An Incomplete Investigation of the Crimes of Bride by Ali Hazelwood | LDBC Ep. 24

[@amyallen6863]

Love a multi-hour video about a book I'll never read

[@littleduckbookclub]

Please, please promise you won't read it! It really is not worth it T-T

[@lisajenny9]

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[@kandibug5303]

MyNameisMarines call books like Bride, Lightlark, Fourth Wing, From Blood and Ash, and Powerless "trope-led books" (or a "trope checklist books" by other people) where the story exists solely as vehicle to fulfill the tropes rather than the tropes being used as tools to explore the story and the characters.

[@littleduckbookclub]

They're definitely really easy to market with how they hit all those buzzwords without actually being interesting lol

[@luisab3079]

Omg I can't with the thumbnail, this is gonna be so much fun

[@littleduckbookclub]

I can confirm that this book personally victimised us. This is just an accurate representation of our mental state.

[@GPhoenix08]

When Lowe asked 'how do you smell like this' I said, they're mates, I'm calling it. This was my first vampire/Werewolf romance. It was just obvious even to me, foreign to romance stories apart from knowing about romance tropes.

[@littleduckbookclub]

It was so obvious the fact that the reveal was near the end when everyone reading already knew felt pretty silly

[@redlikeroses1062]

I haven’t finished the video so I don’t know if you talk about it, but it’s so funny that Misery is named that and her brother is…Owen. Like damn I guess only she gets the interesting name.

[@kandibug5303]

It's a fun game as a non-white person trying to figure out which or how much a former Relyo fanfic is racist depending how they treat the Finn, Poe, and Rose stand ins, if there are there at all, and deciding if they belong on my "never to read" list. Speaking of, the Bridgerton author once said years ago in a questionnaire or interview that she would never write a non-white person as the protagonist and/or love interest because it would be "unrealistic" for a non-white person to be happy or find a happy ending (like the marginalized existed only in suffering) in the Regency period because her whole bread and butter is writing fluffy happy stories and "historically accurate" Regency stories so non-white people are incompatible to that happy ending goal and thus cannot ever be allowed any kind of important role in her stories (I'm being a little facetious here). From what I can recall the author has never publicly said that answer was very cringe of her and that she's not like that anymore, but she is willing to consider putting a non-white person as a protagonist and/or love interest now that Netflix had a diverse cast for their Bridgerton show soooo there's that I guess... I also hated all of the New Trilogy for being a rehash of the original trilogy while at the same time having no coherent vision due to the direction switch in the middle of the New Trilogy which made it feel like watching the first movie was mostly pointless while making the Clone Wars trilogy look better for the simply having a coherent vision and story to tell.

[@littleduckbookclub]

I think it's fascinating for an author to say they write "fluffy happy stories" when they contain sexual assault/rape between your main characters (looking at you, Bridgerton book 1) but maybe I'm just a hater lol

[@ravyncerio3309]

Damn, I'm not even 10 minutes into the video but I have to comment *immediately* because you are truly speaking straight from my soul. I cannot put into words how much it frustrated me how nothing this book was. How much it refused to do anything interesting at every single turn. Misery and Lowe (and also the worldbuilding but that is a whole different mountain of frustration) feel so incredibly shallow that I had the exact same thought about how this felt like fanfiction in the way that this MIGHT be interesting if someone else had already done the heavy lifting and created better characters. They both get one token interest each (hacking and architecture) just for the narrative to touch on that in the most pathetic and superficial way possible. I was simply dumbfounded at the way that Lowe having designed the house himself for his family and how it's supposedly so beautiful was treated as important just for me to realize that I had not the slightest idea what the house even looked like because Ali Hazelwood cannot be bothered to actually put words onto the page. I have never related to a review this much and I've barely seen any of it, so thank you already lmao

[@littleduckbookclub]

I'm glad we could be a voice for the underrepresented (Bride Haters). The fact that this book is so well-received and has a high rating is actually upsetting to me in what it says about general audiences and what an author can get away with if they are already popular.

