Recently I’ve read and enjoyed Check & mate by Ali Hazelwood, which was a real surprise after not liking her work before. This reading experience made me exited for Bride, a vampire/werewolff romance. I haven’t read that kind of book since the Twilight saga back in the early 2010s, so this was kind of nostalgic. Did I like it otherwise?

About the book

Bride by Ali Hazelwood
Published by Berkley on February 6, 2024
Pages: 416
ISBN: 9780593550403
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Romantasy

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

Expectations

This book already gained a lot of hype before its release and ARC readers have been quite positive about it. Or at least, the reviews I’ve read on my fellow blogger’s blogs were all positive. This fueled my excitement even more. Paranormal romance feels quite nostalgic to me and I hoped to get transported back to the good old Twilight days in my final year of high school. I also expected to enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed Check & Mate. Unfortunately, it turnt out I was having a tough time with this one.

Characters

The main reason why I didn’t really like this book were the main characters. I didn’t like both Misery and Lowe. Actually, who names their characters like that?! Besides their awful names, they also were poorly written. Characters are the biggest pillar in romance novels and therefore they have to be written well in order to make a novel within that category likeable. These two were not, because they lack personality to me. They stay on the surface and we barely get to know their feelings, motives et cetera. Therefore, it’s hard to connect to them and feel the chemistry which is also very important for a romance book. The excecution of the characters was no better for the side ones.

Writing

The writing was fine, not bad but not great either. In fact, it was very generic. I had a tough time getting into this book and the writing didn’t provide much help in it. It took me till almost halfway into the story that I realized the first few sentences of each chapter are told from Lowe’s POV while the rest is from Misery’s POV. This confused me a lot to be honest.

Plot

The plot itself was no better. It is quite generic and stays on the surface as well. There’s a romance aspect and a mystery aspect, but I just didn’t care for either. I was confused a lot and had a difficult time understanding the narrative. I wasn’t aware of the mystery part at first, that says a lot right? Even when the story was picking up a bit, I still zoned out and didn’t get intrigued by it. It was just all so so for me.

Final thoughts

I was hoping that after reading Check & Mate, I was liking books by Ali Hazelwood. Unfortunately, that is not the case for Bride. The characters lack personality and therefore there’s no chemistry which is necessary in a romance. Also, the writing confused me a lot and the story was not investing to me. I was excited to dive into this book, but felt really disappointed after finishing it.