Book Review: Bride by Ali Hazelwood

So, when I decided to read this book from Aardvark Book Club, I had already read four structurally bad books from them, and I was a bit worried.  Would this be another dud?  A book I couldn’t even justify as a “not for me” book?

What I Knew About The Author Going In

The short of it?  Not much.  I’d heard of The Love Hypothesis, which was on the NYT Bestsellers List for 40 weeks according to Wikipedia.  But that was it.  I remember watching a YouTube video about the aforementioned book, because I remember the fact that it was originally Reylo fan fiction.

Didn’t exactly tell me whether they were a good author, though.

The Good

Overall, I was absolutely devouring this book.  I remember regularly chuckling or smiling while I was reading it.  And I was grateful that I’d picked up the second book, Mate, at the same time, because I immediately dove into reading the second one too.

From a storyteller’s perspective, the author was good at writing moments that kept the reader going, wanting to push past those obvious stopping points that can cause them to put the book down and maybe not pick it back up again.  Examples included:

• At the end of Chapter 1, Misery’s father is trying to convince her to go along with his scheme to marry her off to the were alpha, but she’d dead fast against it until he mentions “Moreland,” which at the time, we don’t know the significance of.  It is such a perfect example of the solid storytelling in this book.  This had me foaming at the mouth and really highlights the value of drip feeding information.  Creates a mystery we can’t wait to solve, driving the reader forward in the story.
• There was also a point where I finished a chapter right before having to leave for work, and I was so upset because I needed to keep reading and I couldn’t.
• About 90% of the way into the book, there was an absolutely satisfying moment where someone got their comeuppance (and others got their revenge).  It was so unbelievably satisfying and I loved it.

Moving on to structure, this was thankfully the first time (in 5 books from the book club) that there were no structural issues.  Pacing was good.  No notes.

But sometimes it’s the little things that really make a story spark, so here’s a few more that I really liked:

• I absolutely loved the Misery’s peanut butter addiction.  She’s a vampire, has no need of food, but she just kept sneaking it.  Was so adorable.
• At the beginning of each chapter, there was a little teaser in the love interest’s POV.  This worked remarkably well.  You didn’t always understand at the time what was going on, but it made for some pretty decent foreshadowing and again added to the mystery and elements that kept you reading.
• I had some guesses on page 142 about one of the mysteries that while they didn’t end up being correct, were pretty close, and this is another good storytelling thing because you want readers guessing.

The Bad

First: editing.  There are some editing mistakes, though I’m not sure how much the average reader would pick up on.  I’m autistic, pedantic, and an author myself, so I can’t stop myself from noticing, like a grain of sand in my shoe…

• On page 192, there is a POV mistake, where the author has the POV character (Misery) know WHY the other character, Lowe, retreats.  Since this is 1^st person POV, that’s not possible.  It’s not worded as a guess, but like it’s his own thoughts.  Quote: “then retreats again, appalled at his lack of control.”
• On page 263, there is another POV issue, where she seems to see things in spite of the fact that he is both in front of and behind her… and her eyes are closed.
• Then a typo on page 355.  I tend to expect these every once in a while.  Off instead of of.  In fact, I had a hard time finding it from my notes.  

Overall, that’s not bad for editing, though the POV issues were concerning to me.  Typos I forgive pretty readily, but 1^st person POV is pretty rigid, so seeing those mistakes bugged me.

And on a related note, I really didn’t like the way the author loved to use words that really shouldn’t be in a trade book like this.  They should be writing to a general audience, but I took the GRE.  I’m an author.  I have a broader vocabulary than most.  I routinely had to look words up that I didn’t know.  To me, a very basic element in writing is that you should always write to your audience.  This book sometimes felt like it was intended toward grad students because of the language used, even though the topic was decidedly not intended for that audience.

The next thing I really didn’t like the was the trope.  The main trope in the book is miscommunication/lack of communication.  Tropes-wise, this is my second-least favorite trope in romance (the first being sending her away for her own good).  It was okay at first.  I tend to tolerate it in the beginning when misunderstandings are expected and understandable.  

But it just went on for TOOO long.  The last of it was on page 379 of 396, or 95.7% into the book.  That is far too late to still be having misunderstandings like that as far as I’m concerned.

It was also annoying because there was so much great stuff going on in the book.  Plenty of external conflicts.  You really didn’t need the miscommunication/lack of communication trope to create conflict in the story.  He could have been a lot more open with her (even if he kept some things close to his chest) and made a much better story.

The last big thing that chapped my hide was THE BIG REVEAL.  So as not to give any true spoilers, I won’t say what the reveal was, but it just left me feeling like the author had intentionally misled us, which made this reveal more irritating than shocking.  

I’d wanted to go back and try to find examples, but since I read this in print format, that’s really hard to do.  I really wanted to see if it was tricking wording or an actual inconsistency.  Thing is, either way, I never really questioned it because the entire time, it was presented like a fact, like there was no reason to question it, so I didn’t make notes on it until the reveal came on page 313.

And lastly, a little bit of me being a pedant with the last instance of the miscommunication trope on page 379:  You don’t pack all of your stuff into boxes to have windows installed as someone who fairly recently had this done. I know very well what it’s like. You cover things up with sheets and stuff. You move things out of the way, but you don’t pack everything away.  Her thinking that he was moving her out is perfectly justified because there’s literally no other reason even if he was moving her into his own room you wouldn’t need to pack everything up in boxes.  It wouldn’t be worth the effort to put it in boxes and most things you’d just pick up and tote the handful of feet to the next room.

In Closing

I would probably give this 4 stars, rating-wise.  I would be tempted to give it 5 stars, but I tend to reserve that for books with no major problems.  It’s tempting though, because this definitely has the vibe of a 5 star read to me.  I absolutely loved it, so I would be conflicted about the rating, certainly.