[@ravyncerio3309]

@@littleduckbookclub yeah, it is truly concerning how a book with such an obvious disinterest for the subject matter has 4 stars on goodreads. I have reached the point where when a book has a ton of ratings and over 4 stars it becomes an immediate red flag for me. Like literally the day after I finished Bride I started reading A Far Wilder Magic by Allison Saft which features some of the most beautiful and rich and descriptive prose I have ever seen and it has a worse rating than Bride. I just can't

[@jennyesevik7162]

I haven’t read the book but it sounds like the plot around the child (Anna?) would have made more sense if she had a mental disability. It could explain why she acts younger than she is, why the guy is so overprotective. It could also explain why the guy was impressed with Misery saving her. If the werewolves society revolve around strength they’re likely ableist and look down on those with disabilities. So he tries to protect the child from the other wolves ire and then comes Misery who also cares about and protects the girl. But I guess that would be too much nuance, and give the wolves negative traits. Is it possible this was a maffia romance that was then turned into a vampire-werewolf romance?

[@littleduckbookclub]

It would make more sense but also I kind of don't even want to consider what Ali Hazelwood would do with a disabled character since she seems kind of allergic to research... I wouldn't be surprised if it used to be a mafia romance but I also wouldn't be surprised if someone told her to write a vampire/werewolf thing and she knows so little about that whole genre that she fell back on stock romance tropes.

[@maryjunewrites]

It is so gratifying to have all of my thoughts and criticisms while reading this book spoken aloud. Instant subscribe.

[@littleduckbookclub]

We're happy to represent all those who strongly dislike this book!

[@carolinesch.]

I suffered through the love hypothetis as somebody currently in uni for general biology, but I kind laughed at the well some genes mutated and well now werewolf suprise😂

[@littleduckbookclub]

Biologists in the Bride universe: "How did that happen, you ask? We just don't know!"

[@carolinesch.]

Oh I am excited for this episode, this book is my biggest dissapointment of the year simply for the fact that I have read this exact plot multiple times before in fanfiction and most of them were so good, and actually said something about having 2 people from actually different societys and upbringings, raised with diffenet ideas interact and learn from each other while having an actual romance. Instead I got whatever bride is😅 Also the knot part, I am sorry I have read stuff like that before but never have I cringed this hard...also this dynamics are way more fun in queen romances with the werewolves tbh

[@littleduckbookclub]

The fact that this book is so bad is upsetting because I've also read fanfics with a very similar premise and they were really good!! How did she do the same thing so much worse? It boggles the mind! The passages where they explained knotting T-T I had to take a break in-between from secondhand embarrassment

[@cheyenneguest4495]

You're right in that people who don't normally read Ali Hazelwood might be found reading this bc that's what happened to me since all I saw was a cool cover and a neat synopse on the libby app and borrowed it thinking it would be a cool book - spoiler alert, it was not and was just a huge mess of things going nowhere for a majority of the book. Including the marriage agreement between werewolves and vampires. It honestly reminded me of the days when I read werewolf stories on Wattpad in how things are structured, especially with how the male romance lead was written in this. I'm just glad I stumbled upon this bc it was fun hearing people give voice to what I was thinking when reading the book.

[@littleduckbookclub]

Glad we could validate your feelings on this book. It's such a strange experience to read it and I almost feel bad about comparing it to werewolf stories on wattpad because I have to assume at least those people are into werewolves and aren't just writing it because their agent said they should try it cause it sells T-T

[@cheyenneguest4495]

@@littleduckbookclub From what I remembered of the stories, they were very passionate and it's probably bc they were teenagers who were having fun with what they were writing even if it wasn't the greatest - since I was a teenager myself reading those stories as well. But it was definitely weird reading the book bc it didn't feel like much thought was put into it and like someone trying to mimic what was seen in werewolf/vampire stories more than anything else to me. (Which kinda got confirmed with her author's note in explaining this was the first time she wrote this kind of fiction and honestly, it shows in addition to learning that she writes based on tropes from this video.)

[@WindoLickinGood]

Tea and listen time, yay!

[@littleduckbookclub]

Looking at the episode length you'll need a huge cup once again :)

[@WindoLickinGood]

​@@littleduckbookclub or multiple cups!

