Bride

Normally, I can storm right through Hazelwood's books, but this one took me a minute (read: days) to get into. I'm glad I persisted.

I think because I was a) not feeling well and b) wasn't used to the world building that this story required. I understand her world-building when it comes to STEM, but Vampyres (with a “y”) and Weres (for Werewolves) threw me for a loop.

However, I like Misery, the main female character, and her snarky approach to everything, her brother, her life, kids, you name it. It's what kept her sane through all the shuttling around in her childhood, where she was sent to live with humans by the Vampyre Council, headed by her father. She was a token known as Collateral in exchange to keeping the peace. It's how she met her best friend, Selena Paris, and the rift between Human, Weres, and Vampyres mostly controlled her adulthood too.

She was donated to be a bride to the head/alpha Werewolves, again as a token of peace between cultures. It wasn't a smooth transition for either Misery or Lowe, the alpha Were and her new husband.

By the time I understood all of this culture swapping, and some of the quirks involved in each, I wholly bought into the story and it went much quicker.

I'm not the vampire/werewolf type when it comes to reading so it surprised me that I enjoyed this book as much as I did. In the end, some of the animosity between cultures reflects what we see in the real world today. However, I think the sex is better in the book than in my real world.

A+. Read it.