I said I would be back with another Ali Hazelwood book review, and here it is! And for this one. Ali Hazelwood tried something new.

Bride is a paranormal romance set in a world where vampyres and werewolves are real, and in this corner of the world, they are not fans of each other. The humans are not particularly fond of them either, though there is a tentative peace between humans and vampyres. That peace is due to the collateral, a trade of one human child for one vampyre child to be raised in the other’s territory until they reach the age of eighteen. Misery Lark has always been collateral. Even now, years after she was returned by the humans and went back to make her life away from the politics of the vampyre realm, her father ropes her back in to act as collateral with the werewolves. By marrying their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, Misery believes she was ensuring another year of peace for the people, not that she truly cared. She had her own reasons for agreeing to the match.

As much as I love Ali Hazelwood, having already waxed poetic about that love in my previous review for Love, Theoretically, I was not sure what to expect from her new direction. This book has nothing to do with women in STEM like all her others, although her main character has a penchant for using large, complicated words.

This book had a well thought out political and magic system that weaved through the story to allow readers to discover its secrets more naturally. It’s no high-brow fantasy masterpiece by any means, but it works for a paranormal romance. The romance plot allowed for the author to up the stakes to some degree, something those who have read Love on the Brain know she seems to enjoy doing.

Overall, this story is the work of someone who enjoys writing romance for the sheer fun of it and happens to do it well. Definitely an entertaining story, while not quite my favorite of her works to date.