[@romulusnuma116]

The Many Crimes of Bride would be a good book title.

[@littleduckbookclub]

It would be ideal for some sort of fake biography, I think!

[@kandibug5303]

My "fix" is for this book to never be released, but if it had to exist I would have Misery be renamed as Mizeria to have a not so silly name that still uses the etymology of the word "misery" that I just made up in 5 minutes. 32 year old Misery/Mizeria is a dhampir or half vampire human born to a consensual and loving vampire mother and human witch father relationship. Being a dhampir allows Misery/Mizeria to go without drinking blood or energy for months as she can sustain herself on human food not unless she wants to use her vampire powers like night vision or shadow powers, have a much higher sunlight tolerance, and has a reflection. Misery/Miseria's witch heritage from her father gives her an enchanted revolver, allows her to talk to the restless dead or spirits, see past and future vision, knowledge of drug/potion making, and cast powerful, but draining curses or blessings in dangerous emergencies. Then Misery's/Mizeria's parents, members of her father's witch coven, and her lover die during a massacre by werewolves, which she barely survives, and is forced to return to the vampire clan that exiled her mother in the first place as her father's witch coven cannot protect after suffering such losses and evidence that a witch inside the coven allowed the werewolves in. However as per usual, Misery/Mizeria being born to the exile and being a dhampir who likes eating human food makes her an outcast who is targeted by the other vampires for mistreatment and is given the "job" as a house cleaner. Misery/Mizeria is able to form bonds with the other lower ranking vampires also relegated to menial daily tasks the higher ranks in the vampire clan does not appreciate. Her main motivation is to find out who killed her parents and bring them to either justice or vengeance, either works for her. 30 year old Lowen is from a more tolerant werewolf pack who has "due process" and does try to do actual investigations to sniff out potential threats to the "natural order". He was born blind and uses a sight dog alongside his heighten sense of smell and hearing to navigate the world. Lowen is the "left hand" of the pack who is the "lead investigator/hunter" who needs to find evidence of guilt, the lack of guilt, or pinpoint a potential violator of the "natural order" such as witches who kidnap others (humans, werewolves, vampires) to sacrifice them to their otherworldly benefactor, vampires who also do the same but more for feeding and "fun", or rogue werewolves who are committing "unauthorized hunts". Lowen is very duty driven with no love life, or even had sex, and hobbies outside of his job as the lead hunter, believing his only "job" is to prove his worth and loyalty to the pack when his mother betrayed the pack, which led to his father's death, and his mother is currently the leader of more powerful rival pack who believes in a strict "no magic" policy and forced unity even by means of mass murder and fear. He has volunteered to participate in a symbolic marriage of diplomacy with vampire clan to show the pack's commitment to upholding peace and hopefully gain an ally against the pack's enemy, especially his own mother. His main motivation is to protect the pack and have a confrontation with his own mother to ask why she did the things she did from her own words. The vampire clan wants to commit to the symbolic marriage, but they find the idea of sending a "valuable" full vampire not so tasteful so they send Misery/Mizeria instead, who has been living with the vampire clan for the past year. Misery/Mizeria is not pleased she had no say in this, though is comforted that the marriage is more symbolic of the alliance so sex is not a full on requirement. Then during the wedding Misery's/Mizeria's witch training and magic allows her to detect that there is violent magic being cased upon the location and is able to give warning that hostile witches are in the area, preventing a massacre. However there are signs that a clan and pack insider allowed the witches to bypass certain security messages in place, putting everyone on edge and giving a lot of similarities to Misery's/Mizeria's own experience with her coven's massacre. The marriage between Misery/Mizeria and Lowen is awkward and distant as Lowen spends more time at "work" than being with her at all, she's lucky if she sees him more than 10 minutes in a week. However Misery/Mizeria will not let this opportunity being married to a lead hunter werewolf who can potentially figure out which werewolf and/or pack is responsible for the massacre on her coven a year ago pass and so gently pester Lowen into helping her out. This is the part where Lowen and Misery/Mizeria spend time together to form a romantic relationship while uncovering grand conspiracy to break the recent agreements to peace between the vampires, werewolves, and witches. The larger urban fantasy political landscape is that the werewolf packs are the "guardians of order and nature" who see themselves as the sole arbiters who decides what magic person or being gets to exist and a way until they deem "in line with order and nature" until they decide that person or being is "too dangerous" to the "natural order". Different packs have varying ideas of how to enforce the "natural order", some are hardline "kill all witches and vampires no exception" while others try to have some kind of "due process" where the accused is investigated and judged by a bunch of werewolves who decide the guilt or threat level. Vampires, they just wanna have fun (and power and survival), but different clans have different ideas of how to achieve those goals whether it be by diplomacy, assassinations, or blackmail. Usually the vampire clans would be fighting each other for power, but the werewolf packs and witch covens that forces them to play nicer with each other to look more unified in the face of other threats. Witch Covens individually are larger than individual vampire clans and werewolf packs being humans who can replenish their numbers faster, but there are more obvious splinters due to the different otherworldly entities a witch can align themselves to. These otherworldly entities can range from "protector of homes", "watcher of worlds", or "dominator of souls". All entities demand offerings from their witches and for them to fight against enemy covens or magical beings that oppose their end goals. There was always fighting and cold war among the werewolves, vampires, and witches for 400 years that eventually led to an open all out war between the werewolf packs, vampire clans, and witch covens that lasted for 100 years with heavy death tolls and loss of habitable lands. In the recent decade there has been deescalation and talks of ending the war officially to save lives and to allow the healing of the world itself. This ties back to Misery's/Mizeria's mother as she assassinated the leader of her vampire clan to ensure a candidate more inclined towards peace would become the leader, but she still needed to be punished for murder and so was exiled to be without clan for an eternity, a death sentence for most vampires. However not all pack's, clan's, and coven's members are happy with this direction, feeling that by not "finishing" the war they have "allowed" the other sides to "win" and they would rather have the "comfort" of war and hostility than the "unknown" of peace. In a strange twist, these people are united in wanting the war to continue and ending all peacetalks no matter what it takes so they may attempt to kill each other later.

