looking good okay he is like welts all over he's going bald he's super thin it's just clearly not been a good time for him but anyways Ivan gets straight to business as this book does and he tells Alex that Alex has to immediately give him back the CEO position leave the company and also why are Ivan an additional 50 million dollars in emotional damages and he has to do this immediately because if he doesn't then Ivan will kill the hostages who are the hostages you're wondering because of course it turns out that he does in fact have hostages who's been kidnapped that's right it's Ava but it's also Bridget the princess of a fictional European country and these two are just vibing very scared obviously they're tied up and they're being held onto by this just gigantic man who's wearing a pair of camo pants that Alex names in his head camo and Alex immediately feels a deep rage at this Injustice he decides everyone here will die he is Vengeance but first he has to give you not his own villain monologue oh yeah we get more and in this monologue Alex is kind of trying to play I've been into believing that he doesn't care about Ava at all for reasons that become quickly unclear considering the leverage that Alex brings into this room and also the fact that he's apparently pretty sure that Ivan will end up killing everybody in the room anyways when the conversation is over and also Ivan already knows as his partner everything that Alex is saying here so nobody knows for sure why Alex feels compelled to do this but for us for the audience he lays out exactly how he went about his revenge against Michael Chan you think it was a coincidence that Josh and I were assigned to the same room or freshman year a hefty bribe with the right person goes far and there's no better way to destroy your enemy than from the inside I played the dead parents card to gain his sympathy until he invited me over for the holidays and while everyone was asleep I snooped I bugged your house went through your father's files found lots of interesting information why do you think his business took so many hits over the years a tear rolled down Ava's cheek but I kept going I'm sorry sunshine I dismantled his Empire piece by piece and you and Josh had no clue I uttered a soft laugh even as my chest burned this year was going to be the grand finale the year in which my plan to take down his company publicly and humiliatingly came together but I needed one more piece of information one more excuse to search through his office then Josh might take it into your house every Thanksgiving announced he was volunteering in Central America most inconvenience I needed another end that's where you entered the picture Josh did most of the heavy lifting himself when he asked me to look after you but I planted the idea of moving into his house I smiled my heart slowly shredding itself apart after all it was much easier to make you fall in love with me when you had to see me every day and you did it was so easy it was almost embarrassing sweet trusting Ava so eager to fix broken things so desperate for love she'd take it anywhere she could find it clearly he's just laying it on thick with this once again like nobody knows why because he immediately pivots and he's like I got my revenge and I picked him up double bad because it turns out that he wanted to murder his daughter who wasn't even really his daughter Booyah or it would be a Booyah if it really was Michael Chen who killed my family but it was you Uncle Ivan and immediately Ivan responds with his own villain monologue if you're keeping track at home this is the third villain monologue in about 50 pages and it turns out that Ivan framed Michael because Michael was the primary business rival of Alex's dad and he was just kind of an easy Sitting Duck type dude who would be believable enough to Alex to be the target of his revenge and we also learned that Ivan killed Alex's family because Ivan was into Alex's mom but she rejected him and this man thought to himself what if today a Wednesday I just went full unadulterated insult what if we did that you know like I wonder what would happen and what Alex found in that outlet that kind of confirmed to him that it was Ivan all along was the original letters that were between Ivan and Alex's mom so Ivan also apparently thinks that he has Alex kind of in a Checkmate position here because apparently Madeline yep that's right that girl from the pool told him that Alex loved Ava which is honestly even more funny because again at the time Ava was like lying out of her but Ivan is pretty sure as a result that he's got the leverage here with the hot sausages regardless of all of the vitriol that Alex is putting out there and he's just like how about you wire me the money and give me back the position and and we can call it even and Alex has this moment where in his internal monologue he thinks I wondered if he knew Bridget was the princess of Eldora if he did he was an idiot for dragging her into this if he didn't he was an idiot for not doing his research which is just really funny like as a concept because again why is she here what is this woman doing in this book but anyways it turns out that double Checkmate Alex just goes sure I can totally do those things for you Uncle Ivan I can wire back that money I can give you your position or I could save your life because remember like 10 pages ago when Ivan visited Alex to yell at him for taking away his job and had tea at Alex's house you can buy anything on the black market these days I said playing idly with the Ugly Monkey paperweight on the desk including deadly poisons the one currently destroying your system