Werewolves and Vampyres and Predictable Plot Lines, oh my!
The Lukewarm PNR in Ali Hazelwood’s Bride
Tags: #AliHazelwood #PNR #IsitE2L #IsitRomance #Isitworthit #RomanceNovel #BookReview #BookEquivalentofJunkFood #Bride #Consent
*slight spoilers ahead, maybe*
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we’ve got a review of Ali Hazelwood’s new paranormal romance, Bride (2024). The book is marketed as an enemies-to-lovers, contract marriage romance, but is it? The book is written from the first person perspective of the main female character, Misery, which yes, is an awful name for a character. Accepting an arranged marriage to the Alpha of the Werewolves, Misery is headed into enemy territory, as she is a Vampyre. With a Y. She’s got her own reasons, and they are neither super surprising nor particularly convincing, but the book is a decent read if you’ve got a few hours. It’s not terribly groundbreaking in any sense, the plot is predictable from the prologue and the characters are generic and underdeveloped, just like the world they live in. It’s not a challenging read, and there are some “spicy” scenes that are kind of shoved into the second half of the book, but it is not the worst thing we’ve read.
So jumping right into things:
Not The Good, Not The Bad, Not The Ugly
The main character, Misery, and her best friend, Serena, are reunited near the end of the book. This is a major spoiler, sorry, but it was the most obvious of the options the author could have gone with. There are some secrets that come to light and although besties were keeping secrets, they talk about it like adults and move on quickly without getting angst-y. Thankfully, Hazelwood did not subject us to that. It was cotton candy fluff like the rest of the book.
For being advertised as an enemies-to-lovers romance, there was little conflict between the main cast. Misery and her main man Lowe pretty much either avoided each other in person or had stilted conversations for most of the book. Communication was not good, but they also weren’t trying to kill each other, and really Misery had a pretty good time with the werewolves.
The book was easy to read, despite a few questionably real words – what is a ‘sharkle’? – and the spelling of vampyre. It’s about 400 pages or 13 hours of listening and it’s easy to jump back in and understand what’s going on even if you skip some. If you like Hazelwood’s writing, it seems like this is another very similar book to all her other romance novels.
There was about a chapter or two of drama and mild conflict. It was not that dramatic and by the time the big bad was revealed, we didn’t particularly care about the plot anymore. The evil speech was on the long side, but the resolution was quick and efficient. The biggest source of conflict came from a lack of communication skills between Misery and Lowe, that one conversation cleared up pretty nicely.
Werewolf Ugly
Despite being marketed as an enemies-to-lover romance novel, the relationship between the main protagonists was more of a strangers to married to fuckbuddies to oh-yeah-I-love-you pipeline. Although vampyres and werewolves were allegedly arch nemesis, they neither seemed to be at each other's throats (unless we’re talking about fangs and tongues *wink wink*) nor trying to kill each other in their sleep. The newlyweds were, at best, civil and neutral about each other, and perhaps slightly suspicious.
While easy to read, the plot became painstakingly obvious. The other character’s actions became ways for the author to force Misery and Lowe into situations to develop their relationship, instead of…developing the characters themselves. Without the use of characters turned into plot devices, the not-really-enemies-to-lovers would have simply been two people avoiding each other in a big house.
On the note of plot, most of the book was Misery thinking about what was happening or what she needed to do. It was a lot of tell, but don’t do, and definitely don’t show. And then a character would run in and Misery would react and suddenly the plot was moved along.
To top the plot off, the ‘twists’ were predictable to a T. You can literally skip entire sections and still end up not just calling the turn of events but also their resolutions. It really raises the question why 400 pages were necessary to develop, well, not much of a story.
Upon close inspection, the worldbuilding is a castle held together with scotch tape and dreams. If you think about the reality of the characters, it doesn’t make a ton of sense. Why are the American equivalents of these three species so divided, when in Europe there are rumors of hybrids? Why are these rumors that are so top-secret not found by the TWO hacker characters who regularly look at government secrets throughout the book. Why do vampyres have pointy ears?
And as always, our favorite question: What was the plan here? There are several times this question could be asked. What was Misery’s plan after finding Serena? Run away together? What was Lowe’s plan to deal with his obvious feelings for Misery? If he was going to let her go after their year-long marriage ended, what was he going to do when she inevitably just moved back over into Human territory five minutes away? What was Misery’s plan when she started a relationship with Lowe, knowing that their marriage was a temporary alliance? We know this is a bunch of questions. We want answers. Show your work.
One Flew Over The Vampyre Nest
There was a nice drawn out conversation about consent before Lowe started licking all over Misery’s neck on the airplane. Conversations about consent are always good and appreciated, particularly in a world where non-consensual encounters are often romanticized (Kitzinger, 2009; Lumsden & Morgan, 2017). That is all.
Misery’s brother, Owen, offers up their father’s seat on the ruling Vampyre council. While it doesn’t make sense that she would want to live with the people that assaulted her for sacrificing herself as a hostage not once, but twice, it was nice that Owen offered. He did say he wouldn’t be happy about it, but the offer was presented. No one knows why, probably Hazelwood doesn’t know why, but it’s in there.
When Lowe Met Misery – 2.5 stars
Is this the book to buy your Valentine this year? No, We wouldn’t say so. Is it a good read for a rainy day, or nice background noise for cleaning? Sure. It’s a solid, middle of the pack book. We’ve read worse (like this one here), but there are better books out there. This one could use a second pass.
Sources
Kitzinger, J. (2009). Rape in the Media. In M. Horvath & J. M. Brown (Eds.), Rape: Challenging Contemporary Thinking. (pp. 74–98). Willan.
Lumsden, K., & Morgan, H. (2017). Media framing of trolling and online abuse: silencing strategies, symbolic violence, and victim blaming. Feminist Media Studies, 1–15.
Image Credit
Hazewood, A. [alihazelwood] (2023). “At last, my 🐺🪢🩸era is here. BRIDE (2/6/24)” 28 June, https://www.instagram.com/p/CuCWKkCrtvA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link