rubiecore 's review for:

Crazy Stupid Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams

3.0

emotional funny lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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well. i had one goal with this book: pallet cleanser after sunrise on the reaping so i didn’t fall into a reading slump. it did it’s job but i’m still a bit disappointed. i was excited to return to this series after having read the first two books so long ago and was excited to read more of the book club being goofy and just in general, the comedy that i remember loving from the first two. and for the most part, i did enjoy it! unfortunately, i just found both noah and alexis annoying after awhile.

noah was constantly annoyed and aggressive with everyone, particularly the book club members and while i was expecting some resistance to the book club, this just felt extremely childish. you are 31 years old, sure maybe you don’t have to “be a man” in the same way the token misogynistic old man of the book wants you to be, but can you at least act like you’ve lived in civil society??? PLEASE??? he had such a short fuse with everyone and it just made his eventual character development feel undeserved.

i also didn’t like how his hacktivist past was treated so harshly. as if he murdered someone when in reality, what he did was expose defense contractors and their corruption that got civilians and members of the military killed. maybe i’m simply too far on the left bc truly you couldn’t get me to hate him for that LMAOOOO. i didn’t fuck w him for other reasons but i would defend him against the characters who tried to paint him as this horrible person for his hacktivist past. probably the best part of his character tbh lmaoooo. whack em again for me noah.

as for alexis, she’s so much better than me. NO WAYYY would i be giving a kidney to the man who got my mom pregnant, abandoned me, and then stopped my half sister from reaching out to me for three years after finding out ab me. and i would’ve been more angry at said sister for not reaching out until our shared sperm donor needed a kidney. are you crazy? i understand her motivations for helping out her newfound family and for forging these new relationships but, after awhile the interactions she had with this family felt incredibly forced. also the conversation with her father in the cemetery felt incredibly childish. i thought i was reading a contemporary YA novel or watching a disney channel original movie where the main character finally stands up to their parents about quitting the sport they’ve been in since elementary school, how old is she again?

another issue i had with this was the weird treatment of “the Russian”. it’s been so long since i’ve read the first two books but i genuinely cannot remember if it was this bad in those ones?? there had to have been a way to make him the more aloof member of the bookclub without making him,,, act like a caveman??? not only has he not had an actual name throughout the whole series but, why are we also consistently painting him as a complete dumbass? is it to make naoh’s aggression look more tame? or is the author just incapable of writing him as anything other than a weird caricature for the laughs?

anyway, other than these issues, i was still able to enjoy my time with this book! it was a very quick listen and i really liked the slight sarcastic tone the narrator brought to the characters and overall narrative of the story. i mainly read this for cute and funny moments between the bookclub members and i do wish there was more of that,

but i loved how many of the moments we did get were framed around the guys doing traditionally “feminine” things in preparation for mack’s wedding.

i thought it was perfectly cheeky and enjoyable. this book is also so much spicier than the first two, which was unexpected but i didn’t really mind it too much. i do wish we had gotten to see more soft and tender moments between noah and alexis in place of some of those spicy scenes tho. it sometimes felt like we were told they had been best friends for over a year but didn’t really get to see it on page.