[@kandibug5303]

All the people with similar tastes to mine (likers of sensible and competent enough stories) have not like this urban(?) romance(?) with a sloppy side of fantasy book (or her other books) so I think I won't be reading this book or any other works in this author's catalogue. This is added to the fact from what I could gleam is the author's unwillingness to grow from the fanfic writing phase of just relying on the groundwork created by other people to make stories by admitting in an interview around 2 years ago to not being able to come up with original ideas after her debut (The Love Hypothesis which is based on one of her fanfics) so her agent just gives her a list of characters and plot tropes for a story then the author works backwards from there. I would not be surprised if Bride was also made this way too given how trope checklist(y) it sounds on top of the lack of care to explore the characters and the world they are in because meeting the trope quota is what matters. It's one thing to bounce ideas off of someone, but this author doesn't even have ideas or the semblance of a concept to bounce to someone. What is the point of being a creator with the backing of big tradpubs if you have no idea on what to create or stories to tells? Like even Alex Aster of Lightlark's infamy came up with something 10% original from her head in spite of the very obvious inspirations from the Hunger Games and ACOTAR in that story. This author writes contemporary romances and this is her first "fantasy" book and it really shows she is not that interested in or respecting of the potential of the fantasy genre. The author likely made this book because Romance Fantasy is the hot thing right now. This is very similar to the Fourth Wing author who wrote only contemporary romances before the publisher Red Tower sent out a request for an author to write a Romance Fantasy book for their Romance Fantasy line and the Fourth Wing author just took the job because "fantasy is easy to write because you can make up anything and don't have to do any research (like knowing how to pronouncing the Gaelic language at all and that it is still used by living breathing people or spelling bo-staff like bow-staff) like contemporary romances" (which made some fans of Fourth Wing kind of confused by this interview answer, but if you pay attention to Fourth Wing and Iron Flame the least explored parts are the "fantasy" elements. I'm assuming these kind of fans are putting in more work into the fantasy element in their fanfics and headcannons and were hoping for that kind of passion they put in from the creator or projected their belief that the creator cared about fantasy writing despite the bare bones fantasy elements) or something along those lines.

