Twisted Games

Huang’s novels fall into the genre of contemporary romance and the subgenres of dark romance and new adult fiction. Although Twisted Games deals with darker subjects such as guilt, loss, and grief, the primary focus of its plot concerns the romance between the two main characters and details their struggle to remain together despite their problems. Contemporary romances are categorized by their happy endings and familiar plotlines, but they often focus on the main characters’ personal growth, detailing the obstacles that must be overcome in order to achieve the archetypal happy ending. Like Bridget and Rhys in Twisted Games, most contemporary romance heroines and heroes are flawed but often help each other to overcome the barriers that conspire to keep them apart.

Just as contemporary romance novels rely on familiar plot patterns, they also often involve well-worn tropes such as enemies-to-lovers relationships, marriage-of-convenience plotlines, and small-town settings. Twisted Games uses many tropes that are typical of contemporary romance novels, such as the office romance storyline, in which people who work with one another fall in love despite the rules that forbid it. Forced proximity is another common plot device used in Twisted Games, occurring whenever characters like Bridget and Rhys are forced to be physically close despite their desire to avoid becoming romantically involved. Relationships between bodyguards and their clients are also fairly common in contemporary romance novels and can be found in other books like Katherine Center’s The Bodyguard or Sarah Adams’s Practice Makes Perfect, along with popular films and television series such as the 1992 film, The Bodyguard. Rather than shying away from these common tropes, Huang leans into them to show the growing relationship between Bridget and Rhys and the complications they must face.