Reviews with content warning for Death - Bride

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

131 reviews

sydcopus's review

adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I LOVED this book -- it was so cutesy and cheesey and perfect. Misery and Lowe's relationship had me kicking my feet the ENTIRE book. I absolutely devoured this book in four days. SO good!

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lindsm94's review

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adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I am a HUGE Ali Hazelwood fan, but this wasn't my fave fantasy or Ali Hazelwood book. I did really enjoy it in the end and I am looking forward to the sequel.

The story starts slow and then picks up, but that is also the nature of world building. It is a bit predictable, but that didn't ruin anything for me, I was looking forward to seeing how things unfolded.

I would recommend!

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percervall's review against another edition

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funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

While I started this out of morbid curiosity because everyone and their dog were talking about it on TikTok, I really, really enjoyed this

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amartin2085's review

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adventurous emotional funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This is my first Ali Hazelwood book, and I understand all the love her books get! This is definitely worth all the hype on TikTok!

The story instantly grabs you in from the 1st chapter, and is filled with action, enemies to lovers, arranged marriage, slow burn, found family, and some of the best banter I've ever read. Misery is an absolute hilarious character with her sarcasm, whit and remarks, which makes for great banter with Lowe. I found myself LOLing out loud multiple times! The chemistry between the two of them from the beginning was intense, and only grew as the story progressed.

This was such a fun, on the edge of your seat read, and Ali now has a new fan of her work!

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mrskc4's review

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dark emotional funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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kendoftheworld's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

As an aroace enby who is sometimes sex-repulsed, I always find myself amused and simultaneously horrified when reading extremely cishet romance novels … but maybe not for the expected reasons.

Things I liked: Serena, Sparkles, and Owen. That Owen’s final speech to their father is basically soft-coded for “I plan to not make America great again, I plan to make America comfortably insignificant again,” which, *finger snaps.* That none of the women in this book are in any sort of competition with each other. That platonic same-sex friendship is maybe the only major plot point. (I don’t consider sex a plot point, but that’s me.)

Things I didn’t: Basically, the main Romance (and specifically Omegaverse) Thing™️ where really good sex is a) the whole point of the book, b) fundamentally transformative, c) what every normal person is built for, and d) where all the meaning and belonging of life is stored up for folks to experience.

As I mentioned, I’m an aroace enby. I will never experience romance or sex the same way as an allosexual, and I have been raised like everyone else to see romance and sex as extremely meaningful—more meaningful than platonic friendship, because the book never climaxes or ends on platonic friendship even if the author considers it important. The book never ends with someone trying to figure out if life is going to ever be as meaningful for them as everyone else, simply because they’re not built to experience love the same way. And in a book where that *exact* question is raised repeatedly, as a result of biological difference, it’s even more heartbreaking for the conclusion to be “I’d totally still love you if you didn’t love me back or experience love the same way—but isn’t it awesome that we do, in the end, feel the same way for each other and were silly silly people for thinking we were biologically incompatible and *didn’t* experience sex in all its mind-blowing fullness in essentially the same way?”

It’d be nice if someone were biologically compelled to really really like me, sexually and/or romantically, because then I could know for sure that life was meaningful and worth continuing for no other reason than that such relationships apparently make us feel it is worth continuing. It’s not Ali Hazelwood’s fault for amplifying this narrative since literally no one else I’ve ever read has managed anything else, but it does feel particularly galling here, perhaps because she *knows* and she wants to *try* at an inclusive romance. And we quite literally pay for romance books to be the way they are.

I’m not saying I hate being me right now, but I do always hate myself at least a little bit for being such a … (I’m laughing at myself here a bit) … misery melon about the whole thing.

I do dream of a world where a misery melon like me can find a meaningful ending in a romance book that doesn’t involve being transformed by mind-blowing sex, though.

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