Monday 12 October 2020

The Bromance Book Club

Finished October 10
The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

This romance novel has a lot of humour and some pretty graphic scenes. It is the first in a series (as I'm writing this there are four books) that deal with romance and relationships in Nashville. It's different because there is a strong focus on the men's side of things in these relationships.
In this first book in the series professional baseball player Gavin Scott is having a crisis. He fell in love and married quickly when his girlfriend Thea became pregnant, just before he hit the majors. Now it is five years later, and his wife and him have been growing further apart for a variety of reasons. When an intimate encounter enlightens him to the fact that Thea has been faking orgasms for years, he can't deal with it, and reacts badly. Thea is now asking for a divorce and he is panicking. Enter the men's book club (it only gains the name on the cover towards the end of the novel). Some of his team members are in the book club, but so are other professional sports players and men with other high-level profiles in town. They are set on helping him save his marriage, and assign him a Regency romance book as homework. It takes him a while to understand that they are serious and to take the assignment seriously, but he begins to understand that his problems aren't really about the sex, but go much deeper. As he learns to communicate better with his wife and show his caring in ways that she can see, things improve.
The other men aren't shown in depth here, but future novels in the series focus on different men, so each gets his focused look. We also see some parts of the story from Thea's viewpoint and see how her background shaped her and the beliefs she has about relationships.
The intimacy not only of the relationship between these two characters, but of their family life as well brings depth to their story. I could already see one future romance on the horizon for the series too.
A fun read, with a different angle and more depth than at first glance. Looking forward to the next one, and have already put it on hold at my local library.

No comments:

Post a Comment