Review: The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

I really need to stop starting romances or thrillers in the evening. It just means I will be up too late because I have to finish as soon as I possibly can.

The Bromance Book Club is a delightfully meta contemporary sports/marriage-is-in-trouble romance. Baseball player Gavin Scott has recently been kicked out of his house by his wife, Thea. Gavin's friends watch him wallow for days when they decide to invite him to a secret meeting to save his marriage, turns out the meeting is a romance novel book club a group of high-powered men attend to learn how to better look at the world through a female lens. Gavin takes lessons he has learned from a regency romance and uses them to try to fix his relationship.

I really cannot overstate how much I loved how fun this book is. I don't particularly care about the sports bits, but it only really came up in any meaningful way once or twice, so non-sports people totally can gel with this book. I mostly noticed myself really loving the way this romance was so focused on the man and his inner life, trying to actively be able to identify the issue in his marriage and being both very willing and very motivated to take active steps to move forward in a healthier relationship. Also, the book is hilarious.

It is actually laugh-out-loud funny. I particularly loved that the 'girl gang' dynamic of a lot of books was replicated in Gavin's friend group; it showed humourous ways for men to be talking with each other about feminism and women in a very non-toxic way. There would be a joke, a sexual but not rude comment, a line of feminist thought, then a fart joke. Very approachable.

I am a bit torn about how to rate this book, books like this really let me see how silly a rating system at all can be. I really loved most of this book; I laughed and cried and was absolutely glued to the page because I HAD to see these two figure out their feelings and get back together. But I wasn't always quite as connected when it came to the nitty-gritty of their problems; an example of this is that I enjoyed the emotional stuff, but I wasn't that interested in the way sex was a cipher for marital harmony. I don't think this is bad or ineffective; I just think I am a person who is not married, does not have kids, and cannot relate to being in a relationship with someone where it isn't working, and I want to continue. So I think some of the very end of this book would have been more impactful if I related to these issues. I am 100% certain I will be recommending this book; I might even be rereading this book. And I am basically counting down the minutes until I can go get the sequel.

I had so much fun with this romance that, on the surface, does not seem to be targeted to me directly. I am so excited to keep reading this author. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who wants a rom-com that is certainly going to make you laugh out loud.

I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads and The StoryGraph.