THE BROMANCE BOOK CLUB (Bromance Book Club Series #1) by LYSSA KAY ADAMS

‘A lonely marriage is the worst kind of lonely there is.’

The premise of this story set our hearts aflutter! A couple desperate to reconnect, a book club for men discussing romance books…sign us up! There were aspects we really enjoyed about this story and parts that didn’t quite connect.

The first rule of Bromance book club…you guessed it; you don’t talk about the goings on in the boys’ Bookclub outside the walls of the inner sanctum. It’s a secret place for men to read romance novels to better ‘understand’ their wives, their wants, their needs and to try and emotionally connect with their other halves when all seems lost. And Gavin Scott is most definitely lost.

“I’m at your mercy Thea. From the moment I first saw you, I have been half a man, because you’ve always held the other half of me.”

When Nashville’s much loved Second Baseman, Gavin realises his wife Thea, the woman who owns his heart, has been faking the Big O for the past few years, he’s devastated, hurt and humiliated. His way of coping is to shut down and ignore Thea. Thea’s had enough and asks him to move out which he readily does.

Gavin is lost, bereft, drowning in a bottle of whiskey and missing Thea and his beautiful twin daughters Amelia and Ava desperately. He wants her back, he wants their marriage to work and wants to start afresh but has no idea where to start.

Enter his Nashville Legends buddies to the rescue. They invite him to book club introducing him to the word of bodice ripping regency romance, in an effort to help their buddy rekindle the spark and connect with his and Thea’s feelings through romance novels.

This was a story of two people, for whom their pasts are very much a third (and fourth) person in their marriage. On the surface, Thea is the one carrying the baggage from her childhood but as they begin to rediscover one another again, communicating more, we find the sweet vulnerable Gavin, also carries scars which have influenced some of his decisions.

“You make it sound like things were horrible between us, Thea. They weren’t.”
“Is that the highest standard you aim for? Not horrible?”

We have to say, from the get-go, Gavin had our hearts. We felt so sorry for him and willed Thea to give him a break. Gavin wasn’t a bad person, he hadn’t cheated, he loved his wife, but both had lost a bit of themselves along the way. On the other hand, we did understand Thea’s reaction and the impact her childhood played in her decision making and how adrift she had become from Gavin.

“Backstory is everything, Thea. Dig into yours.”

The parts that didn’t work for us first up was Thea’s sister Liv. She grated on our every nerve and only seemed intent on having Thea to herself, berating and belittling Gavin at every opportunity. She didn’t let up and it wore us down. Also, we adore stories with children and found Ava and Amelia to be little sweethearts, however, their actions and speech didn’t reflect their toddler age of 3 – they came across as school-age children which took us out of the moment more than a few times.

We wish there had been more focus on the boys and their book club, as the moments spent with them gave us a right chuckle, and we look forward to catching up with them throughout the series.