Undercover Bromance (Bromance Book Club #2) by Lyssa Kay Adams

Undercover Bromance | Bromance Book Club #2 | Lyssa Kay Adams
March 10th 2020 | Berkley
Source: Library

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.

As soon as I learned that Mack and Liv were going to be the main couple of this story, I was nervous. As much as I liked Mack in the previous book, I was not a fan of Liv. I could tell that there were a lot of emotions that Liv needed to work through especially when it came to the relationship with her father. In the end, however, I liked Liv even less in this book than in the previous one.

I think one of the things that I struggled with was all of the different plot points going on in this story. We have Mack's life and background, Liv's life and background, their love story, the bromance book club and helping Liv take down the chef. Can y'all tell that it's a lot going on? I felt as though Lyssa Kay Adams handled the plot lines well but this book could have been even better without a few of them. At the end of the day, I felt like all of the plot lines weren't given the due credit. I found Liv exceptionally hard to really like because I felt like she needed to get some therapy. Mack's story line was just introduced and moved on from as if it didn't matter. The novel the book club reads during this book didn’t fit into the serious topics covered in the story. Again, I felt like there were too many plotlines going on and not enough time was given to each of them. The overall plot of Undercover Bromance is extremely serious and I think the playful tone of the bookclub didn’t fit all that well.

The plot line with the chef that fires Liv was also well done. It's a plot line that's very relevant today and in many ways, that's what made it hard to read. It's so frustrating to know that so many people have been abused but haven't had the power to talk about it. The fear of repercussion is so strong for many and I really felt for the women.

I am the kind of person who needs to love her characters and because I didn’t like Liz, and thought Mack was simply okay, I didn’t root for the romance as much either. Liv isn't easy to be around and loving her wasn't easy either but Mack really came up to par. Both of them were able to realize that trusting other people wouldn't be the worst thing that's happened to them. Still, this wasn’t enough to save the book for me.