Thanks to @penguinrandomhouse for providing me with a finished copy in exchange for an honest review
✩🐺🪢Review:
Hazelwood’s paranormal debut is addictive and all-consuming!
Bride follows Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman, who agrees to uphold a Vampyre-Werewolf alliance by marrying Alpha Lowe Moreland after discovering that her future husband may be linked to her missing friend.
It was really fun to see Hazelwood branch out into the paranormal romance genre! I enjoyed her world-building and thought the history surrounding Vampyres, Werewolf, and human relations was very digestible.
I love how Hazelwood incorporated the mystery of Serena’s disappearance into the storyline. The breadcrumbs sprinkled throughout paired with the novel’s paranormal elements kept me fully engaged and on my toes.
While “Bride” is quintessential Ali Hazelwood with women in STEM, a big male love interest, galaxy apparel, and palpable love for cats, I think that Misery as a female protagonist ultimately sets this book apart from her contemporary romance novels. I found myself laughing out loud at Misery’s sense of humor and really admired her strength and perseverance. Despite all she goes through having been cast out from Vampyre society, she still remains inherently kind and is fiercely protective of her found family.
Lowe and Misery’s development as a couple is well-paced and her slowest burning romance yet! It takes a while for the characters to give into their attraction to each other given that they are supposed to be mortal enemies, but once they do, Hazelwood delivers on the spice! I couldn’t get enough of the caretaking while injured and “that’s my wife” moments as well as the snippets of Lowe’s internal thoughts at the beginning of each chapter!
This book ends with the potential for a sequel and I hope she’ll move forward with it full steam ahead!
Cross-posted to: Instagram | Amazon | Goodreads | StoryGraph
you’re one of the first oc blogs i followed when i joined the community and i absolutely love seeing all your content and learning more about your ocs! nevaeh was the first oc of yours i saw, so of course i had to make something for her!
I did not think anything could top “The Love Hypothesis” until I read “Love, Theoretically”!
Theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway wants nothing more than to land her dream job at MIT so she can leave her adjunct teaching position and fake girlfriend gig behind her. The only problem? Jack Smith—the older brother of her favorite client and the experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career—sits on the hiring committee.
I LOVED this book because I personally connected with Elsie like no other Ali Hazelwood heroine before her. One of Elsie’s main inner conflicts in the book is her struggle to show those closest to her who she really is. Instead, she embodies different versions of herself to please others so she doesn’t feel the sting of rejection if something goes wrong. As someone with people pleasing tendencies, I have never felt so understood!
I also really loved Hazelwood’s incorporation of the fake relationship trope in this book. Having already written about a fake relationship between her FMC and MMC in “The Love Hypothesis,” I appreciated how Hazelwood shakes things up in this novel by having Elsie fake date her love interest’s brother! This was new and exciting for me to read about and also nicely contributed to the tension between Elsie and Jack in the book.
Elsie and Jack’s romance is absolute perfection in this book! Their progression from rivals to lovers is very natural and I thought it was very clever of Hazelwood to set their rivalry “against the backdrop of academic politics” (as she puts in her author’s note). I was not aware of the feud between theoretical and experimental physicists, so I found “Love, Theoretically” informative as a result.
Cross-posted to: Instagram | Amazon | Goodreads | StoryGraph
You might be thinking 'Poppy, this seems familiar'. And it is! It's a re-make of the first thing I ever made you, and funnily enough, my first gifset. I do have something else for you, which I'll post on your birthday! Hope you like this!!!