If Love

About the If Love series

If Love is Ana Huang's earliest romance series and the gentlest corner of her wider shared universe. Told in third person rather than the first-person voice she'd later use for Twisted and Kings of Sin, the four books follow two pairs of friends-turned-lovers whose lives intertwine across Los Angeles and Shanghai: an aspiring interior designer and a jaded ex-athlete studying abroad, then their respective best friends navigating a slower-burn, workplace-adjacent romance of their own. The tone is softer and less explicit than Huang's later work — closed-door to low-heat rather than the open-door intensity of Twisted or Kings of Sin — but the same instincts are already visible: banter-heavy dialogue, emotionally wounded leads, and a belief that grand romantic gestures matter.

Published in rapid succession across 2020, the four books were Huang's breakout after a seven-year gap following her 2015 debut, and they built the readership that would carry Twisted Love to viral success the following year. If Love is not connected to Twisted or Kings of Sin by shared characters, but Huang has described all her romance series as existing in one loose universe, and readers who start here get the through-line of her career: two pairs of opposites, a lot of longing, and endings that earn their happily-ever-afters.