A review by deepbutdazzlingdarkness
The Boyfriend Subscription by Steven Salvatore

3.0

I have mixed feelings about this. It’s a fun tropey premise and I read it in one sitting, and I enjoyed most of it. When we got to the conflict at the climax…okay, because of the short time frame, it’s understandable that they didn’t immediately trust each other, but making assumptions believing that this person you like so much is a huge liar when it’s OBVIOUS that they’re not involved in the shady shit is just…ugh.

Especially combined with the other romance novel trope I hate which is the characters falling in love in a comically short period of time. At least the characters acknowledge that it’s ridiculous here, but come on. Also the fact that every time I thought the conflict was over it resurfaced…it’s not even a 200 page book and this happened multiple times!!!!!

Also this might just be me being nitpicky, but POVs changed so often that sometimes I did get confused whose POV we were in (not helped by the formatting, since they always happened in the middle of the page, but this was an ARC, so idk if it was on purpose or not). I was planning on giving this 2 stars, but I liked them as a couple and the ending made me cry, so I bumped it up one.

Oh also it’s written in present tense?? I hardly EVER notice that kind of thing when I’m reading fic, but it did stand out to me here and was kind of jarring.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin for the digital copy, all opinions are my own.