CBR Bingo: ‘Black’
The last few Ali Hazelwood books I’ve read have been sort of hit-or-miss for me. I enjoyed Not in Love, was conflicted about Problematic Summer Romance, and hated Check & Mate (it wasn’t a bad book perse, I just don’t think I was the intended audience). I do however really enjoy her writing style, and I’ve been cautiously optimistic about Mate, recently released and the follow-up to last year’s Bride (which was actually the first book of hers that I read).
The narrator is Serena, a half-human half-werewolf hybrid, who, due to her being the first “open” one of her kind, various factions want to capture and/or kill her. She’s also secretly struggling with an illness that she doesn’t want her friends to know about. After the latest attempt is made on her life, she basically plots to become bait in order to draw out the people who mean hybrids harm, mostly to protect the only other known hybrid, an eight-year-old girl. This means entering the protection of Koen, an “alpha” werewolf who has told her that she’s his mate (while also simultaneously not really explaining what that means, and also that he doesn’t ever want to act on it).
Omegaverse werewolf stuff isn’t really my thing, but I am terminally online enough to know what’s involved in those kinds of books. In my limited knowledge, and in terms of weird werewolf anatomy sex, this is probably mild-to-moderate. Enough to know that they’re not fully human, but not so much that it overwhelmed the story.
This was a lot of fun. Serena is a funny main character, and the book strikes a good balance between the romance and plot involving a threat to the werewolf community. The secondary characters were great as well; I especially enjoyed a conversation regarding what would happen if they sent werewolves to the moon.
I don’t know if there will be further books in this series (to my knowledge, Bride was originally supposed to be a standalone), but I’ll be happy if there is.