Unbound — Ali Hazelwood | A Full Spoiler Novella Review

⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Unbound yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.

Opening Hook

I own about five Ali Hazelwood books and still haven’t actually sat down with one yet. Lucky for me, the 162-page novella about a five-thousand-year-old vampire-adjacent (they’re called revenants here) woman and one very kind ER doctor talked me into it.

The Full Story — Spoilers Included

Lilit is a revenant, which is comparable enough to a vampire for our purposes here, and she’s around 5,000 years old. We open to her standing off to the side in the ER watching Roman, a human doctor, who is all things good and kind. They’ve had a bit of a casual situationship going for about ten years at this point. Both of them are in love with the other, but she can’t give him more because it goes against everything revenants stand for, and he is too afraid to lose her if he asks for more. So they’ve spent a decade torturing themselves, neither one able to stay away.

She’s in Chicago for a meeting of the elders, an informal group that works to keep revenants from going wild or hurting humans. They have been called together by Wenceslaus, who accuses her of having Viktor (one of her bloodline) kill his guy Grigori. Bloodline here means a vampire family style of sired revenants, not actual relatives. I couldn’t help imagining it like a vampire mafia, and there’s no way to get that comparison out of my head now. Grigori’s decaying body is thrown on the table dramatically, and the elders (Li Xiu, Imhotep, Atukhos and Aapo among them) look to each other confused. Nobody confesses to having it done, and everyone walks out thinking it was a ridiculous reason to fly them across the world.

From there she goes to meet Roman at their usual diner, but he only stays long enough to break things off and say goodbye. He’s cold, says he’s been seeing someone, a doctor, and then walks out. She stays there, shocked and heartbroken as she realizes how deeply she is in love with him. A while later he calls asking her not to use her key to his house anymore because she’s left her expensive bulletproof-grade sunglasses on the counter and he doesn’t think it would be appropriate going forward. This sets off alarm bells in her head because she hasn’t been to his place and knows what kind of being would need those same glasses… she tells him to sit quietly by the window until she can get there. She has just enough time to tell him to listen to her instructions before an assassin shows up, and she takes him out easily because he’s a young’un and age means strength and speed in their world. Roman learns she isn’t human and watches her drink the assassin’s blood so she can track him if he survives.

The clues on the assassin were so obvious (a Russian pendant) that she’s sure it’s to throw her off, but she goes to confront Wenceslaus first only to walk into a total wall-to-wall bloodbath. They decide there’s not much to consider there, but there’s clearly someone out to get the elders and they need to regroup. They check into a hotel to rest when she gets a text request for a midnight meet up. Before leaving she asks to take a bit of Roman’s blood in case they get separated, but she’s horrified to find that she can taste that he’s dying. He admits it is a glioblastoma, giving him six months more at best. That’s why he broke up with her.

The midnight message turns out to be Atukhos. He can no longer sense his ex, Li Xiu, and he’s sure Imhotep (her current partner) has killed her. They’ve all dated each other through the centuries, so there’s a lot of jealousy and a lot of power imbalances among the elders. To avenge Li Xiu, he wants her help in calling a second meeting to confront and kill Imhotep. Because of how Atukhos’s character was written, he was my suspect right away, but Lilit never showed any doubt in him, so I wasn’t certain until we got to the council meeting. We didn’t know it sitting down to the three remaining elders in town (Atukhos, Imhotep, and Lilit), but she had already checked in with Imhotep, who could still sense Li Xiu, making it clear that Atukhos was lying. He had kidnapped and sedated her to give him time to clear the field of everyone she’d been with (which in this group is everyone). As the truth comes out and he realizes he’s been found out, he grabs his sword ready to go out swinging when Li Xiu steps up behind him and runs him through. Roman is right there behind her, holding her up because he’s the one who rescued her while the other two kept Atukhos distracted with the meeting. Li Xiu doesn’t care for mortals at all, but she makes a point of telling Lilit how much she likes Roman.

Best Part of This Book

The relationship between Lilit and Roman. Both of them deeply want what’s best for the other, but they also want each other with all the love and longing they possess. My heart ached for them, and I loved how Hazelwood wrote it.

Worst Part of This Book

It’s a novella. At 162 pages it wasn’t lacking for anything (it was damn good) but I could have happily read more.

A Moment That Stood Out

Roman letting Lilit look into his mind to see how deeply he loves her, and her telling him the same in return. It’s the turning point between him not wanting to become a revenant and her being devastated by the idea of losing him. He’s afraid that she’ll eventually tire of him one day, and she assures him that she yearns for him just as deeply, and that nobody in thousands of years has made her feel what he does.

The Steam Rating Breakdown

🔥🔥🔥

• Sex scenes: yes
• Fade to black or explicit: explicit and open door
• Romance: the whole book is built on it
• Content warnings: terminal illness (brain tumour), murder and a gory massacre, blood drinking

The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?

Satisfied. Ten years later Roman has been turned, and we’re back with Viktor and Vero from Bound. Anyone who read Bound first will love that.

Roman and Vero are both still adjusting to the change, and it’s interesting that every body handles it differently: some have higher sunlight tolerance, others have a weak stomach, or foods and smells that make them sick, others have trouble with speech and more. They settle into their castle in Ireland, where she eventually builds him a lab because Roman has started to science the shit out of revenant DNA. He began by interviewing other newly changed revenants to see if their symptoms matched his, until every elder wanted to volunteer when they found out what he was doing, and it snowballed from there. It’s cute. He’s moved from practical medicine to research, but he’s keeping up with medical advances because he hopes to go back to it once he can handle sunlight and life around mortals. It was a very cool ending, if you ask me.

Would I Reread It?

Yes.

Who Is This For?

Romance readers, Hazelwood fans, and anyone who wants a short, steamy, vampire-ish read.

Where to Get This Book

Physical Book

Amazon | Bookshop.org

 Audiobook
Audible | Libro.fm

📚 More from the Bound Duology

Book 1 — Bound | Reviewed by LD | ⭐ 3/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥 — Read the Review
Book 2 — Unbound | Reviewed by CJ | ⭐ 4/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥 — you’re here now!

Ready for more reviews from CJ? Find More Here

Plot Twisted. 🔥
📖 | Series: Bound duology Book 2 | Genre: Paranormal Romance | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥

TAGS: Unbound, Ali Hazelwood, Bound duology, paranormal romance, vampire romance, revenant, novella, spoiler review, steamy romance, open door romance, ER doctor romance, situationship romance, immortal romance, book review, Plot Twisted, Lilit and Roman,