Undercover Bromance
(Bromance Book Club #2)
by Lyssa Kay Adams
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: March 10, 2020
Genre: Romance
Rating:
Braden Mack thinks reading romance novels makes him an expert in love, but he’ll soon discover that real life is better than fiction.
Liv Papandreas has a dream job as a sous chef at Nashville’s hottest restaurant. Too bad the celebrity chef owner is less than charming behind kitchen doors. After she catches him harassing a young hostess, she confronts him and gets fired. Liv vows revenge, but she’ll need assistance to take on the powerful chef.
Unfortunately, that means turning to Braden Mack. When Liv’s blackballed from the restaurant scene, the charismatic nightclub entrepreneur offers to help expose her ex-boss, but she is suspicious of his motives. He’ll need to call in reinforcements: the Bromance Book Club.
Inspired by the romantic suspense novel they’re reading, the book club assists Liv in setting up a sting operation to take down the chef. But they’re just as eager to help Mack figure out the way to Liv’s heart… even though she’s determined to squelch the sparks between them before she gets burned.
When Liv is fired from her job as the sous chef of a swanky restaurant, she decides to fight back. She knew her boss was a mean s.o.b, but she had no clue that he sexually harassed and blackmailed his female employees. Once Liv realizes this, she makes it her mission to take him down and expose him. The only problem is, he is rich and famous, and she’s just his ex sous chef. However, with the help of Braden and the Bromance Club, she has a shot of exposing him.
This was an interesting read. We met Liv in the previous book where she was all cut throat about her sister divorcing her husband, Gavin. She has a cynical side when it comes to romance, and she has trust issues with men. So, you can imagine how her relationship with Braden starts off. However, as these two work together, Liv’s walls start to come down around Braden. It takes the entire book for Liv to start to see how wrong she’s been about everything. She is very opinionated and can be a bit pushy in just about a lot of things.
Which brings me to the touchy subject of sexual harassment. Technically this is the whole purpose of these two coming together, to take down a sexual predator. However, I felt like the severity of that issue was overlooked or glossed over by this romantic comedy. I mean, this man did heinous things to his female employees then made them sign a NDA and paid them off. He got away with it for years because none of the women came forward. However, when Liv walks in on his latest victim, she goes on a mission to take him down. However, she accuses the victims of enabling him by not speaking out. She gets angry at them for not fighting back. Now, I get that this is a character flaw, but between Liv’s actions/thoughts and the fact that a lot of the time I forgot about the whole sexual predator thing due to the comedy and romance taking over, I just felt like this wasn’t the appropriate book for this type of topic. It just lacked the severity of what was going on.
This wasn’t a bad story by any means, but I didn’t enjoy this one as much as the first. I didn’t feel that connection between the two characters. I didn’t care that the serious topic seemed to be overlooked a lot. I still look forward to reading the next book in the series. This is a very interesting concept where macho men get together to read romance novels to better understand the woman psyche. It’s just that this particular story didn’t really do it for me.
Previous reviews from Bromance Book Club
The Bromance Book Club
Too bad for this one. I must admit, the covers and premise for this series is super cute.
I really thought I would like these more, but they were just missing something for me.