Bride
by Ali Hazelwood
Caution: This blog may contain spoilers!
This blog is for adults, 18+ only. Please be aware of the trigger warnings listed at the bottom of the article.
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Bride. By Ali Hazelwood
Goodreads Score: 4.09
Genre: Romance, Fantasy, Paranormal, Adult
Spice level: 2/5
My Overall Rating: 2/5
“Dark” spectrum: 1/10
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.
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 over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she 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.”
My Review:
Woof, y’all. This one was hard to get through. I really really wanted to like it. I was looking forward to a dark romance with lots of spice, after reading a lot of other genres recently, and I thought this would be the perfect book to get me back into my dark romance era. I was wrong. So, unfortunately, today’s blog is basically a roast of this book. I will list all the reasons to you, dear reader, why I did NOT like Bride.
Our main characters: Misery and Lowe
Reason #1: No (barely any) Spice! :(
There is light sexual tension in the first half of the book but nothing sexy even happens until after the 1/2 way point. I am NOT reading this book for the plot, Ali. And there aren’t even any trigger warnings! And the sex that happens? 98% of it is like normal “vanilla” sex… and the other 2%? Well, buckle your seatbelts folks because if you don’t want to think about dog penises then this is not the book for you.
Our love interest in the book - Lowe (side note: hate that name)- is a Were ( like werewolf) who is arranged to marry our protagonist Misery, a Vampyre, a very controversial decision made in order to unite and maintain peace among these two races. The classic Forced Proximity Trope, which I do actually like. Anyway, back to the dog penises… when they FINALLY have sex Lowe is scared that he is going to hurt Misery because of the Knot- a swelling at the base of his penis that keeps it inside of her vagina. Yes, folks, exactly like what happens with dogs. So, I had a REALLY hard time not imaging his penis was essentially… a red rocket. Barf.
So idk.. is that spicy? Not for me. However, there is a lot of biting and marking that happens in these sexy scenes so, it does have that going for it.
Reason #2: The writing!
I wasn’t the biggest fan of The Love Hypothesis, so I should have known to enter in with lower expectations. But, I was disappointed, y’all. I mean, book-tok hyped this book up so much. And over 4 stars on goodreads?! What am I missing? I found that there was a total lack of complexity of the characters. There weren’t any real depth beyond what you automatically saw from the start with our main characters. So if you are going to make me read more than half of this book without any spice, it needs to be worth it with an intriguing plot or characters.
Also, this book did not feel like a paranormal romance. Like, yes it technically was since there are Vampires and Werewolves but, the paranormal part felt so irrelevant. There are some plot development points where their “heightened senses” progressed the story line. But, I don’t know how to explain it. It just felt more like a contemporary romance that happened to be about vampires and werewolves than a true paranormal romance.
Reason #3: The main character. Misery.
For someone who is supposedly so smart, she is SO DUMB. Without going too much into Reason #4, there are many moments where, despite many many logical clues, Misery seems to disbelieve that anyone could like her, especially Lowe, and usually assumes the worst of people and does not ask questions.
I found her unrelatable and annoying. One of her biggest personality characteristics is that she is sarcastic and irreverent. Like we get it, she’s not like other vampires and she doesn’t care about what normal vampires care about. yawn.
Reason #4: The miscommunication trope
I HATE this trope. People need to ask questions. COMMUNICATE! This whole book circles around the fact that Misery just seems to believe that Lowe hates her and that informs every single interaction she has with him until she ‘gets to know him and warms to him over time’ which would be fine except the whole time he is nice and warm and accommodating and she just refuses to see it.
I would not recommend this book.
But, if you enjoyed me shit talking this book, or if you wanna disagree with me, comment below!
Thanks for reading, y’all!
Love, Jilly
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“You know what its purpose is?”
I may know nothing about Were biology, but I’m not stupid, or naive. “Yes.”
“Say it.”
This is simultaneously mortifying and the most erotic experience of my entire life. “To keep it inside.”
