Bride by Ali Hazelwood

 A Vampyre and a Werewolf get into an arranged marriage to keep the peace between their two people what else can I say, turns out a lot. I really enjoyed this book more than I thought I was going to. It was going to be a fairly standard enemies-to-lovers romance story but it had such a well-written character and a great mystery. 

Bride is about three species of beings that are constantly fighting and on the edge of war, humans, vampyres, and werewolves, with a new human governor taking charge and refusing to continue the same alliance that had worked previously between vampyres and humans, to prevent all-out war an arranged marriage is put through between the new alpha werewolf, Lowe, and the daughter of the vampyre councilman, Misery. Before long it's discovered Misery has hidden reasons for agreeing to this arranged marriage outside of trying to prevent a war and atone for the many deaths of werewolves at the hands of vampyres. Throughout the book, we learn more about Misery's childhood as she was the collateral child that gets traded between humans and vampyres to ensure peace between the two species, if either side breaks the treaty the traded child is killed. We also learn more about Lowe and the werewolves that he governs, learning that Lowe also has his own secrets. 

I would describe this as a mystery book with a healthy dose of interspecies romance, and as a mystery story is incredibly intriguing I found myself reading at every opportunity I had and finishing the book in three days. The main character Misery is super interesting she grew up surrounded by humans knowing that the adults around her who were raising and taking care of her would also be the ones who would kill her if the truce were to break between their people, so she grew up not trusting anyone around her except for her adopted sister who ends up being the only person Misery cares about, it makes her a very unique protagonist to follow she doesn’t quite fit in anywhere and she had a distant attachment to everything but you can tell through the writing that she cares very much about the wars going on and trying to keep the peace even if she does have ulterior motives for agreeing. 

The love interest Lowe is also a fascinating character to learn about through Misery's perspective, at first he seems to be a typical grumpy alpha unhappy with the arranged marriage and uneasy with the new truce between the vampyres and werewolves but the more she gets to know him the more we learn about the layers to his character and why he has agreed and even encouraged the truce, to begin with. 

Some parts of the writing and the story can become a little frustrating as the two love interests keep missing each other and not communicating clearly, and near the end, there is a worn trope that wasn’t the most fun to read however that is a small portion of the story, and everything else in it was fun and captivating I kept coming back to find out more about the mystery plot and see the enemies to lovers relationship progress. I also want to address the species being called vampyres rather than just vampires, I have no idea why this is done other than to be different, it doesn’t really affect the story at all but it is an odd choice, doesn’t detract from my enjoyment it's just a thing that's there.

Overall I would give this a 4.5 out of 5, I found such delight in this story and its characters not only is Misery one of my favourite protagonists, but the romance and mystery plots combined together are a really fun way. I wish Ali would write more fantasy stories because of how much i liked her writing style but I don't think I could get into a straight romance plot without the fantasy and mystery element.