quite similar to thallium it's odorless tasteless colorless hard to identify because it's so rare and its symptoms often points to a range of other illnesses but unlike thallium it is no widely known antidotes luckily for you Uncle there is a secret antidote and I have a vial stashed away yeah Alex apparently dosed him in secret with this slow acting super ultra Giga rare poison which again with this kind of Leverage it just really makes a girl wonder you know like why he had to do Ava so dirty during his villain monologue but whatever you know because when they're talking here just as if on cue three things happened at once Ava threw herself at the distracted camo and knocked the gun out of his hand Bridget's bodyguard tackled camo from behind and caught him in a Chokehold and I whipped out the gun hidden in the shoulder holster beneath my coat and pointed it at my Uncle I used my other hand to send a quick one-number message on my phone without taking my eyes off I've event there was no cue by the way like they're all just that good I guess and Bridget's bodyguard she's got a new one by the way her old one bodyguard number one retired at this point just hops out of nowhere and they went instantly in that one paragraph and Uncle Ivan now recognizing the fact that he's completely lost is like Alex or family and Alex looks at him with darkness in his eyes and he's just like we're not family you killed my family and he makes Ava and Bridget leave to go and call the police outside and I've been still groveling he's like think of the good times Alex but then he just gets like immediately shot as soon as the girls are out of the room and Alex says unfortunately for you I'm not someone who waxes poetic before I pull the trigger you'll die today looking as ugly on the outside as you are on the inside which is unbelievably Rich considering that again Alex had his own villain monologue just like mere moments before this but anyways he shoots his uncle like seven more times you know it's kind of like stop he's already dead energy here in Bridget's bodyguard who's still there like holding down the guy in camo is like you're good bestie like you're doing all right you know just watching all of this happen and Alex is like yeah I'm doing so great you know you should head out you can leave the guy in camo to me and The Bodyguard even though he's kind of suspicious about what's about to happen right fully takes his leave and then for lack of a better and cuter and more romantic way to phrase this um Alex essentially skins this guy alive yeah it's Fade to Black but it's fully like implied torture to death which is a lot once again what about hello how are you anyways after he's done he just walks out of this building in my head there's a Vine boom that accompany says Exit and that's that that all really did happen in this book less than 60 Pages ago we were eating turkey with Michael in the living room Alex and Ava were smashing in a student health center and now we have come to this I just hope you understand why this video needed to be made okay like I never had the choice but we're not done there's more you know how could we possibly stop here how could this be enough nonsense for one book it's not after Alex is all finished skinning camo guy alive he meets Ava and Bridget outside and the both of them are obviously traumatized after what happens as one would be and Ava especially just doesn't really know what to believe anymore given everything that Alex was saying in the room with his uncle about her not mattering to him and just being like a means to an end everything in the villain monologue is really throwing her off so she goes up to Alex after he comes out and they chat and she's like were you being for serious you know like was anything that we actually had real to you and Alex just has a lot of enemies because of his big powerful business and he's really worried that one of them is going to end up kidnapping Ava eventually because that's just the thing that happens all of the time you know Rich wives of billionaires just get ransomed constantly so in order to protect her from that fate he decides to Simply lie you and me I was afraid to ask but I had to know was any of it real Alex stilled and I held my breath hoping praying I tried to warn you sweetheart he said his face impassive I told you not to romanticize me to harden that soft heart he just loves saying that it was my one courtesy for the kindness that you've shown me over the years but you fell for me anyway consider the lesson for the future pretty words and pretty faces don't equal pretty Souls so yeah very cool Ava's like dead inside now and we also learned soon after this that get this all of the paramedics and the police that were called by Ava and Bridget to help deal with the situation yeah they were all hired in advance by Alex I had cleanup teams on standby in various cities ready to swoop in in case any of my many plans went awry no one knew about them not even my uncle when he'd been alive they were discreet efficient and looked like normal people who held normal jobs not fixers who could bury any body erase any evidence and jam any Communications including outgoing calls to local police stations every police officer and paramedic who showed up today was on my team and they played their roles convincingly yeah so Alex chats a bit with one of his boys and then he just decides to burn down Ivan's house to cover up the crime and he uses his mysterious all-powerful connections yet again so that fire is never investigated once again Alex's network does a lot of heavy lifting in this book you know like he just knows everyone I guess and