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I don’t usually read contemporary romance, but I liked the premise of Lyssa Kay Adams’s The Bromance Book Club and was curious to see what book the guys would pick up next. My hope was that each novel would deal with a different sub-genre of romance, and in Undercover Bromance, the Club has some insights into romantic suspense. However, the story was something of a mixed bag, and not quite up to the high standard of Ms. Adams’ debut.
Braden Mack wants to prove to his friends in the Club that he can get married, as opposed to being a perennial flirt. He takes his girlfriend to a fancy restaurant and orders their thousand-dollar cupcake, intending to propose to her afterwards. Unfortunately the pastry chef drops the cupcake in his girlfriend’s lap by accident, and the evening goes downhill from there, since his girlfriend can tell that their date is a performance designed to achieve a certain goal. So she dumps him.
The pastry chef, Liv Papandreau, has a problem too. Royce, the owner of the restaurant, is furious, so Liv goes to his office to face the music. But she overhears Royce pressuring another chef, Jessica, for sex. Liv goes ballistic and storms in to help, only to find Jessica refusing to admit that anything inappropriate happened, because she needs her job. And then Liv is fired.
Mack stumbles across her moments later, and when he gets the truth out of her (about the firing, not the harassment), he offers her a job in a bar he owns. Liv shoves him out of her way, but later thinks that Mack could hire Jessica. Like her, Mack is enraged when he hears about what Jessica endures to remain employed, but he also realizes that they need to stop Royce. Which means working together, no matter how much Liv snarls that she hates men in general and him in particular.
So, let’s start with the characters. Mack has a lot of baggage regarding his past, which is one reason he’s determined not to allow a man to prey on women if he can help it. He’s also smooth, successful and good-looking, which is a winning combination if readers can get past the winking. This is his go-to gesture when he flirts, and since he does that almost constantly, he winks over twenty times in the story. It became like a nervous tic. Still, he’s good hero material. I especially liked the fact that he checked in with one of his employees to ask if he was making her feel uncomfortable.
Liv, on the other hand, is… difficult to like. Readers who don’t mind a prickly heroine might find her palatable, but I found her exhausting. She was angry a lot of the time, which is understandable, given her circumstances, but it took her some time to realize that other women might have reasons for not rocking the boat. She gets better towards the end, but before that, I wouldn’t have confided in her about sexual assault unless I wanted to deal with an explosion.
Mack has it worse, though. Rather than telling her his father is abusive, he lets her believe his father is dead, so when she discovers the truth, she takes this as more evidence that men can’t be trusted and breaks up with him. This is clearly the Obligatory Separation, as the book club would put it, which didn’t make this part of the story seem either original or well-plotted.
Speaking of the book club, just as they do in the first book, the guys flip each other off, and the Russian is a comic relief character defined by his bowel functions (good thing he wasn’t called, say, “the Pakistani”). But he gets a name at the end, which brings me hope that he’ll have some character development soon. And I enjoyed reading the men’s take on a sub-genre where women are often placed in danger so men can rescue them. I just wished there had been more of this, because the very engaging discussion was confined to a single scene.
Ultimately, while Undercover Bromance wasn’t a bad read, it wasn’t outstanding either. The author should be commended for tackling the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace, but the serious plot where the hero and heroine team up to bring down a predator often clashed with the humor, and I can’t say the romance worked for me. The story did make me want to read the next in the series, though, and I hope Ms. Adams will have another hit with that one.
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Grade: C+
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 23/07/20
Publication Date: 03/2020
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I'm Marian, originally from Sri Lanka but grew up in the United Arab Emirates, studied in Georgia and Texas, ended up in Toronto. When I'm not at my job as a medical laboratory technologist, I read, write, do calligraphy, and grow vegetables in the back yard.
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The previous book had some big issues but yep, this did not improve upon them.
One thing I missed was the excerpts from the romance-within-a-romance that paralleled what was happening in the story. This book only had one such scene included. I hope the next in the series will focus a bit more on the premise of the book club.
I reviewed the audiobook of this one when it came out, and had very similar reactions. I hadn’t liked Liv all that much in the first book – she was ranty and shrill and not likeable, and as a result I hadn’t intended to review this one, but was asked to do it as a favour! I, too, had real problems with Liv’s disregard of her colleague’s requests: I wrote – Liv had the best intentions, but she was so pushy that it felt like she was harassing Jessica just because the other woman wouldn’t do what Liv wanted.
I like the concept behind the series and in this one, that the author changed it up and instead of having a guy who had no idea how to “woo”, as in book one, had the hero as a guy who was too good at it, and I like the friendships between the club members. So far, they’ve been the best parts of both books – the romances have not exactly been stellar. I may continue with the series, but only in audio because they’ve got a terrific narrator.
I read this book the day it came out, I really enjoyed the first in this series.
Unfortunately, I found it a bad read.
– Repetitive, juvenile dialogue that did not move forward,
– A total disrespect by both h/H for the repeated explicit requests for confidentiality on a super sensitive topic – basically, you started knowing that every time someone said “please respect this confidence” they would instantly call in others and inform them of all details… h/H, sister, all other persons – there was not one trustworthy person in the lot (this triggered me strongly, I felt like there was no serious damage done only because this is a feel good romance book, it would have meant horrors in any other genre),
– characters that behaved like pasteboard cutouts: the older gent, the older lady, etc.
– no sign of rational thinking and planning until very late in the plot,
I liked that she tackled sexual harassment and did not downplay it to be easy to solve, explaining the power differential well, I like her idea for the book club, I like her showing the guys friendship evolving (though I doubt that these guys could exist in real, it was totally over the top in this book, how they related, for me), so I really regretted how much I disliked this book.
I will probably wait for the review of the next one, or only download a sample first.
I am sad that this just went sideways so fast, I was happy with the first book and I adored the idea.
Agreeing with your review & comments above, as well.
Forgot to mention that – and cannot access the edit function
i read this and agree exactly with you and the review
Thank you both!
I love the idea for the book club, especially since the guys take it seriously, and the author uses their discussions to analyze what works or what doesn’t about romance. That was inspired. But yeah, the problems dragged this book down. I still plan to read the next, but only after the library gets a copy.