Crazy Stupid Bromance
By: Lyssa Kay Adams
Published Year: 2020
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 342
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): Alexis Carlisle and her cat café, ToeBeans, have shot to fame after she came forward as a victim of a celebrity chef’s sexual harassment. When a new customer approaches to confide in her, the last thing Alexis expects is for the woman to claim they’re sisters. Unsure what to do, Alexis turns to the only man she trusts—her best friend, Noah Logan.
Computer genius Noah left his rebellious teenage hacker past behind to become a computer security expert. Now he only uses his old skills for the right cause. But Noah’s got a secret: He’s madly in love with Alexis. When she asks for his help, he wonders if the timing will ever be right to confess his crush.
Noah’s pals in The Bromance Book Club are more than willing to share their beloved “manuals” to help him go from bud to boyfriend. But he must decide if telling the truth is worth risking the best friendship he’s ever had.
First Impression
I have read and enjoyed the first two books in this series (but apparently never reviewed the second one. whoops) and was curious about the characters in this one. I am a cat person so I was excited about the cat on the cover and the fact that it was going to be a book about Alexis who owns a cat café. However, Noah appeared in the last book and he wasn’t someone that I felt super drawn to. Either way, I know this series is solid so I added it to my lit.
What I thought
While I did enjoy this book, it’s admittedly my least favorite of the series so far. It felt like a book that was being used as a tool to get us from book 2 to book 4.
Noah and Alexis have become best friends for a year and a half (since the end of book 2) but there are some obviously not-so-secret feelings. When Alexis finds out that the father she never knew needs a kidney transplant and she may be the only option, her world gets turned upside down. Noah is, of course, dealing with his own stuff as well as his feelings for Alexis.
It was kind of hard to get fully invested in Noah and Alexis at first because all of the history and groundwork was laid before this book even started. In the last book, Alexis dealt with a lot being the person to come forward against a celebrity chef about sexual abuse and in this book she gets an entirely different but yet no less traumatizing drama to deal with. I wouldn’t have minded if some if the stories had been toned down a little. It felt like Adams had a whole bunch of ideas that she could go with and so she put the all in but then forgot to take out the ones that didn’t work as she went. For example, there’s a disgruntled business owner who is brought in very early on for once scene and then it appears like it will be an issue in the future and well, spoiler alert, it just fizzles out.
I also felt like this book was a lot of setup for character stories in future books. I know the next book is about The Russian and he was in it a bunch and for the first time a lot of questions were being asked about his wife. There was another new male character introduced named Carlton, and he was in the book a lot even though Noah seemingly didn’t like him.
Speaking of the Bromance Book Club, I feel like this book had the least amount of relation to the lessons and the book club itself. Yes, Noah was inducted and asked to read the book, but it seemed like an afterthought to everything going in. Everything that happened in this story could’ve moved forward without the book club concept and that made me a little sad.
All that being said, Noah and Alexis did grow on me and while their conflict drove me nuts, I did enjoy seeing them get together and see how things played out. They had a lot of common ground and I liked their comfort levels.
Right now, I’m feeling like this may be one you’re able to skip in the series. I liked the first two books a lot but this one was just ok for me. That’s not to say it was bad, just that a lot of it fell flat to me. I’m still looking forward to the next book in the series and hope that it picks back up.