Spice Without the Story I Craved: A Review of 'Grimoire’s Bride' by Lenore Nox

-g e n r e-

/fantasy | /romance

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-t a g s-

/drama, /dark-suspense, /series, /morally-grey, /mystery, /supernatural

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Lenore Nox's "Grimoire’s Bride" had a killer premise and moments of fun, steamy energy, but it didn’t come together as a full story for me. If you’re here just for spice and a badass heroine, you might enjoy it more. But as a reader who loves when romance and fantasy world-building weave together seamlessly, I felt let down.

The story drops you straight into the world, and honestly, I felt lost from the start. The magic system wasn’t really explained, and the world-building felt like something I was supposed to know already.

I even double-checked to see if I had missed a previous book, but no, it just never gave me the grounding I needed. Due to this, the plot felt messy and confusing, more like a series of disconnected events than one smooth story.

The romance was the part that kept me hanging on. The female main character has that strong, powerful energy I love in dark romance heroines, and by the second half, her chemistry with the grimoire’s keeper finally pulled me in.

The spice was definitely there, steamy, bold, and different from the usual monogamy, but it sometimes felt like it was dropped in without enough emotional build-up. I wanted more time with the couple’s relationship, more of that slow, dangerous tension that makes dark romance so addictive.

In conclusion, when I picked up “Grimoire’s Bride” by Lenore Nox, I was so excited. The premise sounded perfect for me: a witch tied to a cursed grimoire, forbidden magic, and the promise of a dark, twisted romance. As someone who loves dark romance with fantasy vibes, this book had everything I thought I wanted. Yet the actual reading experience was incredibly distant from what I expected.

By the end, I was invested enough to care about where it would all lead, but I was still confused about the bigger picture. The world and the magic felt under-explained, and the plot kept jumping in ways that made it hard to stay fully immersed.

-r a t i n g-

{ ★★☆☆☆ }

You can steal this read over on Amazon.

(This book was received as an ARC from NetGalley, and this is an honest review.)

You can also read this review on Goodreads or NetGalley!