can do anything yeah that's how this section of the book wraps but we're not done so it's been a couple of months we have another time Skip and this entire time Ava's life has just sucked it's just been a pretty bad time for her coming to terms with the fact that both her dad and her ex-boyfriend gasslet her for multiple years many people are saying it's not an easy thing to get over she stopped talking to Alex entirely ever since what happened and just gone into a full depression Arc it's just kind of grim out there for our girl now that she's trying to find a reason to live after learning that there's no good in the world but despite how difficult that is she actually starts to do what I would argue is decently well for herself after a couple of months of psychological torments she has this really nice scene where she realizes that the pain of everything that she'd gone through was holding her down and stopping her from being able to live her life so in order to get through that she'd have to just force her way forward like nobody was going to do it for her you know and to represent this realization she ends up going to a pool and jumping in and just swimming around on her own it's this really big moment for her obviously with both her phobia and also what it represents I'd survived not one not two but three near-death experiences I'd had my heart broken and smashed but I was still breathing I'd lived with my nightmares almost my whole life and still Found the courage to dream I swam until my limbs ached after that I stayed in the pool for a while longer reveling in my accomplishments me swimming alone for I snuck a peek at the clock an hour without a panic attack more than an hour I tilted my head up my first real smile and month spreading across my face it was small but it was there baby steps above me the storm had abated the angry gray clouds giving way to blue skies and Through the dome's Glass I saw quite clearly the pale glimmers of a rainbow so yeah she's kind of having her like hot girl healing summer and on top of that earlier in the book Ava had gotten this very prestigious photography Fellowship that was going to take place in New York after she graduated I didn't mention it earlier because it was irrelevant at the time but now it matters because it's a big deal and she was planning to move to New York with Alex but obviously after what happened she's finding it really really hard to be excited about that future since he's not going to be there anymore you know it's like tough for her to imagine so in order to get herself like pumped up about it again she ends up switching the location of the fellowship to London which is a massive deal because earlier in the book she said that she never saw herself capable of traveling over an ocean because of her fear of water the thought of it just filled her with this like paralyzing anxiety but she seals herself and prepares to do it because she's decided that she just needs to have a fresh start somewhere new and that's exactly what she does so yeah like obviously she's hurting but she's also kind of on the up and up you know she's trying to figure out it's kind of inspirational or it would be if that was a direction that the ending of this book took but obviously that would be impossible you know like why would this book Champion such a reasonable and well-adjusted Recovery you know that that's not going to happen that would be silly because meanwhile Alex has just like thrown himself into his work he's clearly suffering he's drinking whiskey in the middle of the work day he's like Angry all the time and everyone I really didn't think it was possible but he's like somehow more tortured than he was before for and he does hate himself for what he did to Ava but of course he still doesn't anyways because once again he has like absolutely no respect for anybody's agency other than his own more on that soon but anyways while Eva's on her self-improvement grind who shows up at Alex's office but Bridget again for some reason sir Carolina his assistant poked her head in again her face pale and not a little terrified uh you have another guest if they don't have an appointment I don't want to see them about that it's don't bother I'll announce myself a statuesque blonde swept in like she owned the place the vein in my temple pulsed harder princess Bridgets of Eldora here to see I mean Alex volkov so yeah Bridget's there because apparently her new bodyguard has discovered that as you might expect Alex is having Ava followed again for her own protection just a very cool thing to do again without telling someone also this is not like relevance to the plot at all but I just want to mention it because I think it's ridiculous apparently Brit's new bodyguard is a former Navy SEAL which considering the fact that she's a princess of a non- United States country just strikes me as a little weird you know as a decision for the crown to make but apparently the person who was following Ava was also a Navy SEAL so they were like besties and he just like told the new bodyguard everything but anyways Bridget like pretends for a few seconds to be mad at Alex about this but she's not really there to be like righteously angry at Alex for ignoring Ava's boundaries so much as she's there to convince Alex to admit that he really does love Ava and to go and grovel to her which is wild again like Ava does not know about this and Bridget does this because apparently nobody can get through to Ava she's clearly struggling yada yada and all of her friends are just like worried about her and they don't know what else to do which again just seems to be factually not true like Ava's