Paranormal Romance Bride Marks a Refreshing Swerve for Author Ali Hazelwood

Romance author Ali Hazelwood is primarily known for megapopular STEMinist romances like Love on the Brain and Love, Theoretically, contemporary love stories which feature delightfully nerdy heroines set in traditionally male-dominated professional fields like science, technology, and math. But recently, Hazelwood has been expanding her horizons a bit as a writer, releasing the charming YA novel Check & Mate in late 2023. Though it’s set in a male-dominated world (competitive chess), it’s as much a coming-of-age tale as it is a romance, featuring complex family dynamics and realistic middle-class problems alongside its rivals-to-lovers story. Now Hazelwood is dipping her proverbial pen into the world of paranormal romance with Bride, a delightful and unexpected swerve that more than proves this author is no one trick pony.

A genuine swerve from the recognizable formula that’s made her famous, Bride allows Hazelwood to indulge in an entirely new kind of story, embracing new tropes while building out a fictional world with its own rules and politics (both interspecies and otherwise). If you read any supernatural or paranormal romance, many of the story beats will be familiar to you—-well-known tropes are well-known for a reason after all—but interlaced with Hazelwood’s trademark humor and character banter, this is a delightful escape from start to finish. 

Bride follows the story of Misery Lark, the daughter of a powerful Vampyre councilman who’s spent most of her life being used as a political pawn to help protect her species and maintain the delicate balance between Vampyres and humans. After having spent a decade in the human world serving as the living collateral that kept the peace between their species, she’s tapped for yet another truce agreement. This time, she’s told must marry Lowe Moreland, the hulking Alpha of a local Were pack, in an attempt to keep the peace between the two species who have long been mortal enemies. But Misery has reasons of her own for agreeing to the political match—just before she left the human world, her best friend Serena disappeared while investigating a story. And the only clue she left behind points straight at the man who’s about to become her husband. 

Determined to do whatever it takes to find Serena, Misery vows to survive while she’s isolated from her people in Were territory and surrounded by strangers who hate and fear her kind. But the fact that Lowe Moreland is dangerously handsome and that the connection between them certainly feels like something that goes quite a bit beyond political convenience makes things more complicated. (As well as the fact that Misery slowly begins making a genuine place for herself amongst his pack.) But as her search for Serena begins to turn up more potentially dangerous questions than it answers, the newlyweds will have to join forces to find the truth, even if working together makes things more complicated than ever between them. 

Despite her unconventional name, Misery makes for a compelling heroine—nerdy, quippy, strong, and loyal to a fault to the few she cares about. (And, of course, she’s a hacker, this is still an Ali Hazelwood novel despite its fantastical elements.) Having spent most of her life being repeatedly shown that she’s essentially expendable to those who are meant to care the most about her, it’s no wonder she’s imprinted so strongly on Serena, who often seems more like her soulmate than Lowe does. Their friendship, much of which we see in flashbacks, is a definite highlight of this book. 

In another swerve from Hazelwood’s usual pattern, the romance takes a backseat for much of this novel in favor of worldbuilding, political machinations, and character dynamics. From a group of Were rebels known as the “Loyals” who are working to undermine his place as Alpha to a corrupt human governor and a series of increasingly confusing clues about what, exactly, Serena was attempting to investigate when she disappeared, Misery and Lowe aren’t left with much time to deal with feelings that are developing between them.

But the pair have some of the best dialogue Hazelwood has yet written and their surprisingly strong “opposites attract” chemistry gives their slow burn romance a little extra sizzle. Their romance does reflect some of the tropes and elements that Hazelwood tends to prefer as an author. (No one who reads her books regularly will be surprised to discover that Lowe is a large man in every sense of the word.) Unfortunately, thanks to plot-specific reasons, readers aren’t really allowed to get to know Lowe for most of the book. Though his reasons for keeping Misery in the dark about various key aspects of both his own choices and Were physiology are almost immediately apparent, the amount of miscommunication and “for her own good” selective truth-telling can get annoying fast. 

That said, the marriage of convenience and fated mate aspects of the story certainly set Bride apart from Hazelwood’s other, more traditional rom-coms, and the introduction of such a new and different setting gives the book a surprising sense of fun and freedom. Snappy dialogue keeps the various subplots moving at a brisk clip, and a bonkers ending hints that maybe we’re not entirely done with this world just yet. A fun and unexpected treat. 

Bride is now available wherever books are sold. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB