A Twisted Love Story – 2/5 ✩
A Twisted Love Story is about Wes and Ivy, a couple who are a clearly bad for each other, but still can’t seem to stay away from each other. When Ivy calls the police about a stalking incident, the detective on the case sets her sights on Wes. As the book progresses and further crimes ensue, the detective keeps Wes in the forefront of her vision, trying to pin everything she can on him. Meanwhile, Wes and Ivy remain entwined, no matter how bad they know they are for each other.
This was not my favorite novel, but I still wanted to write about it because I think Samantha Downing did a great job crafting her characters.
I thought the premise of the novel was fantastic. I was totally reeled in by the conflicts that were driving Wes and Ivy’s story and I desperately wanted to know the ins and outs of Wes and Ivy’s relationship and what had happened in the past to bring them to this place.
The two of them were in a completely toxic relationship and it was evident that Wes and Ivy shouldn’t have been in a relationship at all. And while I thought this could be interesting to read about, their actions angered me and I didn’t have trust in either of them, which I found hard as a reader.
I also was frustrated by the detective’s actions. Karen spent the entire novel under the impression that Wes was the bad guy and was emotionally abusing Ivy and Karen desperately wanted to help Ivy get out of the relationship. I understood why she felt that way – it was clear their relationship was not healthy and we learned Karen had been in an emotionally abusive relationship herself – but I felt like she letting her own experiences cloud her vision. I felt her actions were coming from too personal a place and she was searching for ways to solve to case in order to implicate Wes, rather than looking at the investigation objectively.
I 100% agree that Wes did NOT treat Ivy the way she was supposed to be treated, but the detective was treating Ivy as an innocent victim which she absolutely was not. Neither Wes nor Ivy were perfect by any stretch of the imagination and they both treated each other terribly. Unless there was something I missed, I personally felt that Ivy was more of a problem than Wes was and I was irritated the entire novel by how Karen was allowing her own past to cloud her vision.
With that being said, I think Samantha Downing is a great writer because she was able to create characters that elicited such a strong reaction in me. While I may not have liked the ins and outs of the story or its characters, I can’t deny that Samantha Downing wrote a compelling story and should be recognized for crafting such strong characters.
Anchored Musings 