The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

Narrated by Andrew Eiden and Maxwell Caulfield

There was quite a bit of pre-publication buzz about The Bromance Book Club, and the synopsis – a guy woos his wife with the help of romance novels – sounded intriguing, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that what really prompted me to pick it up for review was the name of the main narrator, whose alter-ego is a very well-known, very popular and extremely good narrator of contemporary romances.

Baseball star Gavin Scott has been happily (as far as he knows) married to Thea for three years. They dated only briefly before they married after discovering that their twin girls were on the way, and have settled into their lives as parents and partners, a life in which Gavin’s job sees him frequently away from home and oblivious to the effect his absences and the demands his profession make on Thea are having on their marriage. Things come to a head one night when Gavin learns that Thea has been faking orgasms for practically the entirety of their marriage; he takes it really badly and, furious and upset, moves into the guest room before leaving the house the next day and holing up in a hotel.

It’s here that a group of his friends and teammates find him, totally shit-faced and full of self-pity, a few days later, and decide an intervention is in order. It seems that most or all of them have been in similar situations in the past, and have mended and rekindled their relationships by using romance novels to help them to better understand the women in their lives:

“ Romance novels are … entirely about how [women] want to be treated and what they want out of life and in a relationship. We read them to be more comfortable expressing ourselves and to look at things from their perspective.”

Gavin is, of course, very sceptical about this, but having no better ideas, decides to go along with it. The book chosen for him – Courting the Countess – is a Regency romance featuring a marriage in trouble, excerpts of which are dotted throughout the novel and which the author uses to good effect to illuminate Gavin’s situation. He’s got a lot of work to do, not least of which is persuading Thea to give him a chance to win her back and then finding a way to get around her defences so they can reconnect with each other – and he’s only got a month in which to do it.

The Bromance Book Club is full of wry humour as the author plays around with romance tropes, and it’s very meta in places with plenty of inside jokes. But there are times when that just doesn’t work and the words coming out of characters’ mouths sound like something out of a lesson on feminism and gender studies:

“Modern romance novelists use the patriarchal society of old British aristocracy to explore the gender-based limitations placed on women today in both the professional and personal spheres.”

Says one of member of the club. (They’re all professional athletes, btw.)

“The backlash against the PSL [Pumpkin Spiced Latte] is a perfect example of how toxic masculinity permeates even the most mundane things in life. If masses of women like something, our society automatically begins to mock them. Just like romance novels. If women like them, they must be a joke, right?”

Says another.

I’m not saying I disagree with either of those statements. But in context of the novel, they sound like completely unsubtle tub-thumping on the part of the author and don’t feel true to the character voices at all.

I really liked Gavin, who is a decent bloke trying to do the right thing and a wonderful mixture of sweetness and strength. Thea’s bombshell and subsequent request for a divorce hit him completely out of the blue, but he’s willing to learn, to really think about what has driven Thea to the place she’s in and to do whatever he needs to do to make things right. But I found it hard to warm to Thea, who is, to start with, completely unwilling to try to find a way to compromise. Regardless of the fact that she and Gavin had two young children to consider, it’s all about what she wants. I’m not saying that she doesn’t have a point; she had no real time to come to terms with what her life would be like as the wife of a professional athlete, she felt ‘unseen’ and that she’d gradually submerged her personality into the perfect WAG – and there’s no question that Gavin was oblivious to what was happening – possibly deliberately ignoring Thea’s unhappiness because he didn’t want to have to deal with it. But on the other hand, she never broached the subject with him, never gave him an inkling that all was not well with her, and with the best will in the world none of us is a mind reader.

But the author does a good job of exploring the reasons behind Thea’s reluctance to trust Gavin again, and of showing how they both have issues they need to address individually as well as as a couple if they’re going to repair their marriage and move forward together.

And… this may be a small thing but it bugged me because it’s the basis for the whole book; we’re told that Gavin realises Thea has been faking it in bed because on one particular night she doesn’t, but we’re also told that before they married, they had a healthy and successful sex life, implying that Thea had orgasms. If he can tell the difference between O and no-O well enough to realise she’s not faking it on the night everything falls apart, how did he not notice before?

Andrew Eiden is an experienced, talented performer and is one of my favourite narrators, although up until now, I’ve only ever heard him as the alter ego I mentioned at the beginning. But regardless of the name he’s using, he delivers a performance that’s every bit as good as I’ve come to expect from him. His pacing is excellent and he expertly differentiates between all the characters, providing believable voices for the female cast by means of a slight rise in pitch and softening of timbre, and his interpretation of Gavin is spot on, capturing the many facets of his character perfectly. I was particularly impressed by the way he renders Gavin’s stammer – as the parent of a child who stammers, I really appreciated his naturalistic approach and lack of exaggeration. The ‘story within a story’ chapters from Courting the Countess are read by British actor Maxwell Caulfield (whom I vaguely remember as something of a teen heartthrob back in the eighties!), whose clipped, upper-crust tones are perfect for its aristocratic hero and heroine.

In spite of the issues I had with some aspects of the story and writing, I did enjoy listening to The Bromance Book Club. Andrew Eiden’s performance really delivers on the emotional content of the story as well as its more humorous aspects, and both performances considerably enhanced the story and my enjoyment of it.

Caz

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Buy The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams on Amazon