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Title: Crazy Stupid Bromance
Author: Lyssa Kay Adams
Sub-genre: Contemporary
Publication Date: October 27, 2020
Trope(s): Friends to lovers
Content Warnings: sexual harassment (not on page); victim blaming; seriously ill parent; death of parent (off page)
Okay, some mixed feelings on this one, and I’ll go into more details about some of the content warnings too.
Alexis (one of the sexual harassment victims from Undercover Bromance) and her business partner have turned their cat cafe into a safe haven for fellow sexual harassment/assault survivors. It’s well know that survivors can come to the cafe to talk about their experiences and find a place to meet with other survivors, so when a new customer pulls Alexis aside one day, she assumes the girl is ready to open up about her own assault. But she is shocked to learn the girl is actually her little sister. Alexis never knew her father, but the sister finds her through one of those DNA sites and seeks her out because their dad (who Alexis has never once met) needs a kidney transplant. With Alexis’s whole life thrown into a state of upheaval, she turns to her best friend Noah (who we also met in Undercover Bromance, he’s the hacker). Noah is a successful business owner, kind of grumpy yet sweet, and hopelessly in love with Alexis. Things with Alexis and Noah progress, but they struggle navigating the road from friends to lovers, especially in the midst of dealing with Alexis’s decision as to whether or not she should help her dad and Noah’s unprocessed grief over his own father’s death. Of course, in the end, it all gets sorted and they live happily ever after.
So since this is a romance, let’s start with the love story. Alexis and Noah are fantastic together. I’m becoming more and more of a friends to lovers fan, and I think this one was really well done. They’re so sweet together, and very protective of each other, and for the most part, I really liked how their relationship unfolded and evolved. Noah, for the most part, is a super dreamy hero who takes very good care of Alexis, which made my heart happy. Were this book only about their relationship, I think it would have been a five star read for me.
Some of the other moments in the book were tough for me though, and not necessarily because the writing or story wasn’t good–I’d actually argue they were very well written hence my *feelings*–it just felt like a lot of trauma. SPOILER ALERT: When Alexis first meets her dad, his wife, and her brother, none of them even know she exists. The younger sister springs Alexis on the family like ta-da here’s our kidney donor, oh by the way she’s dad’s daughter no one knew about, and their reactions (rightfully? understandably?) are not great. The way Alexis is treated by this group of people who then turn around and ask her to give up an organ from her body is pretty appalling. It made my viscerally angry. So again, I think that speaks to the quality of the writing, but it was just not super enjoyable to read.
The one real misstep in the book for me was actually a big bummer because it came from the Bromance Book Club, who I think we all fell in love with in the first book of this series. When Noah and Alexis kiss for the first time, they are both a bit buzzed, and when Noah pauses things to check in with Alexis, she takes it as he is rejecting her and runs off. What he’s actually doing is checking for consent, which is, you know, VERY IMPORTANT. When Noah relays the story to the bros, they chastise him for stopping things and making Alexis feel like he didn’t want her and that is not the look I want from these guys. As self-professed readers of the genre, they should be well-versed in the rules–verbal consent always and often.
For me the mixed feelings come as a result of being able to see this book is well done, while at the same time, not feeling like it was a fun one to read. And again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, not every romance has to be light and fluffy, but for me personally, it felt like too much.
Overall Rating: 4 stars
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