Book Review: Bride by Ali Hazelwood

youngcreativepress

5 hours ago

Synopsis:

A dangerous alliance between a Vampyre bride and an Alpha werewolf becomes a love deep enough to sink your teeth into in this new paranormal romance from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis.

Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast-again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are she has been called upon to uphold an historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange. Again . . .

Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s every movement that he doesn’t trust her. If only he knew how right he was . . .

Because Misery has her own reasons to agree to this marriage of convenience, reasons that have nothing to do with politics or alliances, and everything to do with the only thing she’s ever cared about. And she is willing to do whatever it takes to get back what’s hers, even if it means a life alone in Were territory . . . alone with the wolf.

Review:

There’s a big part of me that wants to give Bride five stars but the Ali Hazelwood male love interest yearning just wasn’t there for me. I liked the dynamic between Misery and Lowe but he wasn’t completely and pathetically head over heels for her in the way I expected. Yes, he did the whole ‘don’t touch my wife’ trope but he wasn’t a yearner.

Also, the fact that he won’t be open with Misery about what’s going on was driving me insane. You’re already married, it’s not like it’s a fully forbidden relationship. I couldn’t help but feel annoyed at a specific scene in chapter 25. I won’t spoil anything but my god did I hate it.

I’m actually a little disappointed that the Vampyres didn’t have any type of powers. Usually I’d think being a vampire would be cool, yeah you have to drink blood to survive, but at least you’re immortal and have various powers. In Bride they just have to drink blood to survive. No powers other than being able to thrall people (which lets be honest isn’t very exciting), no immortality, they’re pretty much just human. At least the Weres can shift.

The classic Ali Hazelwood humour was in full force with Misery. I do love how funny she makes her female characters. The men are never really funny, they’re just there to be tall and yearn – the women however are hilarious. Two of my favourite quotes from Misery are:

“The birth control shot I was given before coming here was a joke, not just because Lowe and I are as likely to have sex as we are to start a podcast together”
“He’s covered in blood, mostly purple, but then again—so am I. And so is Owen, and everyone else who was in that office during the carnage. When Alex arrived on the scene, his first question to me was whether all the blood was making me hungry. Once we’re back in Were territory, I plan to smear a pancake on the inside of a toilet and ask him the same.”

The dynamic between the vampyres and weres was very interesting, but not one we haven’t seen before.

There was actually a lot more going on with the plot than I thought there would be. I wasn’t expecting so many politics and world dynamics. I thought this would just be a spicy shifter romance. To be honest, there was hardly any spice at all, which I suppose is pretty common for Ali Hazelwood’s books if I really think about it. She only ever has a couple of spicy chapters.

While Bride hasn’t been my favourite Ali Hazelwood book so far, I did really enjoy it. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a book of hers that I’d hate. I’ll definitely be checking out Mate, the sequel to Bride, at some point in the future, but I think my next book of hers will be Deep End – I’ve heard very good things.