living for sarcasm and sunsets

So, how was it?

6.5/10, wrap it up

Okay, and now jokes aside. Generally, the book was fine. I bought Bride accidentally during a trip around Europe mostly to have something to do in the bus while driving from Dresden to Prague to Kyiv, so I didn't have any expectations or background knowledge about Bride except for my bf telling me about it shortly, mentioning "that new vampire book by Ali Hazelwood".

Story

The book starts with a very dramatic wedding scene between out two main characters, the high-rank vampyre Misery and the were Alpha Lowe Moreland. The tension gradually lowers as the story progresses resolving in a happy end for the couple in love. There are some hot and romantic moments, some are forsed by external events, some are more genuine and hurt/comfort. The main tropes are: forced marriage, fake/pretend relationships, soulmates, omegaverse elements.

Style

Gotta say it's my first experience with Ali Hazelwood. I've heard much about her, however, never really wanted to touch upon the creations of an author who's reputation is "that girl who published a Reylo fanfic". That's actually the reason itself cause I read fanfiction more often than published books. When I look for a published book I actually expect it to be something bigger that a typical trope-driven story. Fanfiction covers this need perfectly.

Well, this was not the case for Bride. This book, being pretty original, feels absolutely like a romantic fanfic you've read a thousand times. I guess that is the core of Ali Hazelwood's style: it's light-hearted, quick to resolve, low-stake, with quirky humour and ironically archetypical characters. If you're looking for some serious drama, losses or emotional traumas —  this is not the choice for you. Also it's written in the first person and that itself is a red flag to some people me included. I made an exclusion this time cause the MC was fine.

Characters

The whole book mostly holds on the character of our main heroine — Misery Lark. She's self-critical, witty, has a good sense of self-preservation and is quite rational — or at least tries to be so, because eventually her empathy and emotions take over. This is just the bit needed for the character to develop and the plot to move. I liked Misery's internal conflict where she's trying her best to be rational and cold and think of her life as a business matter but fails at some point because she was only fooling herself. Her real conflict is that Misery has been alone for most of her life and therefore is afraid of building durable relationships. Of course she collapses when meeting him — Lowe Moreland.

There are a few things you catch about him right away: Lowe is vEry biG and muscular because he's the Alpha ofc, he's the perfect stoic hero, solid and reliable outside, but tired to be strong inside (something Misery magically feels just by looking at him even though they've met like two days ago). Overall Lowe is fine, a golden retriever who's desperately pretending to be a wolf and who is willing to sacrifice himself for the safety of his pack. He accepts Misery as part of his pack/family right away and stays true to the very end.

This leads to one of the biggest problems with Bride for me: it lacks conflict. I mean, there is an external political vampires vs werewolves conflict and there's a personal conflict between Misery and Lowe but both doesn't really matter. The personal conflict feels made-up and exists just for the sake of some cheap short drama that comes up and resolves literally in a few last chapters.

Other character honourable mentions: Lowe's little sister Ana (nice little thing) and Serena Paris, Misery's human best friend absent for the most part of the story (she's a nice touch to the story, but serves more as a plot device for Misery's conflicts and to create some mystery rather than as a supporting character).

Worldbuilding and Lore

Now it's time to talk about the universe of Bride. It takes a more modern approach to the classic vampire-werewolf rivalry. Both of these biological species (called vampyres and weres) live in separated parts of the City somewhere in the southern east (might be other part, don't remember) of the USA alongside people. Humans know about vampyres and weres but they mostly don't contact anyhow apart from general political agreements between the Alpha of the Weres, the main councilman of the Vampyres (that's Misery's dad btw), and the human Mayor. This creates tension as the three species are constantly at the wage of war. The political part is executed poorly in my opinion, as it gives only general information and all the conclusions we make are the ones the characters talk out loud (we wouldn't be able to come up ourselves due to lacking of info and understanding of the world).

A nicer touch is how the species work. Ali Hazelwood does this simple but efficient thing where she takes ordinary human things and makes them foreign, strange and different for vampyres or weres. For example, vampyres drink only blood and don't eat human food because they simply are unable to chew and digest solid foods, only liquid ones. Therefore Misery not only confuses the names of foods, but also doesn't get the concept of eating for pleasure (not for survival). These little details are what makes this vampyre-were lore alive, original, interesting and believable.

Spice

And of course we have to talk about weres. I could continue analyzing were lore in the previous section, but the truth is all quirks of were biology and behaviour are only multiple reasons to justify or initiate closeness, romantic, and, mainly, sex scenes. I was lucky to not be familiar with omegaverse tropes before reading, however, when i realized them it was too late. If you're a sucker for weird licking written in a surprisingly intimate way, for possessive scents and, god help me, knots, the spice in this book is for you. Overall there's a course of quite predictable scenes between Lowe and Misery starting with forced proximity and marking by licks and bites, continued with Misery feeding on Lowe despite all vampyre rules and them kissing, having an almost-smut-but-we-can't-be-together scene right before the finale and an explicit two-page resolution in the end.

Conclusion

6.5/10 goes for:

minus one point for the omegaverse tropes i wasn't ready for

minus one for the lack of conflict and depth to the worldbuilding

minus 0.5 for the fact that I got the main mystery of the book somewhere in the middle of it

minus one for the fact that you expect a vampire romance but you ultimately get a werewolf one with only subtle mentions of MC being a vampire (and ironically sucking at being one).

All the points given are for:

an interesting world and lore with nice homages to modern supernatural classics (I'm speaking about Twilight, Teen Wolf and Vampire Diaries ofc)

nice female lead, not too stereotypical and aware of herself in a good way

the story being almost a parody of itself with comments like "of course the Alpha is big and strong, what did you expect"

villain father figures (classic)

the quick and easy flow of the book, dynamic and light-hearted, with no major trigger moments and mostly focused on romance, because at it's core it's a romance story, not a mystery and not a paranormal world exploration or a commentary on racial/species discrimination.