suffering of course as you would be after any breakup much less a breakup with this kind of drama behind it but she's clearly making moves for herself that like Bridget's just choosing to ignore in terms of Bridget being like the worst friend to ever do it honestly it's almost worse that she's right and Alex does in fact still love Ava because where does she expect this to go you know like you really want your bestie to get back together with this man no obviously that's that's insane like I said I despise what you did to her but I also believe you love her even if you're too stubborn or stupid to see it I have an IQ of 160. I said insulted intellectual intelligence doesn't equal emotional intelligence she retorted and do not in interrupt a princess it's terrible etiquette as I was saying you're too stubborn or stupid to see it and now it's too late so Alex finds out through Bridget that Ava is flying out today to London in just one hour apparently from when this conversation is happening which like honestly why even go and see him at this point what are you trying to accomplish Bridget and he is suddenly and finally convinced I guess that he made a massive mistake because he just buys a random ticket and busts into the gate hoping to find Ava before she leaves to do God knows what you know things like moving on and trying to make a future that's brighter than her past you know just terrible stuff he can't have that and it's supposed to be this classic rom-com airplane scene but it's subverted because Ava is already gone is over the ocean okay she's out of there and obviously Alex finds this very difficult to accept let's just say and immediately after Alex Goes to the airport only to find that Ava's already gone we have this cool time skip of at least a couple of weeks I mean we don't really know how long but we find out that Ava is just absolutely thriving in London I loved London I loved its energy the Posh accents and the anticipation that I might cite one of the Royals any day I didn't but I could though I reassured Bridget that she'd always be my favorite Royal most of all I loved that it was a fresh start no one knew me here I could be whoever I wanted and the creative spark I'd lost in those dark weeks after Philadelphia came rushing back so yeah she's clearly doing better you know like she's recovering it's great I know you're wondering where we could possibly go from here and you guessed it Alex shows up because of course he does one day when she's walking home from classes for her fellowship and the two of them have what I honestly believe is an all-time cringe conversation Ava immediately starts panicking as soon as she sees him just backsliding completely she's clearly really upset but Alex came prepared to fight okay from the jump like as soon as he sees her he's like I love you I miss you I'm sorry like please find in your heart to forgive me I mean honestly he answers this conversation with like a decent enough line you got your revenge and I'm not interested in whatever new game you're playing so leave me alone pain slashed across his face this isn't a game I promise this is just me asking you for not forgiveness not right now but hope that one day you won't hate me and we might get a second chance he swallowed hard I'll always need you sunshine and I am just a murdering Psychopathic Super Genius standing in front of a girl asking if she will love him ah but whatever yeah I mean that quote seems more reasonable when I was writing the script initially like it's desperate but it's not like outright problematic you know but honestly I think that the only reason why I was like that's not too bad is because of where this conversation ends up going because obviously Ava shoots him down because she's still really mad and Alex in trying to like explain himself reveals that he's just had her followed for the past six months which begets this very cool conversation moment wait I held up one hand you had me followed for your protection I couldn't believe it how is that okay that's that's crazy how long oh my God my eyes widen do you have someone following me in London too he stared at me his face Stoney unreal I breathed you are truly psycho where is he I looked around frantically I didn't see anyone suspect but the most dangerous people were those who looked anything but call him off right now I already did I narrowed my eyes that was too easy you did yes because I'm taking over his duties oh my God what like excuse me if this man was not described as hot nobody would find this to be a romantic things to do this is deranged Behavior you'll be seeing a lot more of me from now on the hell I will the thought of seeing him every day sends me into a tailspin of panic I'll file a restraining order against you have you arrested for stalking you can try but I can't guarantee my friends in the British government will comply his face darkens and if you think I'm leaving you alone and unprotected anywhere you don't know me at all so there's literally nothing that she can do here there's no recourse against this man Ava just has to live like this now and to her credit Ava does not respond well to this new reality and she like yells at him about the damage that he did and is continuing to do to her through like this and she literally begs him to leave her alone but because Alex is just a consensus King this is what he says just leave me alone Alex's chest heaved like he couldn't get enough air into his lungs I can't do that sweetheart I'll wait however long it takes but I'll never be okay with the world in which you're alone who says I will be maybe I'll find someone one else his eyes darkens to a