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Title : Undercover Bromance
Author: Lyssa Kay Adams
Sub-genre: Contemporary
Content Warning: Sexual harassment and assault on the page; confrontation of sexual predator; victim blaming
Okay. I went into this one not as excited as I originally was, after hearing about some of the sexual harassment stuff. I LOVED Bromance Book Club and was super stoked for this book when it was announced. But I definitely read some reviews that made me a little less excited. In the end, I liked it more than I expected to.
Liv (Thea from book one’s sister) is a pastry chef working in a fancy Nashville restaurant for an asshole of a boss. When a customer knocks into her and she drops a $1000 cupcake, she gets fired. When she goes to talk with her boss, she overhears him harassing and assaulting one of the restaurant’s hostesses. Liv is beyond angry, yells at her boss, pressures the girl into leaving with her, and when the girl refuses, storms out. Where she runs into the customer who knocked into her, Bromance Book Club member Mack. Mack and Liv had a confrontation in the first book and already don’t like each other. But once Mack finds out what the boss did to the hostess, he decides to team up with Liv to try to take him down. Along with the other members of the Bromance Book Club, the two work together to stage a coup at the boss’s new cookbook release event. Of course, along the way, Liv and Mack fall in love and have to deal with both of their emotional scars in order to find happiness with one another. In the end, the bad guy gets caught and they all live happily ever after.
So first and foremost, I think it’s important to say that the way Liv treats the victims in this book is pretty terrible. More than once, she badgers them to come forward, and shames them when they say they don’t want to. She gets called out for this behavior, and eventually realizes she is going about everything in the wrong way, but the words are there on the page, and I imagine they would be difficult for any survivor to read. It also makes it really hard to like Liv. Because despite her best intentions, she’s about as anti-feminist a heroine as I’ve seen in a long time. And she thinks she’s super duper feminist, which is tough. I did come around to her in the end because once she opens up and allows herself to be vulnerable, I think it makes a lot of her actions make more sense. That doesn’t make it right, but at least it’s something.
The main reason I liked this book was because of Mack. I think Mack is everything we want in a contemporary hero. He’s snarky and charming and sarcastic (traits I love in a man), but underneath the swagger he is all mush ball. He wants to snuggle, and he reads romance novels, and he is there for his friends. And unlike Liv, he actually is a feminist. He supports all of the women in the story in a way that I wish were more prevalent in real life. I also really enjoyed further getting to know the other members of the Bromance Book Club. The book opens with them all going into a bookstore to buy a romance novel–no hiding, no saying it’s for their sister–and they’re all rightfully horrified by the store’s tiny romance section. I think every romance reader can relate to that feeling. The relationship the guys have is by far the highlight of this book.
The other aspect that made me a little eh was the way the whole ending shakedown scene played out. It felt very unrealistic, and it plays out with both Mack and Liv not actually being there, so we didn’t get to see it happening, we only heard it. I didn’t love that. And the whole thing felt a little too easy.
There were lots of moments and choices in this book that weren’t my favorite. But I think there were enough good moments to at least cancel out the icks. I’m glad I went into this one with some idea of what to expect, I think it made it easier for me to get through it. I will continue to read the series because I do love Lyssa’s voice and her wit, but I’m hoping for something a little less heavy in the next go around.
Overall Rating: 4 stars
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