Bride by Ali Hazelwood – Review

Published: February 6, 2024

Publisher: Berkley

Series: N/A

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Pages: 416 (Kindle)

My Rating: 4 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
A dangerous alliance between a Vampyre bride and an Alpha Werewolf becomes a love deep enough to sink your teeth into in this new paranormal romance from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love, Theoretically and The Love Hypothesis.

Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again…

Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s every movement that he doesn’t trust her. If only he knew how right he was….

Because Misery has her own reasons to agree to this marriage of convenience, reasons that have nothing to do with politics or alliances, and everything to do with the only thing she’s ever cared about. And she is willing to do whatever it takes to get back what’s hers, even if it means a life alone in Were territory…alone with the wolf.

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I’ve largely stayed away from contemporary romance and thus haven’t read Ali Hazelwood until now. Bride is her first foray into the more fantastical romances and I couldn’t wait to check it out. As you may well know by now, I love a good vampire and/or werewolf story and Bride is the story of a vampire (vampyre in this work) woman being married off to the new alpha werewolf. Classic forbidden romance themes, much like Romeo and Juliet, but no one badly faked their death in Bride.

Misery Lark is used to being traded away for the sake of an alliance. First, she was sent to live with the humans as a child and now, as an adult, to the werewolves. While she may have agreed to being the bride to the werewolf alpha, she did it solely because her dearest and only friend has just gone missing and she has reason to believe Serena was looking into Misery’s soon to be husband, Lowe Moreland. She would do anything to save Serena, even if that meant walking into the den of the enemy to find her.

Misery expects hostility, and she certainly gets it from some of the wolves, but she’s surprised to find Ana, Lowe’s much younger sister, is full of curiosity and a lack of fear for her new vampyre sister-in-law. Ana’s just a kid, but she’s a surprisingly important piece on the political playing field for numerous reasons. And actually, the amount of species politics in this book was both surprising and fascinating. I enjoyed that the plot wasn’t entirely romance centered because it made the romantic moments more exciting when they did happen! The ending was satisfying and definitely had some action (of the non-romantic kind) and plenty of tense moments that kept me turning pages.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read with a decent amount of spice, balanced out by a solid plot that could easily stand on its own. Instead of Lowe having his own POV chapters, each chapter started with a somewhat contextless sentence that revealed a bit of what he was feeling. It was kind of fun puzzling out how they fit with Misery’s point of view and then even more fun when the quotes became a little more obvious. Bride was a great story and I would definitely consider checking out some of Ali Hazelwood’s contemporary romance in the future.