Review: Isn't It Bromantic?

Isn't It Bromantic? by Lyssa Kay Adams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

It's finally the turn of Vlad, the Russian ice-hockey player with the intestinal issues. Luckily they get cleared up very quickly LOL. For six years Vlad has been married to his childhood best friend Elena, madly in love with her since they were teenagers he offered her a marriage of convenience to leave Russia after her father, an investigative journalist, went missing, never to return. Elena has now finished her studies in Chicago and Vlad has plucked up the courage to tell her he wants a real marriage between them, only for her to tell him that she wants a divorce!

Just before Elena is about to return to Russia to start her career as an investigative journalist, and track down what really happened to her father and the people-trafficking business he was investigating, Vlad gets injured in a ice-hockey game and she is called in as his closest relative to help him.

Elena has always been grateful to her best friend for everything he's done for her, including the supreme sacrifice of a marriage of convenience. The least she can do is look after him while his leg is in plaster, even though it breaks her heart to love someone who doesn't love her back.

Can these childhood sweethearts find a way to communicate before it's too late?

There is still some of the slapstick elements from the previous books (personal view the Cheese Man should have been totally cut from the plot - it was stupid) but not too irritating. However, it was replaced by a bizarre self-referencing 'thing'. So Vlad and his friends are in a romance book club, but Vlad is also writing a WW2 romance where the characters bear an uncanny resemblance to him and Elena and we get to read extracts, and the book club talks about how romance novels are constructed and the need for conflict and resolution etc. Basically, for me, it started to feel like a bizarre English Lit class where a panel discuss literary devices and then you get to see (aka read) that device in action. It really acted as a disrupter for me, pulling me out of the story itself and back into literary critical theory.

I am rereading my reviews of the previous books in this series and I would say I like it more than the third book (Crazy Stupid Bromance) but not as much as the first two The Bromance Book Club and Undercover Bromance. I think the literary theory elements are similar to what I described as the banner-waving, right-on, bludgeoning the reader with PC messaging of the second book.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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