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Ana Huang on Twisted Love
In her own words: quotes and insights from the author.
Why she wrote it
A lockdown, a day job she hated, and a niche she didn’t know existedBefore Twisted Love, Huang had written the If Love series, which was far less explicit. It was BookTok, Bookstagram, and Kindle Unlimited that opened a door she hadn’t known was there, and the 2020 lockdown gave her the hours to walk through it.
When the 2020 lockdown happened, I needed a creative outlet. I rediscovered my love for reading and writing, and since I was unhappy with my day job at the time, I focused on becoming a full-time author. I published *Twisted Love* in 2021, and the rest is history.
beccavry.wordpress.com, “Ana Huang Interview - becca vry - WordPress.com”She had found a genre she genuinely loved reading, and she wrote toward that taste with no particular expectation of reach. The book went viral while she still had a day job.
When I started writing the book *Twisted Love*, I just wrote what I liked to read and it was for a very niche audience. I did not expect it to take on the traction that it has.
Two specific anchors shaped the book before a single word of plot was drafted: a real person she knew, and a city she had actually lived in. The brother’s best friend trope, one of romance fiction’s most familiar setups, was the third fixed point around which everything else was built.
Alex is loosely based on someone I know, and the setting was inspired by my time living in D.C. I also wanted to write a brother’s best friend trope. The rest of the plot came to me as I was outlining the story and trying to figure out ways to make it more interesting.
How she wrote it
A café incident, a placeholder system, and a very strict rule about her motherThe explicit content in Twisted Love was new territory for her, and she had originally considered publishing under a different name to put distance between herself and the page. The discomfort showed up in real time as she drafted.
When I was writing *Twisted Love*, I don’t know if people can tell, but I was still a little bit uncomfortable writing super spicy scenes. I was typing like, ‘Am I really writing this?’
The discomfort had a logistical consequence. Working in cafés became complicated after a woman sitting beside her glanced over at exactly the moment a particular word was enlarged on screen. That incident pushed her toward a drafting system that separated the explicit scenes from the rest of the manuscript.
When it comes time if I’m writing a book and I hit a sex scene, I put a placeholder, and I come back and I fill it in. I just have to be in a little bit of a different headspace to write them.
Getting into that headspace wasn’t always automatic. She named the specific tool she reaches for when the mood won’t arrive on its own.
If I’m not feeling it and I just need a little inspiration, I will read erotica just to get into that mindset.
Beyond the explicit scenes, she was drawn to heroes who operate outside ordinary social constraints. Alex Volkov, the cold, obsessive guardian at the center of Twisted Love, fits a type she returns to across her work: morally gray, controlling, but always loyal to the person he loves. Writing characters like him, she has said, gives her a larger creative box to work in.
I love those characters that have a little bit more edge. When I write them, I don’t necessarily have to adhere to social boundaries; it’s a bigger box for me to play in.
That larger box is precisely what makes Alex so difficult to put down and, for many readers, so uncomfortable to admit they find compelling.
What she wants us to sit with
A guaranteed happy ending in a genre that used to embarrass peopleHuang is consistent across interviews about why she thinks romance sells the way it does right now. The argument isn’t nostalgia; it’s relief. She connects the genre’s appeal directly to the texture of contemporary daily life.
I think especially in today’s world where everything is so chaotic and messy at times, there is a comfort in reading a genre where, no matter what happens, how messy or how hard things get, there is always a happily ever after.
Asked specifically about Alex, the kind of hero who controls every room and anticipates every need, she gave an answer that is less about fantasy and more about cognitive load. Readers who find themselves drawn to a man who makes every decision aren’t necessarily looking for submission; they’re looking for a break.
It’s the fantasy of having someone just take care of all these things so you don’t have to think about it. In real life, we are overwhelmed by all of the decisions we have to make, and it can be exhausting.
There is a floor, though, beneath every morally gray hero she writes. Whatever else Alex does in Twisted Love, whatever edges he has, Huang places one absolute constraint on the type.
No matter what kind of hero I write — they tend to be on the ‘morally grey’ alpha spectrum or a bit gentler — what they have in common is that they always treat love interests with respect. They will never cheat on them, and even if they make stupid mistakes, they will always regret it and try to become a better person.
Romance fiction spent decades shelved in the back of bookstores, read in secret. BookTok changed those conditions, and Twisted Love broke through at the exact moment the shift was happening. Huang understands the history behind the dismissal and says it plainly.
There will never be anything that will compare to your breakout, because that is where the majority of your fandom came from and is still going to be the one series that people will talk to you the most about.
For readers arriving at Twisted Love now, that weight is invisible. For Huang, every subsequent book is written in its shadow.