As someone who grew up loving Twilight, I’ve been living for the renaissance the film series has had in the past few years. I’ve always loved the paranormal theme of ghosts, vampires, and werewolves, and I also appreciate the drama that comes with a love story.
When I found out that Ali Hazelwood, the author of books like Love, Theoretically and The Love Hypothesis, was releasing her paranormal romance novel called Bride, I was ecstatic. All my friends, who are romance novel readers, really enjoy Ali Hazelwood’s books, so I was going into this with high hopes.
For those of us who aren’t surrounded by readers, or at least have never heard of this book, Bride follows the story of a vampire bride named Misery (I know I giggled too) and her werewolf husband, Lowe. Their relationship is completely arranged and done for political reasons because the vampires and werewolves do not like each other… shocker!
The story follows how their relationship blooms in a very tense environment as Misery moves to Lowe’s side of town, which does not take kindly to her at first. Throughout the novel, we see Lowe and Misery go from not being able to stand within six feet of each other, to being friends, to realizing they’re in love with each other.
We also see a mystery element to the book but I won’t spoil that because I think it’s one of the most fun elements of Bride, and I love the payoff of the mystery.
Reception for Bride has been mostly positive online. Readers who are fairly new to the genre of paranormal romance, or another genre called Omegaverse, a very popular literary and fanfiction subgenre, which mainly deals with basic werewolf lore and hierarchy and makes it into a romantic or sexual story (Coleylovesthings on YouTube has an amazing comprehensive video on it if you’re at all curious!) loved the change to what they usually read. Goodreads, the book review platform, has a collective rating of 4.13 stars out of five for Bride.
Some of my favourite reviews are by users such as Ayman, who wrote, “The only dawg in this book was me reading it… in classic Ali Hazelwood fashion I’m served with a quirky female protagonist and [an] overlay muscled man with obsessive tendencies and I am 100% here for it. I’ll always eat it up and bite my nails down to quickly read her books.”
Another user named Heather wrote, “This definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but if you were like me as a child, a teen wolf-loving, AO3 werewolf fanfic reader, this might just speak to your soul [as] it did mine.”
As the certified “weird girl” in my friend groups, meaning I am often compared to Lisa Frankenstein and the lead character from Warm Bodies, I absolutely loved Bride!
It was fun and had an emotional depth to it, and honestly, brought back those rose-coloured glasses I had for things like Twilight, Warm Bodies and Teen Wolf. Misery and Lowe feel like real, human characters with their intentions while not feeling too corny or soap opera-ish.
Side characters like Lowe’s sister, Ana, and Misery’s brother, Owen, bring layers to the story and help bring nuance to it. If you need a new read or are interested in the twilight-adjacent vibes, give Bride a shot!
Bride absolutely satiated my little fanfiction-reader brain with a lot of drama, admittedly cookie-cutter characters with silly names, and honestly, a good premise! If any of these descriptions sounded at all interesting or new to you, give it a read, and don’t hesitate to find my Instagram and talk to me about it, I know my friends have surely heard enough of me.