‘The Bromance Book Club’ (2019) Book Review
The Bromance Book Club Synopsis from the Publisher:
The first rule of book club: You don’t talk about book club.
Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott’s marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him.
Welcome to the Bromance Book Club.
Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville’s top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it’ll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.
Review:
I have had The Bromance Book Club on my shelf for quite some time now, and I’ve been trying hard to work through my TBR list. I was also in the mood for something light and fluffy, so it felt like the right choice. There were a lot of things I liked and disliked about this book. I enjoyed Lyssa Kay Adam’s writing style a lot, so I’ll be checking out some of her other work, including the sequels to this novel.
I felt she did a pretty good job creating two very different voices for Gavin and Thea, and the guys involved in the Bromance Book Club had really good chemistry together. I think I enjoyed their scenes more than I did the actual romance angle. This book had some genuine laughs as well, again, mainly within the book club itself.
“Don’t be ashamed for liking them. The backlash against the PSL is a perfect example of how toxic masculinity permeates even the most mundane things in life. If masses of women like something, our society automatically begins to mock them. Just like romance novels. If women like them, they must be a joke, right?”
I listened to a lot of this book on audio while commuting to work and on my daily walks. The audiobook is narrated by Andrew Eiden and Maxwell Caulfield (yes, Grease 2 and Empire Records Maxwell Caulfield!). I always say that a narrator can make or break an audiobook. Eiden did a great job, though I wish they had gotten a woman for Thea’s chapters. It was hard to “fall into” the story when a man is attempting a lighter, feminine voice. Maxwell Caulfield narrated the excerpts from Courting the Countess, the romance novel that Gavin is reading, but his voice made the two lovers in the romance novel sound incredibly… old, I guess?
The conflict between Gavin and Thea was relatable (just communicate, you two) and realistic, but it also grew incredibly frustrating. Thea really made it incredibly difficult to like her. I know Adams tried to explain and reason Thea’s behavior, but after a while, it grew tiresome. On more than one occasion, I thought Gavin must have been a masochist because any reasonable, self-respecting man would have probably walked away, and I wouldn’t have blamed him in the least. Her sister Liv was just as irritating, constantly belittling Gavin and pushing Thea to leave him for good, like she had some right to tell her sister how to live her life and then getting angry when Thea didn’t listen to her.
The book itself isn’t that long, but it felt long at times because it felt like Gavin and Thea were just stuck in a cycle of regurgitating the same issues. Ultimately, I did enjoy the book enough to continue the series, but I’m hoping those female characters are a bit stronger and less wishy-washy than Thea was.
Have you read The Bromance Book Club? What did you think of it? Hit me up in the comments!
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