The Bromance Book Club, in which some macho athletes use romance novels to improve their real-life relationships

Title: The Bromance Book Club
Author: Lyssa Kay Adams
Publication: Berkley, Trade Paperback, 2019
Genre: Romance

Plot: Pro baseball player Gavin Scott has a beautiful wife, Thea, and three-year-old twins, and what he thinks is a perfect life until he learns his wife has been faking orgasms since their marriage.  Hurt and ashamed, he moves out and Thea asks for a divorce.  Drinking himself to oblivion in a motel, Gavin is visited by his best friend Del and several other athletes and Nashville notables who urge him to join their secret group, which uses romance novels to improve their ability to understand and please the women in their lives.  Gavin is skeptical but has no better options, reluctantly accepting a pile of romance novels, including Courting the Countess, a regency historical that has some parallels with his situation.  Under the tutelage of this ramshackle group, he persuades Thea to let him move back in for one month, with the goal of winning her back.  During this time, he will try to show he understands her needs, convince her of his love, and cope with those who don’t want Gavin and Thea to have a HEA . . .

My Impressions: I don’t remember who recommended this book to me but I usually enjoy contemporary romance with a sports theme and found this entertaining and often amusing, if not quite as charming as I had hoped. While the source of Gavin and Thea’s problem is meant to be funny, their real issue is that they married quickly when Thea was pregnant, and the lifestyle/absences of a professional athlete put a strain on their marriage while they were still developing their relationship.   Now they have to decide if they want to work through their problems or just bail.

Thea and her sister Liv both have a lot of baggage from their parents’ unhappy marriage and divorce.  Their father is about to remarry someone close to them in age and their mother’s bitterness has rebounded on her daughters.  Gavin also (although this is less convincing, given that he is a handsome, talented athlete) has struggled to believe he could find a loving relationship.   The premise of the story is that until they can share their feelings and their troubled pasts, there cannot be a true meeting of the minds.  Thea also has a lot of resentment that Gavin’s job takes him away from home a lot and she dropped out of college after their marriage (not sure why as they can certainly afford a babysitter if she wanted to continue her studies either full or part-time).   Although Gavin’s attempts to woo her are sometimes poignant and sometimes funny – as when he takes her on a date to a craft warehouse to show he understands her interests, and his buddies stalk them in disguise), it takes Thea going to her father’s wedding to understand some truths about her own marriage, not to mention a grand gesture from Gavin to work everything out. I definitely enjoyed this enough to read the second book about Thea’s sister!

Harvard freshman Chris Ledlum (4) has been the Ivy League
Rookie-of-the-Week five times

Off the Blog: It was a busy basketball weekend with two “eyelash wins” by the Crimson over Princeton (61-60)and Penn (69-65), and a disappointing double OT loss by the University of Chicago to Brandeis (cheering for a family friend).  I managed to squeeze in a few hours at our VITA tax site as well.

Source: Library