Publisher: Del Rey
Page Count: 396
Release Date: February 6th, 2024
Series: BRIDE, Book 1
Rating: 3/5 Stars – Liked It
As the daughter of a member of the Vampire Council, Misery Larke is no stranger to being used as a political pawn. As a child, she spent years as the Collateral, a hostage living with humans to ensure the terms of the human-vampire treaty were kept. So she’s hardly surprised when her father expects her to take part in a political marriage with the Alpha of the nearby Were pack, a marriage that will finally (hopefully) put an end to violence between vampires and weres. But Misery doesn’t agree out of the goodness of her heart. Her human friend Serena has gone missing, and the only clue leading to her whereabouts points directly at the Alpha himself. Misery will do whatever it takes to find her friend – even if it puts the alliance at risk.
BRIDE is a perfectly fine contemporary fantasy romance. I know that’s damning with faint praise, but while it’s not a bad book, it’s not a great one either. It gets a little too bogged down in minutiae and doesn’t spend enough time on the relationship building for my taste. There seem to be endless conversations discussing Were rituals and hierarchies, using Misery’s childhood spent amongst humans to explain her ignorance regarding supernatural affairs. Now to be fair, I’m no stranger to urban fantasy (though this my first Omegaverse style novel), so I didn’t need the hand holding for most of what it explained. This being Ali Hazelwood’s first supernatural romance, however, it may be that her contemporary romance fans who have followed her on her next writing adventure are not as well versed in these lore bits as I was, and would welcome all of these explanations.
On the other hand, there were times when I genuinely didn’t know how much the author expected me to guess about what was going on in the subtext. Romance is a weird genre in that it is often the antithesis of no-spoiler culture; its authors rely on their audiences to know the tropes of the genre and how the story will likely play out based on those tropes. We all know a Happily Ever After is in the cards, so we sit back and enjoy the ride.
So what to do, then, when Misery spends most of the book convinced that her Were husband Lowe hates her, when many of us know what’s really going on? For me, I found it frustrating (miscommunication tropes ahoy), while others may just accept this as a natural part of the journey. But I wasn’t clear if Hazelwood intended a surprise reveal of what was really going on, or if we were all supposed to be in on the subtext.
(It also didn’t help that there was a third act breakup that was undone so quickly I had whiplash. I genuinely did not understand why it was thrown in there.)
That does feel like a lot of negatives, but I’ll stress again that I did not hate BRIDE. I think overall the romance is fine, the mystery is fine, the plot is fine. While it has some tropes I don’t love, that’s personal preference; others may not mind them in the slightest. And as I haven’t read Ali Hazelwood’s contemporary romances, I can’t speak to how much these are in line with her other works and how much you will like BRIDE if you liked THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS. For me, I probably won’t continue with a sequel if there is one, but that’s because for me, it would be hard for me to prioritize this over other things.
Realms of My Mind 