#because I cannot fucking stand how badly written it is I literally can't. I've had to deal with that shit too often lately

[daincrediblegg]

I hate it when I accidentally hit submit on the course eval for one of the classes I was most looking forward to critiquing for improvement when I had barely written anything 🙃

[blurrypetals]

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

originally posted oct. 14, 2024 - ★☆☆☆☆

Oof. Or, should I say, woof.

I really have to stop taking book recommendations from Facebook and Instagram Reels (sorry, not a TikTok user). I've never read any of Ali Hazelwood's work. Something about the covers just set off alarm bells for me, like a poisonous plant flagging its toxic nature to those who see it, so I steered clear. This book, however, seemed not only directly up my alley, but had a cool cover that seemed to say: hey, this book is different from her other work.

How wrong I was.

This book and I immediately started off on the wrong foot when it was revealed the book is, for a reason I cannot comprehend, set in the modern day. Nothing about the synopsis indicates this and the worldbuilding is so god-awful, it doesn't matter one single bit that it's set in the modern day at all, beyond talking about phones and internet.

It's not that having a vampire (ahem, sorry, vampyre) and werewolf romance set in the modern day is inherently bad, it just does not fit the plot at all and it isn't used to the story's advantage either, so it just feels awkward and out of place. Why do these werewolves have spyware? Spywerewolves. Stupid.

Also, this is, uh...allegedly supposed to be enemies to lovers? Where are the enemies? They just seem like slow-burn friends, for fuck's sake. Lowe also has like, no personality and while Misery has a personality, it's poorly-written and overdone. The sex was also extremely lame, and everything about his knot (which I wasn't prepared for one single bit) made me laugh so hard, so uncomfortably. Holy shit, y'all, this book was so fucking weird and stupid.

The side-characters are all absolutely wildly undercooked, too. Ana is quite literally every precocious child character I've ever read about, especially the badly-written ones. I also really don't understand how Misery so cartoonishly hates children (to the point where she can't tell the difference between a 3-year-old and a 13-year old? Excuse me?) except for this one kid because she's so special.

And speaking of children, the worldbuilding was so wild, it felt like a toddler who just learned what werewolves and vampires were trying to tell me what they were like: So, uh, the werewolves and vampires don't like each other, and the vampires are spelled with a Y instead of an I, and the werewolves have green blood, and the vampires like the sun but it can still hurt them and—

I couldn't stand this book. I don't understand why it's popular, but that's been the same song and dance for me all year, it seems. The characters were flat, boring, and had zero chemistry, even when they were fucking, the worldbuilding is absolutely laughable, some of the funniest shit I've read all year, and the writing is awful. It's incredible how bad this all is.

Thanks, but no thanks, Ali Hazelwood. I should have known this would be a poisonous plant, too, and stayed far away.