[@littleduckbookclub]

I also feel strongly that Bride must have been inspired by other people telling her to write it. She's so obviously not interested in vampires or werewolves or the supernatural aspect of this whole thing that it's kind of offensive tbh I didn't know Fourth Wing came out of what is basically a commission? Fascinating. I love learning lore about popular bad books.

[@unsocialevent]

yayyy an episode that doesn't come with required reading!!!!!!!!!!

[@littleduckbookclub]

This is in fact the opposite!!! It comes with a warning to not, under any circumstances, pick up this book. For your own mental well-being.

[@illyann4669]

When you pay for fanfiction writing from a fanfic author. Lol

[@michellecgb]

I love hours-long book bashing sessions ❤

[@kiddracoify]

Yes! Finally somebody agreeing with me that episode 9 was worse than episode 8! 8 had potential and could go along with the themes of the evolution of good and evil instead of being a cheap, incoherent nostalgia cash grab. ... Sorry got side tracked XD great video. Too bad that all romance books are basically the same and therefore feel cheap and boring. And Ali Hazelwood has some ace or demi characters, but even that is solved by the snap of a finger instead of being discussed or explored. There are always kernels of ideas and then puff- nothing. And regarding fanfiction, my friends and I always said: fanfictions are the better stories the authors ignored. Don't get me wrong they can be bad, but also bold and more intresting, because nobody would get them through publishing

[@littleduckbookclub]

I'm glad you and Anna are validating each other's opinion on Star Wars. I myself don't know enough about it to have an opinion but seeing all the think pieces on how bad episode 9 was was actually fascinating. I feel like there is for sure interesting and fresh romance out there (it's not my genre but I can't imagine it all being this boring) but anything that's widely popular ends up being the most boring thing you could conceptualise.

[@carolinesch.]

I just finished a vidwo that is every published reylo fanfiction, and the main take away if all of her published books except bride can be traced back the published reylo fanfiction, even her short story/novella thingys are oneshots of reylo😅

[@littleduckbookclub]

Wait, tracked back as in fanfic she herself wrote? Or fanfic that exists out there??? It's all Reylo all the way down???? Makes me wonder if this would've been better if it had been more Reylo-adjacent than it is...

[@carolinesch.]

@littleduckbookclub yeah as in you can find her old Profile and at least the title of the now deleted stuff I watched the video of elievileye on it

[@littleduckbookclub]

@@carolinesch. damn that's kind of crazy... I need to watch that video at some point!

[@kandibug5303]

Well this book has one good use for one of you duckies... it's a great sleeping aid.

[@xRaiofSunshine]

Omg 3 hours long. We’re feasting tonight bois

[@xRaiofSunshine]

Also, a question: is Duck No.1 the duck with the blue headphones and Duck No.2 the ones with the yellow? Idk why but that’s what I imagine when listening to these with the illustration lol.

[@littleduckbookclub]

It is, yes!!!! Wren's got the blue headphone, Anna the yellow ones :)

[@xRaiofSunshine]

@@littleduckbookclub😂😂😂 thanks for answering 😇

[@sunfvalley]

haah?? wdym she just write tropes recommended by someone else.. genuinely baffled by that T_T

[@littleduckbookclub]

Apparently some people are entirely uncreative by themselves :|

[@user-xf4hn1cc2p]

2:15:09

[@Vanbedda]

This was my first, and I think only, Hazelwood book lol. I listen to a lot of historical romance and wanted something a little different. WELL. Different it was. I didn't hate everything about it, and I think listening to it in German as practice made it more engaging for me, but the plot ended up being rather uninspired, which was a disappointment for sure. Also, I really just could not with the magical expanding werewolf **** 😫

[@littleduckbookclub]

Yeah, I don't think I'll read more Ali Hazelwood after this either... actually the idea of reading this in German sounds extremely scary (I would die of cringe) but such is the power of the native language, I suppose lol

[@ribbonquest]

It's okay. American houses are cheap. Any made in the last 30+ years at least.