King of Pride

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-10

Chapters 11-20

Chapters 21-30

Chapter 31-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Background

Author Context: Ana Huang

Ana Huang originally self-published books on Amazon with her Twisted series. The series consists of four interconnected books, each focusing on a particular couple in the Washington, DC, area. The four female protagonists of the series—Ava Chen, Bridget von Ascheberg, Jules Ambrose, and Stella Alonso—are best friends who fall in love with their respective male love interests—Alex Volkov, Rhys Larsen, Josh Chen, and Christian Harper. Huang’s popularity skyrocketed after her books became popular with the literary cohort of TikTok called “BookTok.” Following her massive success, Huang’s Twisted series (and eventually past and future works) were acquired by Bloom Books and traditionally published in 2022. Huang is a contemporary romance novelist who specializes in the dark romance sub-category. Her books often include morally ambiguous, wealthy male and female protagonists, as well as elements of action, intrigue, and danger and explicit sexual content.

Huang is an Asian American and normalizes diversity in her casts and plots. Vivian Lau from King of Wrath, Kai Young and Isabella Valencia from King of Pride, and Ava and Josh Chen from Twisted Love and Twisted Hate are all Asian Americans with a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. In King of Pride, Huang also pulls from her personal experiences as a writer to inform Isabella’s character and her struggles to finish her novel due to self-criticism and impostor syndrome.

Among Huang’s published works are the If Love series, consisting of If We Ever Meet Again (2020), If the Sun Never Sets (2020), If Love Had a Price (2020), and If We Were Perfect (2020); the Twisted series, consisting of Twisted Love (2021), Twisted Games (2021), Twisted Hate (2022), and Twisted Lies (2022); and the Kings of Sin series, consisting of King of Wrath (2022), King of Pride (2023), King of Greed (2023), and King of Sloth (2024). The Kings of Sin series continues in 2025-2026 with the releases of King of Envy, King of Gluttony, and King of Lust. Huang has also ventured into sports romance with the 2024 release of The Striker.

Series Context: Kings of Sin

Like most of Ana Huang’s novels, the Kings of Sin series exists in the same “world” as her other series and includes brief crossovers with characters and locations from these—specifically Twisted. In King of Pride, Alex Volkov and Ava Chen from Twisted Love run into Kai Young and Isabella Valencia at an art event. Christian Harper—the male love interest from Twisted Lies—also appears in the story briefly to help Kai track down evidence that reveals that Russell Burton has engaged in illegal behaviors to rig the CEO vote for the Young Corporation.

In the Kings of Sin series, Huang’s male love interests each wrestle with one of the seven deadly sins. These deadly sins include wrath, pride, greed, sloth, envy, gluttony, and lust. Following this order, the series will consist of seven novels. Most of Huang’s novels include characters who are billionaires. This places her works in the billionaire romance sub-genre; the main hallmark of this genre is an excessively wealthy love interest (usually male). King of Pride is one of Huang’s lighter romance novels. Though it features some darker content, it does not veer as far into traumatic events, criminal behavior, or violence as other installments in the series.

Huang is well-known for the use of tropes in her romance novels. King of Pride employs the forbidden romance trope to increase the romantic tension between Kai and Isabella. Because this novel precedes the third installment, King of Greed, which follows Dominic and Alessandra Davenport, Huang also incorporates their relationship subtly into the novel to foreshadow the events in the next book. Dominic’s obsession with work is evidenced when Isabella begins working with Alessandra to open up her online shop. Though the women work late hours in Alessandra’s home, Dominic is never there, and Isabella notices the sadness that this has created in Alessandra.