Review: "The Weaver Bride" by Lydia Gregovic

The Weaver Bride by Lydia Gregovic
Published September 2025 via Delacorte Press
★★★

Lovett's life is a ticking time bomb: unless she marries a Weaver, who can use her magic to enhance his own, before she turns twenty-one, she will be banished to the cloisters to spin her hair into magic until her power wears out in a few years. What happens after that, nobody knows; nobody returns from the cloisters alive. And so when a chance to compete for the hand of a wealthy Weaver comes her way...well, she can't turn it down.

This feels like one for fans of The Selection and Wither. I'm probably dating myself with those references, but they're what I thought of, with this combination of reality-style competition and girls desperate to survive past their twenties. There are elements of a fairy tale here (a little bit of Sleeping Beauty, a little bit of Rumpelstiltskin), but what interested me most was Lovett's magical gift (her Wit, in book parlance): she can get through any door, regardless of locks. There's a moment when it seems like this will be an advantage, something to set her apart from her competition—and then you're reminded that every girl maiden ("maiden" count: 130) in the competition has a Wit, and some might prove more valuable than others. What do you think you could do the most with? One maiden can find anything, as long as she knows what she's searching for; one maiden can mark windows and look through them later; still another can force truth with a kiss. It's not clear if most silkwitches have Wits that are so useful for, well, sneakery, but I think it's probably more that the ten who have been chosen for this competition have been chosen partly on the grounds of their Wits.

I was a little disappointed not to see those Wits used more heavily. Oh, Lovett sneaks around the manor, and a few of the other maidens do some sneaking of their own, but mostly the competition is a bit passive—waiting to see how they will be judged. And judged they are: It takes Lovett well into the book to realize that it isn't a fair competition (the men doing the judging are looking for, among other things, a maiden who is powerful but docile), and that even if she wins, her life will not necessarily be easier. The men are not shy about their disdain for certain maidens, because magic or no magic, it is the men who have the power. Lovett is not really in it to marry the man who is this competition's prize, but I wish she were a little more strategic—she's conspiring with a man named Eliot to find out what happened to his sister in the previous year's competition, but every time he reminds her that they have to be subtle and he can't show her favor, she agrees and then gets wildly huffy when he doesn't immediately make his interest in her public. ("smirk" count, mostly the two of them: 43) She's a teenager, so I suppose there are hormones and underdeveloped brains to consider, but it ends up feeling like she rarely acts in her own best interests.

Judging by the ending, this will likely be spun into a duology or trilogy—in which case I'd hope to see a closer look at this convent that unmarried silkwitches are consigned to. Lovett probably still has quite a bit of untangling of her life to do before she can rest...

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.