Bride

By: Ali Hazelwood

Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer, Will Damron

Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

#1 Indie Next Pick!

A Hall of Fame LibraryReads pick!

One of People’s Best Books to Read in February

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.

©2024 Ali Hazelwood (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Not your typical Fantasy

Spoilers-
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Deets:
✨Enemies to Lovers
✨Vampires x Werewolves x Humans
✨Single POV, w/Blurbs From the MMC POV

Love:
* The banter is amazing and I’ve always enjoyed Ali Hazelwood’s brand of humor!
* The FMC is feisty and witty! She’s reluctant to caring and it’s fun to see her walls break down! Her humor in this book had me laughing out loud 🧛🏻‍♀️
* The MMC is a classic alpha! Protective, broody, tender and takes care of the FMC in subtle ways. His love at first isn’t loud, it’s quiet and in ways like adjusting his home temperature, adding things to the fridge for her, etc. 🐺
* Fantasy/Paranormal in a modern setting is a lot of fun!!!! It’s a cool twist and it’s nice to relate to the technology and modern references. 🧝🏼‍♀️💻
* If you are a die hard fantasy reader you may not love this book. It strays a lot from the standard fantasy book but it’s still so much fun to read. Give it a chance and go into it expecting it to be a fun mysterious romance read that happens to be between a werewolf and a vampire. I enjoyed it and loved being able to easily pronounce the words in a fantasy book 😂 IYKYK
* The twists in the book were great! Some were predictable but they were still juicy! I would enjoy a second book for the brother of the FMC!

Didn’t Love:
* Personally, I struggled with seeing their “world”. There wasn’t a lot of detail on the land unlike other fantasy books. Im aware this book takes place in a US state where werewolves and vampires live divided by humans. Maybe it’s just me and maybe I missed a detail…. But I wish there was more detail on their “world”. I just feel like I was left with a lot of questions… 🧐
* I’m not opposed to swearing in books, it doesn’t bother me, but for some reason the FMC constantly cursing around and to the 7yo just felt weird to me. It’s also A LOT of cursing in general and it’s really only from the FMC. Seemed a little forced, like the FMC has a daily swear word quota.

Incredible! So glad Ali expanded into the Paranormal 😍

Just when I thought I couldn’t love Ali Hazelwood’s writing any more, she ventured into paranormal romance! A perfect blend of things that are predictable with plot twists you don’t see coming! I truly hope this is the first of many in this beautiful world she’s created!

Easy Read

I hope that there is a sequel soon! Such an easy and entertaining read. It kept my attention and didn’t want to put it down.

The reading is way too emotive

I thought maybe it was just the teenage voice in Check & Mate, but it’s the voice actor. Not a fan of listening to narration that shoves the story down my throat by half shouting most of it, like come on use your indoor voice.

Twighlight Erotica

I am disappointed because I've really like Hazelwood's other books. I am reading this with my daughter and needless to say, we won't be able to talk about half of it.

Wonderful Fantasy Romance!

Wow!!!! I hope we get a sequel (the epilogue makes me believe we will)!! What a refreshing take on supernatural/VampirexWerewolf romance. LOVED IT. Such a wonderful slow burn and it feels way more edited that Hazelwood’s previous work, which is a great thing in my book. My one qualm was that the whole “Misery can’t small yet she alludes to smelling things throughout the novel” confused the hell out of me. Either way, one for the ages (😉)

Hazelwood does it again!

Another amazing story from Ali Hazelwood! So enjoyable, smart, witty, fun, and sexy! Can’t wait to see what she comes up with next! I’m knot going to miss it! 😉

Fantastic

So glad I picked this up. Narrators was fantastic. Can’t wait for the next book.

Really fun slow burn

I loved this book start to finish! The characters have depth and theres a thick plot worth waiting around for the slow burn.

Great Premise but the lore left something to be desired.

Misery has always done what was best for her people including being their collateral to the humans to help keep peace. Now as an adult she is to become the Alpha Were’s bride to help broker peace between the Werewolves and the Vampires. So what if the last time this was attempted it ended in a massacre?

But Misery has too much at stake to back out. Her best friend disappeared investigating something involving her new husband and if he’s the key to getting her back she won’t stop until she succeeds. But having been isolated from her own people her whole life she finds the Weres to be a breath of fresh air even if they severely mistrust her and try to off her. And things get really complicated when she starts to realize she might just really like her husband.

I loved the premise of this book and I was so excited to fall in love with another Ali book but this one fell a little flat for me in some places. I don’t understand why she made the vampires so incredibly weak and useless. I would have loved to see a strong heroine flexing her vamp skills instead of her being a weak nocturnal damsel.

Lowe was also too much for a martyr for me pushing Misery away at all times “for her own good” at the detriment of both of their wellbeing.

All that being said I loved her relationship with her human friend, her relationship with his sister and even the one with her brother. I think she did a great job of establishing these excellent secondary characters and making us fall for them in some cases even more than the main ones. This is definitely a slow burn and I was worried we wouldn’t get any knotting action but she pulled it out at the very end.

She set up for a second book at the end of this one and despite some of the shortcomings in this one I think I’d still be down to read about the next couple because the FMC is anything but a damsel in distress and I’m so here for that.