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A review by iam
Bride by Ali Hazelwood
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.5
A fun paranormal romance with a sassy protagonist, a heavy focus on friendship, but unfortunately a lack of worlbuilding.
Content warnings include: drugging, discrimination, segregation, hostage situations, kidnapping, poisoning, sex on-page.
This author has been quite hyped, so I wanted to give one of her books a go, and since I love paranormal romance I picked this one. I also heard that this is the gateway for omegaverse into the mainstream so I had to give it a go for that alone - and right of the bat, this is nowhere near or even close to omegaverse, so don't go in expecting that. The werewolf pack has an Alpha, but that's it.
I liked that the main motivation for Misery, the proagonist, was to find her best friend after her disappearance. Always love such a focus and even priorisation of friendship, especially in a romance book! This led to a mystery subplot, though to be honest, the mystery wasn't so much solved as was just suddenly revealed with the entire solution towards the final climax. I did not mind this much, and had a good time both with the overall plot and the final reveal.
Reading from Misery's POV was very fun. She is quite sassy, and both her narration as well as her interactions with others were feisty and fun - though it sometimes veered a bit too much into overly-comical, almost sitcom overdrawn joke/situation territory for me, or into the "omg I'm so quirkyyy" stereotype. But it always got the curve to not be too much for me, and I overall really enjoyed reading her voice and her take on situations.
Unfortunately, the rest of the cast lacked depth. Lowe, the love interest, aside, there are so many werwolf characters, but none of them really get a personality, and when they do they are mostly reduced to "older caregiver with sad eyes", "silly adoreably annoying child" or "nervous nerdy IT guy". I still enjoyed these characters, but there really wasn't much to them. The few that DID have more depth did not get the attention they deserved, which in this genre may mean they will be getting their own book, but I have no clue if that's something this author does?
Another thing that lacked depth, and this is what I noticed the most, was the worldbuilding. It kind of pretended it was there, but you only had to scratch the surface to see the cracks. Some of this is explained away by Misery being "bad at being a vamypre" due to having grown up in human territory (due to being what basically amounts to a political hostage). But even with that, there are soooo many times where the lack of thought put into the detailed was obvious. At one point it is heavily implied werewolves do not have the same organs as humans (a werewolf gets confused about where gallbladder/liver/kidneys are located on humans and then makes a comment about not getting human anatomy??) which is then never mentioned again.
There is also a long conversation and (anatomical) sexual compatability between werewolves and other species.... which was a lovely conversation and I adored it was there as the situation is fun, except it amount to nothing and bordered on nonsensical, both because the werewolf for some reason refused to just open his mouth and say what was different about him, and because they are very much compatible anyways (and I am genuinely confused as to why he thought they wouldn't be, anyway? Is this implying that AFAB werwolves have different reproductive organs than humans or vampyres??? Who the fuck knows, certainly not the author).
Lastly, to comment on the romance itself... it was lukewarm at best. Make no mistake, I did enjoy these characters together, and it read very well, it was enjoyable to read about them being wary at first and warming up to each other. But to be quite honest, there wasn't much passion or spark there. This was definitely a case of "ok but what do these charactes actually have to talk about when there isn't an external reason making them work together?". Here the whole Mate subplot (basically fated mates/soulmates/love at first sight) really worked against the integrity of the story here.
Despite all this critique, this was still fun to read and I had a good time with it. It felt lighthearted and entertaining, I just enjoy these paranormal aspects too much to not be somewhat wistful over what could have been. The book made such a huge deal out of how incompatible humans, vampyres and werwolves are in all aspects, including culturally and anatomically, but that amounted to nothing and just straight up wasn't true in many cases.
Content warnings include: drugging, discrimination, segregation, hostage situations, kidnapping, poisoning, sex on-page.
This author has been quite hyped, so I wanted to give one of her books a go, and since I love paranormal romance I picked this one. I also heard that this is the gateway for omegaverse into the mainstream so I had to give it a go for that alone - and right of the bat, this is nowhere near or even close to omegaverse, so don't go in expecting that. The werewolf pack has an Alpha, but that's it.
I liked that the main motivation for Misery, the proagonist, was to find her best friend after her disappearance. Always love such a focus and even priorisation of friendship, especially in a romance book! This led to a mystery subplot, though to be honest, the mystery wasn't so much solved as was just suddenly revealed with the entire solution towards the final climax. I did not mind this much, and had a good time both with the overall plot and the final reveal.
Reading from Misery's POV was very fun. She is quite sassy, and both her narration as well as her interactions with others were feisty and fun - though it sometimes veered a bit too much into overly-comical, almost sitcom overdrawn joke/situation territory for me, or into the "omg I'm so quirkyyy" stereotype. But it always got the curve to not be too much for me, and I overall really enjoyed reading her voice and her take on situations.
Unfortunately, the rest of the cast lacked depth. Lowe, the love interest, aside, there are so many werwolf characters, but none of them really get a personality, and when they do they are mostly reduced to "older caregiver with sad eyes", "silly adoreably annoying child" or "nervous nerdy IT guy". I still enjoyed these characters, but there really wasn't much to them. The few that DID have more depth did not get the attention they deserved, which in this genre may mean they will be getting their own book, but I have no clue if that's something this author does?
Another thing that lacked depth, and this is what I noticed the most, was the worldbuilding. It kind of pretended it was there, but you only had to scratch the surface to see the cracks. Some of this is explained away by Misery being "bad at being a vamypre" due to having grown up in human territory (due to being what basically amounts to a political hostage). But even with that, there are soooo many times where the lack of thought put into the detailed was obvious. At one point it is heavily implied werewolves do not have the same organs as humans (a werewolf gets confused about where gallbladder/liver/kidneys are located on humans and then makes a comment about not getting human anatomy??) which is then never mentioned again.
There is also a long conversation and (anatomical) sexual compatability between werewolves and other species.... which was a lovely conversation and I adored it was there as the situation is fun, except it amount to nothing and bordered on nonsensical, both because the werewolf for some reason refused to just open his mouth and say what was different about him, and because they are very much compatible anyways (and I am genuinely confused as to why he thought they wouldn't be, anyway? Is this implying that AFAB werwolves have different reproductive organs than humans or vampyres??? Who the fuck knows, certainly not the author).
Lastly, to comment on the romance itself... it was lukewarm at best. Make no mistake, I did enjoy these characters together, and it read very well, it was enjoyable to read about them being wary at first and warming up to each other. But to be quite honest, there wasn't much passion or spark there. This was definitely a case of "ok but what do these charactes actually have to talk about when there isn't an external reason making them work together?". Here the whole Mate subplot (basically fated mates/soulmates/love at first sight) really worked against the integrity of the story here.
Despite all this critique, this was still fun to read and I had a good time with it. It felt lighthearted and entertaining, I just enjoy these paranormal aspects too much to not be somewhat wistful over what could have been. The book made such a huge deal out of how incompatible humans, vampyres and werwolves are in all aspects, including culturally and anatomically, but that amounted to nothing and just straight up wasn't true in many cases.