stress_reader 's review for:

The Weaver Bride by Lydia Gregovic

4.5

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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💖🔍🧵👰🏼‍♀️The Weaver Bride ARC Review 👰🏼‍♀️🧵🔍💖

⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

Spoiler Free

"For girls with my particular gift, fate was a narrow and unwinding road; either we wed and enter the supervision of our Weaver husbands until the inevitable fading of our magic, or the cloisters would look after us instead."

A thief. A Weaver's son. A deadly game of marriage and murder. As a Silkwitch, Lovette has to either marry a Weaver, or be away in the cloisters forever. She'd rather risk everything, including her life, than be sent to the cloisters.

"I’d attempted to rob the only living child of one of the most powerful men in the entirety of Balmoore, had tried to lift his watch fob, as if he were a common rake I could swindle. Lovett, you absolute fool."

💭 I had such a great time reading this story, and loved most parts. 

That ending! Part of me wants to hate the ending, but I feel like it was inevitable and is the way it has to go. It does end in a way that left me desparate for book 2 (please let there be a book 2). Not exactly a cliffhanger, but also not not a cliffhanger. 😂 It leaves you clamoring for more, to know how everything turns out. 

📖 The Weaver Bride spins a tale in which every Silkwitch must wed a Weaver by their 21st birthday - or be forever locked away in the cloisters. Skilled at stealing from the wealthy, Lovette doesn't have family or status to help her find a Weaver husband in this Regency Era fantasy/murder mystery/romance. 

When she unknowingly steals from a Weaver's son, she expects to be arrested. Instead, he overs her an alliance: compete in the Vainglory (the deadly marriage competition) as a way to uncover his sister's murderer. And maybe she can also find herself a Weaver husband while there, this avoiding the cloisters for good. 

Lovette Tamerlane has a special skill that allows her to open any door, but some secrets are meant to stay locked away. 

"I did not realize then how tragedy could change a person. How it worked like rot on a peach, softening the exterior and hardening the core."

✍🏼 Lush, rich descriptions with thoughtful word choices. I found it to read smoothly and easily. 

If you don't enjoy a lot of figurative language in your books, you may not enjoy this as much. Ripe with analogies, metaphors, and similes, the writing won't be for everyone (though I loved this aspect). 

"I wish him nothing short of great love, for no other weapon can assure equitable agony." —unknown Balmoorish general, speaking of his opponent

⏳The book grabbed me pretty quickly, maybe immediately, and if I could've, I'm not sure i would've put this book down. 

The beginning is a smidge slower to get going, as the groundwork for the magic system and world is being laid. Because I found the world and magic so interesting, it didn't feel slow to me. However, that may not be the case for others. 

"A mandate cleverly disguised as a fantasy."

🗺️ Or is it a fantasy book clevery disguised as a way of opening minds to real life issues women around the world face?

I loved this spin on the Regency Era. It's similar enough that most of us easily have a nice background before starting the book. Then Gregovic spins and weaves it with personality and ambiance making it into a living, breathing atmosphere there's both eerie and beautifully.

The stakes are appropriately high.

🔍 I loved the who done it aspect - it felt like reading a game of Clue and kept me guessing the whole way. Actually, maybe if cross Clue and Nancy Drew, that's somewhat how I felt reading this. 

I haven't read a ton of mystery books in the last few years, so this may be different from how an avid mystery reader would see it. 

“It is curious, isn’t it, how easily we accept the explanations we’ve been given?"

🧩 I found the trials to be exciting and innovative. I've never personally come across trials executed in the same way. 

The opportunity to bind oneself, inseparably, to the most powerful family in the nation. A life of wealth and prosperity, of a ring around one’s finger, like a bullet between the watching eyes of the cloisters.

🔮 This magic system! I find it unique in itself, but what I love most is the symbolism within. Here, females can randomly be born as silkwitches - females whose hair becomes a source of magic when they come of age (hit puberty). Their magical hair has a time limit and the magic runs out in their "midtwenties, when womanhood had swept away the cold ashes of her youth." If they haven't married by the time they turn 21, they forced to go into the cloisters, never to be let out. While the magic is in their hair, it glows and shines ('a woman's hair is her crowning glory'). 

Conversely, Weavers, males who weave said hair into magesilk that's then used to craft magical items, those are only born into Weaver families. 

"... for the vast majority of silkwitches, protecting one’s hair was tantamount to protecting one’s virtue— as well as their future husbands’ investments."

Once a Silkwitch marries a Weaver, "her hair is no longer protected." Instead, it's "harvested to fill her husband's coffers." 

Items retain their magical power even after the death of the Silkwitch whose hair was harvested to make said item. 

Hair is power. Since their hair is woven into magesilk, silkwitch's hair is both a commodity and a source of limited agency. Taking something intimate like a person's hair and using it as a source of enchantment for others is symbolic for exploitation, selfhood, and beauty. 

Each silkwitch has one magical gift, called "Wit." Lovett's Wit gives her the ability to open any door, locked or not, both literal and not. Doors often represent barriers, secrets, and/or power imbalances. Lovett's ability means she can traverse boundaries, social and moral boundaries, for examples. 

Truly I find this to be a genius, noteworthy way of opening these topics for discussion. 

"Until the day we wed, our power was as remote to us as an underground spring; our duty lay in keeping it pure, safeguarding it for our future husbands’ use, but never did we drink from it ourselves."

👥 The MCs are well developed and dimensional. I found their personalities to be interesting and they felt real to me. It looks at the duality of humans, what it means to be good/not good, for example. How we view ourselves and our the others around us view of we're "good," or kind. 

The key here lies in the intent. What motivates our intent, or the intention in our motivation to say or do something. 

There are a fair number of characters, 9 other females competing in the Vainglory. Aside from

when Lovette is speaking directly to the other competitors, she refers to them by first name (speaking to them she refers to them as Miss _last name_. This resulted in me having some difficulty remembering who was who and all. 

L:“If you are going to arrest me, I would prefer you get on with it.”

E: “I am not going to arrest you,” he replied in a level tone. “I simply wish to get to know you.”

L: "You seem to know a great deal about me already.”

E: “Aren’t you going to finish that thought, ‘And yet I, almost nothing about you’? Or are you not curious?”

L: I narrowed my eyes. “Excuse me, sir, I seem to have forgotten my line. Perhaps if you were to hand me a script, I could better comprehend my part in this conversation.”

E: “Clever,” he said quietly. “I thought so back in the lobby, too.”

🎙️ I thoroughly enjoyed the banter in this - it's sharp and witty alternating with painfully raw and vulnerable. My favorite bits of banter risk spoilers, so you get the above as a tiny teaser.

"Confidence extends both ways, dear reader."

💖 I was loving their slow burn, reluctant allies journey that went through the gamut. Up until the declaration, which I'm still just not sure I 100% buy. Even still, the aforementioned gamut their relationship goes through was intoxicatingly fun for me. There's a bit of kind of love triangle going on for just a minute. As someone who typically doesn't enjoy 📐, I was surprised to find this worked for me. Especially considering how it works out. 

📚 If you like: The Selection (Kiera Cass), Servant of Earth (Sarah Hawley), Radiance (Grace Draven), The Hundredth Queen (Emily R. King), or The Rose Bargain (Sasha Peyton Smith) then I think you'd like this. 

Thank you @ Lydia Gregovic @Delacorte Press @RandomHouseChildren's Books and @netgalley for the opportunity to read this eARC. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. 

#theweaverbride #lydiagregovic #netgalley #symbolicmagic