Undercover Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams
Braden Mack believes that because he reads romance novels, he is an expert on love, but he will quickly learn that reality is superior to fiction.
As a sous chef at Nashville’s hottest restaurant, Liv Papandreas has the job of her dreams. Unfortunately, the renowned chef-owner lacks charisma when he is not in the kitchen. She confronts him after seeing him bullying a young hostess, and she is then fired. Liv swears to exact retribution, but she will require help to defeat the formidable chef.
Undercover Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams
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Unfortunately, doing so necessitates contacting Braden Mack. The charismatic nightclub owner offers to help Liv expose her ex-boss when she is shunned from the restaurant industry, but she is sceptical of his motivations. He’ll have to enlist the assistance of the Bromance Book Club.
The book club helps Liv put up a sting operation to catch the chef after being inspired by the romantic thriller book they’re currently reading. Even though Liv is desperate to put a stop to their chemistry before she gets burnt, they are just as anxious to help Mack find a way into her heart.
Adams creates a believable sense of a small community in Nashville where everyone seems to know one another. Liv Papandreas squares up against her celebrity chef boss, who threatens to ruin her name after she unintentionally catches him in a lewd situation. She accepts Braden Mack’s assistance with much reluctance because he initially wants to make amends for his role in the incidents that led to her termination.
But when Mack learns Liv’s entire account, he jumps in headfirst—and for the right reasons. The members of “The Bromance Book Club” support their leader in a sincere and humorous manner. And these “Me Too” moments will be felt.
This series just keeps getting better, and this episode featured Liv and Mack as its main characters. Liv (Olivia) was a fierce, independent woman who aspired to own her own restaurant and worked tirelessly to make that goal a reality. In the book club, Mack (Braden Mack), a self-made businessman who owned several nightclubs and was the stereotypical playboy bachelor, started to desire to settle down and find his own partner since everyone else was married or in a committed relationship. Each one had a dream they wanted to come true, but they also had their own challenges to overcome.
Although “enemies to lovers” was a theme in this novel, in my opinion, it was more about Liv treating Mack badly and Mack trying to win Liv over. Personally, that’s all I could think of as I read this book.
Anyway, I enjoyed the humour and the way Liv handled everything with a certain degree of ruthlessness. By this, I mean that she was tenacious rather than the stereotypical “damsel in distress.” Despite Liv being a strong woman, she did have trouble living up to expectations of herself and letting go of a prior self that regarded her as a failure, a wild child, etc. Her harshest critic was Liv, and anytime she felt sorry for herself, all I wanted to do was hold her.
On the other side, Mack appeared to have everything under control at the beginning of the book, from acquiring a new location for his company to maybe intensifying things with his date, but sadly, things didn’t work out with Gretchen, his lawyer date. Mack had always seen the other men in the book club be content in their own relationships, which inspired Mack to envision his own future and to consider who “the one” might be.
