I must admit, I don’t exactly read at the level I aspire to. My goal for 2025 was to read one book a month, and while I fell majorly short in that regard, there is one book that I just couldn't resist getting my hands on.
I’ve long had New York Times bestselling romance author Ana Huang (King of Wrath, Twisted Games and Twisted Lies) on my radar, first learning about her on #booktok during the pandemic. But with so many books under her belt now, I didn’t want to jump on the Ana Huang train until I was able to start from the beginning. Luckily, you don’t necessarily have to go in the order of her previous books/series to understand her newest novel, The Defender. And when I heard it was a mixture of my two favorite topics, sports and drama, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to read it early and interview Huang herself.
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“It’s definitely a little different from what I usually write. I think my other books tend to be a little bit darker—not dark romance—but they tend to have drama, angst and a high-stakes feel,” she tells me. “I wanted to challenge myself by stepping outside of my comfort zone, and I thought it would be nice to have a change of pace.”
