Update 5/14/20: The Bromance Book Club has been optioned by Netflix, according to the author: https://twitter.com/lyssakayadams/status/1255857707405529088
Hello Kittens! Quarantine is weird y’all. The one positive is that I am catching up on some long overdue reading. I was granted access to our next book several months back on NetGalley and it ended up languishing on my E-reader for the next few months. In fact, by the time I got around to it, the second book in this series had already come out, but better late than never. This book combined something that I love: baseball, with something that I don’t read a lot of: romance. While the book is light on the baseball and heavy on the romance, it was still a refreshing change in my reading game, and I’ll be picking up the next book in the series whenever my library re-opens. It’s a strange sensation for a librarian to be without a library for so long.
Title: The Bromance Book Club
Author: Lyssa Kay Adams
Author website: http://www.lyssakayadams.com/
Publisher: Berkley
Publish date: November 5, 2019
ISBN: 9781984806092
Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble
Gavin Scott has screwed up his marriage. He’s not sure how, but he has, and now his wife wants him out of the house. We meet him as he overindulges in drink at the hotel where he now resides. A group of his professional baseball teammates and few as yet unknown-to-him extras tag along and offer him a chance to get his wife, Thea, back. He doesn’t believe that is really possible at that point, but he’s willing to try anything. He truly loves Thea and he doesn’t want to lose his two beautiful twin daughters either. His friends let him in on a secret club that’s been operating right under his nose: a book club for men that exclusively reads romance novels. These guys have discovered the shocking truth of romance novels: that they are written for women and contain nuggets of wisdom that might be useful to men in terms of understanding what women want. At first Gavin is hostile and skeptical of the idea, but he wants Thea back, and he’s willing to give it a try.
Thea has put up with a lot since marrying Gavin. Being a professional baseball players wife comes with significant social expectations, and Thea really doesn’t fit it. Fed up with the way that the other wives and girlfriends have treated her and frustrated with Gavin’s absences, both physically and emotionally, she has drawn her line in the sand. Thea is ready to move on from that life and embrace the dreams that she put on hold when she met Gavin. With the support of her sister, Thea agrees to an ultimatum with Gavin that will get him out of her life for good.
This story was both humorous and extremely sexy. There’s a lot of description of what goes on in the bedroom, especially since that is a central conflict in the story. There’s also a story within the story, which is the romance novel that Gavin is reading while trying to remedy the situation with Thea. In addition to the romance storyline, we also get to know Thea as she embraces her new life and comes to terms with the past that made her so hesitant to live out a fairytale. Of the two main characters, I definitely preferred reading about what was going on with her embracing her own power as opposed to Gavin getting over his ego to understand that he neglected her. It’s always nice to see a romance novel tackle the bigger issues in relationships, and complacency in marriage, while not unique, is certainly important.
I loved the concept of men treating romance novels as though they were textbooks. To a certain extent, it’s a realistic option for men who are trying to figure out how to communicate with women. I like that Adams is addressing the problems that arise when women think relationships are going to turn out like romance novels and then are disappointed in reality. By the time I got around to reading this galley, the second book in the series had just released, and according to Amazon, there’s going to be a third addition to the series releasing in October. Adams definitely isn’t wasting any time, and it looks like the second book in the series extrapolates a romance that was hinted at in the first book.
All in all, I think romance readers are going to enjoy this addition to the canon. The book got great reviews when it came out and has topped several recommended romance reading lists since then.
Disclaimer: I received an electronic copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
My rating:
1 glass of lemonade= a book that can only be recommended to someone whose reading taste you know well, like a best friend. There may be a fair amount of curse words, spicy sex scenes, or potentially morally repugnant behavior. This does not mean that the book is bad, just that the audience might be a little more limited.
It was a good read, but there are sex scenes every few chapters, so you need to really know what someone is looking for in a book before you recommend this one. Also be aware that there is a little bit of emotional abuse from one of the character’s childhoods.
Books Dani Likes 