furious shade of emerald and his shoulders tensed even more some wear Thunder boomed I hadn't noticed the weather more from Sunny to its current gray gloomy States but I wouldn't be surprised if Alex had the power to control it with his emotions the hell you will he snarled I'll kill any man that touches you you have no right I hissed back I don't belong to you the muscles in his jaw popped that's where you're wrong I [ __ ] up massively but I will earn your forgiveness one day and you are mine always no matter how much time or distance separates us which is just a crazy thing to say okay like let's just pause for a second imagine having the absolute audacity to tell your ex who you dumped by the way that she can either option A take you back or option b never date anybody ever again because if she dates somebody then you will kill them and we all know by this point in the book that Alex is not messing around with this because lest you forget he literally skins that guy alive in his house and if Ava's so uncomfortable with this that she wants to like report him to the police for stalking her he's like actually yeah the British crown they're my besties you're Sunshine deal with it and you're telling me that I as the reader am supposed to like this man I'm supposed to find him attractive what anyways so this conversation just really goes nowhere because to Alex no does not in fact mean no and he just ends up following Ava home that night and we'll follow Ava home every night now forever that's where this book is going we also learned that he abdicated his position as CEO of his company so that way he could spend literally all of his time just following Ava around and winning her back which again I think romantic feels like a really dashing romantic thing to do because he's an ambitious boy you know he's a capitalist he loves his job but he loves her more but in reality when you think about it for longer than one second it is just completely deranged but yeah he makes good in his promise and just starts following her around literally everywhere that she goes and he ends up buying her these really expensive gifts until she tells him to stop which I don't know why you tell him to stop getting you gifts because it seems like it's like the one benefit that you're getting out of this situation that you can't leave but you do you Queen and somehow this entire Saga of events is very surprising to Ava I never thought Alex volkov would become my stalker but there we were there we were I don't know what life you're living or what book you think you're in but if this is unexpected behavior from this man at this point we are simply consuming different content oh whatever you know like that's what he's doing and then very suddenly we get a one-year time Skip One entire year passes and it turns out that his behavior is just the same that entire time through her entire Fellowship just you know following her rounds and walking her two and from class and refusing to leave her alone poor Ava at this point has been like stockholms into kind of appreciating it Alex and I developed a new well I wasn't sure if I could call it a friendship but it was a step up from whatever we had when he arrived in London a year ago a year ago he still waited for me in front of my flat every morning and walked me home after my workshops every afternoon sometimes we talked sometimes we didn't he helps me practice my self-defense moves assembled my new dining table after my old one broke and served as a de facto assistance in some of my photo shoots it had taken a long time before we reached that point but we'd gotten there he was trying more than trying and while I'd regained a modicum of trust in him something held me back from fully forgiving him I could see how much it hurt him every time I pushed him away but the wounds from his and Michael's betrayals while they were healing ran deep and I was still learning to trust myself much less other people which is just interesting you know considering that what's holding her back isn't even the fact that he's been stalking her against her wishes for a year for me I think that would make the top of the list but anyways right now she's at an art show to celebrate the ends of her fellowship and at this art show all of the photographers are hoping to sell the photographs that they've taken during the year to buyers that appreciate their art you know jump starting their career I would be happy if I sold one knowing that someone anyone liked my work enough to pay for it since a swarm of happy Jitters through my stomach so yeah it was kind of expecting to sell nothing when Suddenly at the very beginning of the art show an anonymous buyer sweeps in and buys up Ava's entire collection now who could that possibly be like do I even have to tell you and again I think we're supposed to see this as like a very sweet thing for Alex to do but what it actually does is just prevents anybody else from being able to appreciate Ava's artwork she'll never know if her photos are good enough for somebody to want them on their own Merit and not because they're her psychotic acts who is very possessive of everything that she creates and is also hoping that she'll take him back and if that's not enough for you yet to get the ick here with this man and just everything that he's done in this entire book if you're still somehow cooking if you still kind of like him everyone's at some kind of opening or closing ceremony for this art show and the director comes out and is like surprise we have a surprise it's a surprise performance just for you guys isn't that wonderful and Alex walks out onto the stage dressed to the nines about