Twisted Game (Filthy Wicked Psychos)

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I was extremely underwhelmed and disappointed by this being so hyped up on BookTok. So much so, that I’m writing my first GR review because of it. Relationship development: Much progress between Willow and the brothers occurs here and it is so well done. It feels organic and there was no 'how did that happen?' type of moments. Malice made a huge impression on me from the get-go and he's on my top tier H. Ransom and Vic are also no slouches and they all fit with Willow in their own unique way. No complaints. Yeah, you’d think so. But it turns out revenge is a messy business, and when I end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, I royally piss off four brutal, twisted, gorgeous men.

Long story short it reads more like high school. The drama and the way the characters talk does not lend itself to college aged adults. They sound more like they’re 16. You’re right. Maybe you’re not a knight,” I whisper finally. “But maybe… maybe I don’t need a white knight. Maybe I need something darker.” The dark RH genre is filled with over-the-top shenanigans. In some RHs, the author isn't good at getting me to just go with whatever the premise is. In this story, is it ridiculous that Willow is selling her virginity, then gets entangled with these mysterious gangster brothers? Sure! But the way Eva Ashwood writes, I never pause to be like "this is absurd," the way I do with some others. She draws me in and gets me to just go with it.This is an amazing first book for this series and I can’t wait to jump into number two!! Willow is a young college student who has had an extremely rough life and was raised by her adoptive mother. Or shall we say Willow raised her. She is doing anything she can to make ends meet and get through college which puts her in the wrong place at the wrong time. She sees Ransom, Malice, and Victor getting vengeance for their mother’s death. I knewwwww she (trying to keep it spoiler free) was dodgy, it took so long for it to come to fruition I was almost questioning myself but I will say that I pretty knew the ‘twist’ from the moment she came along in that sense.

The characters are all surface level. Maybe one foot deep? Malice is the typical hot head. There’s really nothing more to him, honestly. Victor, Malice’s twin, has OCD that’s mentioned once by Malice very briefly. Victor’s POV mentions his tics but doesn’t elaborate on them at all. And they’re all the stereotypical OCD tics: counting, obsessively cleaning, germ avoidance. Ransom is the golden retriever little brother that they try to shield from the world. He’s arguably the one who fell first and the hardest for Willow. He’s the one who keeps Malice from killing her at the brothel to tie up loose ends. He’s the one who she has sex with first. He’s the sweetest towards her. Plot: Great pacing and a LOT happened here. Willow and the guys had very little chill time, it seems, but oh the down time was hot 👍. That twist at the end too.. man… poor Willow.First of all, I cannot deal with the names of 2/3 of the guys. Ransom and Malice, are you serious? I’m sorry, but I absolutely detest that. I literally cringed every damn time their names came up. I’ll be calling them Ran and Mal from now on. I’m honestly not sure how I feel about the guys besides their names. I really liked Ran at first, but he turned into such a cliché that I kept cringing every time he spoke. Drawing her a bath after their first time, “there’s always room for you”, puke. Mal seems promising, although I’m not completely sure if I like him yet? I do feel like I like him the most out of all of them at this point though. Victor is just… I don’t know, not it. He’s giving me major Saint from Kings of Quarantine vibes, but his OCD behaviour is a bit too much. He does however have the most depth so far because of this behaviour, so that makes me like him a bit – he’s the only one who actually has some character traits besides “bad-ass” or “went to prison” or something like that. Furthermore, it honestly didn’t make any sense for them to know Russian. I’m sure it’ll be important at some point, but there really wasn’t a reason for them to learn it? I don’t know, it just once again feels like something that’s just there to progress the plot or a convenient thing for the dirty talk although Russian isn’t a sexy language at all imo but okay.

Okay it took me a little longer to finish this book than I usually would. But it was mainly because my mind was really cloudy with work stuff, I think. I had some trouble getting through it at the beginning of the book because it felt really slow to me and not much was happening. But my friend told me I had to keep reading so I did. And I'm soooo happy I continued! Because it ended up being amazing 💖 some tropes: criminal/morally gray MMCs, reverse harem, forced proximity, virgin heroine + hero (one of the men) I purposely put off reading this book until the last minute because I knew I would obsess over that cliffhanger (and warning: it's not an easy one, but nowhere near as bad as ROW. Yes, I'm still salty about that. That cliffy almost sent my ass to therapy.🤣) but OMG this was so freaking good!! Willow is a badass, and though she's much softer than the other heroines I've read from this author, she still has such a formidable strength to her that I can't wait to find more about. Plus I have a feeling that a particular someone the guys tried to kill is going to end up being very important to her. The fbi needs to recruit me, ok? These three dangerous brothers will do anything to make sure I keep my mouth shut about what I saw, even if it means stalking my every movement. I’m a loose thread to them—but somehow, I’m becomingmorethan that too.

I actually wish we got more chapters from each of the brothers, because those are always my favourite and I felt like we got just a way higher percentage of Willow's dialogue than the brothers and I found myself getting a little bored with Willow sometimes. She's really sweet and plain but I kind of like my FMC's a tad more badass and mouthy 🫢 But I have a feeling that she will grow as a person after everything she's been through and we'll see her progress in the third book. This is the perfect start to the series, Eva does such a good job at painting a full picture to the story, we slowly start to uncover what’s happened to these characters in their lives leading up to where the book begins, what they’ve been through etc