Love it or Hate it? Isn’t It Bromantic by Lyssa Kay Adams | Book Review

Book 4 in the Bromance Book Club series was published about a week ago and I’d honestly forgotten this was coming out until it appeared up on my Instagram feed. This prompted me to get a Kindle copy.

I don’t have reviews of the previous books so let me briefly tell you what the series is about. A group of men start a book club and give each other relationship/romance advice based on the historical romances they read. Did I mention they’re hockey players? That definitely gives the story an interesting spin stereotypical as it is.

Things I liked:

• it reads very quickly;
• finally Vlad’s story – Russian hockey player moved to the USA to play for a Nashville team. We got glimpses of him in previous books as a true friend, but also an emotional man who sure loves his cheese;
• The Cheese Man and dairy industry conspiracies;
• the bits of conversations in Russian;
• the love of cooking and all those glorious meals got my mouth watering, I want some Russian pancakes now;
• the grand gesture moment and Colton shouting how they (the group of friends) always run for the grand gesture;
• the friend group and how they seamlessly accept Elena into the fold.

Things I didn’t quite like:

• didn’t care for the trafficking subplot, I understand the author wants to discuss some heavy topics (has been the case in all the books so far) but don’t think the execution was the best;
• the book within a book aspect was absolutely redundant, I still appreciate the scenes of Vlad trying to write it and the book club members helping to do so, but I did not care for the actual book scenes at all. They added little to the story other than increase the word count;
• the plot twist and how quickly and conveniently it all wrapped it was a bit much. I know it’s not a suspense novel but it could’ve been built up a bit better.

The writing is not spectacular but the idea is unlike other romances I’ve read so I give a point where a point is due. Vlad is a gem of a character and the friendship these people have is incredible. I wish we got a bit more time with Elena and learnt more about her family situation though, I found her character development somewhat lacking.

Overall, I’m happy we finally got Vlad’s story but the story itself was very underwhelming. I may have expected too much. That being said, I will read any future books in the series as I’d love to spend more time with this friend group.

Have you read this book? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below.