to be on his reasons completely unclear to me this man just starts singing nidai reminds you can't sing from 200 Pages ago yeah he can and he is riddle me that I realize this is quite a surprise as a live performance wasn't in the program tonight Alex said and if you know me you know I'm not famous for my patronage of the Arts or my singing skills whether it's music photography film or painting the Arts reflect the world around us and for too long I only saw the dark side the Seedy underbellies the ugly truths photographs reminded me of moments in time that never lasted songs reminded me that words have the power to rip one's heart out why then would I care about art when it was so terrible and destructive it was a bold statement to make in front of London's art world but no one heckled no one so much as breathed Alex had us all under the spell of his words then someone came into my life and appended everything I thought I knew she was everything I wasn't pure-hearted trusting optimistic she showed me the beauty that existed in this world and through her I learned the power of Faith Joy love but I'm afraid I've tainted her with my untruths and I'm hoping with all my heart that one day she'll find her way out of the darkness and into the light again and then he sings and apparently his voice is blessed by the Angels he's the best to ever do it in the eyes of this audience me personally I wanted to throw up in my mouth this is finally enough I guess for Ava and after his performance she wants to talk to him but she can't find him he has disappeared this is crazy he never does this and while she's wandering around looking for him one of her friends from the program ends up pulling her aside and asking her out on a date and Ava's not the worst person in the world so she tries to let him down gently you're one of my closest friends here and I'm so glad I met you you're a great guy ouch jacquinced I feel like that's not a good thing when used in this context I laughed no trust me it's a good thing you're cute and funny and talented too and any girl would be lucky to date you I sense a bud coming he said Riley but but she's busy a smooth voice interrupted from tonight through the foreseeable future yep it's Alex and because answering for somebody who isn't your girlfriend was not enough for this man he also decides to hit Jack with a very cool threat you're the guy who performed tonight and is always waiting for Ava outside wyp Jack narrowed his eyes who are you again someone who will rip your entrails out and strangle you with them if you don't take your hands off her again just so well adjusted so wonderful just the perfect man but it works I guess like it rises her up at this point because one page later they're hugging and she's saying how much she missed him and he's saying that he'll never leave her again and just like that they're macking in the art gallery actually they end up having sex because Alex used his magical connections again to make everybody leave the art gallery so it was just them too inside of it and yeah just like that they've made up completely he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen he crushed his lips to mine hard and demanding I yielded with no resistance letting him into every part of me my heart my soul my life and you know what Alex and I we fit perfectly no you don't it's literally Stockholm syndrome this is what Stockholm Syndrome does also before any man get any ideas if you pull this nonsense and start trying to serenade the women in your life you're just gonna end up getting bullied okay I I'm just giving you the advice that you need to succeed in this life but yeah that's where we end within 20 pages of Ava's move to London on her upswing in her thriving recovery era she has undergone a year of non-consensual stalking gotten over that and gotten back together with Alex and now they're going to be with each other forever and I I guess we get an epilogue where they're doing Thanksgiving with Alex's old Krav Maga coach and they Smash and then we get a bonus chapter where they're at an apple orchard and they Smash and we're left to assume that this is how it ends for them they never face danger again we also get a cool setup where Bridget's brother who is the Crown Prince of her small fictional European nation has abdicated the throne and run off with a woman to marry her and Bridget's now next in line for the crown except she's also very clearly in love with bodyguard number two which that creates some drama as I'm sure you can imagine so yeah the geopolitical stakes of this Wattpad series just are continuing to rise but we're not going to cover that right now okay that's not in this book I just hope you understand why I felt the need to share this with you really this is the worst book I've ever read that I've still felt compelled to help others in my life experience so yeah I hope you had a good time I hope you enjoyed this Odyssey that we embarked upon together and I hope that you find a partner in your life that treats you better than Alex treated Ava in this book depending on what you guys think I might recap more books in this series I haven't actually read any of them yet only this one or I'll just do more videos like this in general if you have any ideas or like requests that you want to see please feel free to leave them Below in the comments and yeah if you had a good time to die please like And subscribe Etc okay that's all I have to say bye

Channel: lexi aka newlynova

Views: 837,107

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Id: h6np56h-hKM

Length: 82min 5sec (4925 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 18 2023