Series: Bromance Book Club, #5
Traits & Tropes: grumpy heroine; sunshine hero; hero falls first; famous hero
Publication Date: 11.01.22
Genre/Setting: Contemporary; Nashville, TN, USA
Heat Level:
Rating: 3/5
Country music star Colton Wheeler recognized what he felt when he was with Gretchen Winthrop, but unfortunately for him, she didn’t agree. It’s been a year since their one night together and he’s struggling to keep his music career on track. He’d definitely be sinking into some depression if he didn’t love the Christmas season so much and have a great support system in the Bromance Book Club.
Workaholic immigration attorney Gretchen loathes Christmas. She struggles to enjoy the frivolity of the seasons when her clients are struggling to feed their families. When her wealthy, estranged family offers her the opportunity to serve on the board of their charitable foundation, she can’t turn it down. Unfortunately, the offer comes with a catch: she has to convince Colton to do a public endorsement of her family’s whiskey.
Colton tells Gretchen he’ll consider the offer if she goes on three dates with him before Christmas. As Colton works to show Gretchen the magic of Christmas and the validity of the spark between them, they’ll have to deal with some ghosts from their pasts to create a future together.
I wanted to love this so much more than I did. I was expecting a lot more Christmas and a lot more bromance, so I was just a little bit letdown. I think my main issue here was Gretchen herself. She definitely came off as a bit too poor little rich girl for me. I didn’t like the fact that she was allowed to be so mean to Colton with no consequences, but when he’s had enough and is a bit mean back to her, it has to be a big deal. I wasn’t a fan of that double standard and I think that right there is what’s wrong with feminism today. Otherwise, there were also a ton of filler characters that we didn’t really need and I’m not sure why they had page time, the entire staff of the record company for example.
There was a lot more drama and angst here and a lot less Christmas than I wanted. I also could’ve done without the heavy-handed politics, especially in the first half of the book. It definitely didn’t set me up for the warm Christmas fuzzies I was craving. I did love the male friendships here and how they were openly affectionate and supportive of one another. However, much of the time rather than bromance what we really got was the guys ragging on Colton and warning him not to hurt Gretchen when he was clearly the more vulnerable one in their relationship. When he wound up being the one to get hurt, they still did apologize for not seeing his feelings. In fact, Colton’s feelings kept getting glossed over by literally every character in this book. His mom was the only one who saw that he tried to be happy for everyone else and hide any sadness or loneliness he felt. I so wanted to explore this more and have his friends come to this realization, but it’s barely touched on and that felt like such a missed opportunity. When Colton was sad, his friends didn’t really take him seriously and it definitely seemed like the book club boys were really just there for some occasional comic relief less than to be actual supportive friends.
I think Gretchen gave her family way too much power over her, especially after such a long estrangement. I just kept feeling puzzled and asking myself why she cared. This definitely made me appreciate the found family aspect of the book club, even if Gretchen still never really embraced it. Gretchen had her reasons and past traumas to blame for much of her behavior, but I still found her problematic, and I didn’t think Colton deserved to have to work so hard to reassure her and then receive nothing in return. He should’ve gotten some security in the relationship too. Instead, it seemed like she worked pretty hard to keep him feeling uncertain and certainly not loved or wanted. In fact, this just made Gretchen seem toxic rather than sympathetic because she’s perfectly fine with letting Colton feel insecure and unsure of her if it means she can have the upper hand and not open herself up to him.
In the end, I wanted to know more about why the alcoholic, philandering brother was so tolerated by the rest of the family. I think Gretchen should’ve been asking Colton’s forgiveness and not the other way around. He may have been less than kind to her, but he did say some things she needed to hear. I definitely got fed up and a little bit bored with her constantly running away. She wasn’t there for him emotionally when he needed her, so the relationship felt incredibly one-sided.
This bit of one-dimensionality wasn’t helped by the fact that Gretchen is grumpy, likes helping people (so she says, though we don’t really see her actually being nice to anyone), and prone to running away when things get tough. That’s about it for her character. She got fleshed out a bit more toward the end, but it was a bit too little too late for me after how hateful she’d been to him. Colton was adorable, but I have zero clue as to why he was so steadfastly attracted to Gretchen. The meaner she was to him, the more he liked her, and I will never like that in a romance. He was actually really sweet, and she literally told him she was embarrassed to be seen with him, yet he keeps coming back for more. We know there is a caring person beneath Gretchen’s shell, but all the grumpiness was just on another level and it hard to believe anything else was there because she just never let up, not with Colton, not with her friends, just mostly rigidity.
The resolution in the end seemed rather rushed, incomplete, and less than satisfying. I think what Colton went through and the potential damage to his career over it wasn’t really necessary and was just more angst added to an already very angsty book. I had a lot of questions that were left unanswered, and I wanted to see more of a comeuppance for her family. Otherwise, I really did love Colton’s family, and their interactions were a place where Gretchen started to become more human and likable, so I would’ve loved to see more of this and less of her shutting herself off and running away. Unrelated, but the steam here also didn't live up to what I was expecting; there was a lot of fade to black and some weirdly awkward clichés that were a bit of a letdown after a lot of build-up.
Overall, this wasn’t quite everything I hoped for, but I definitely enjoyed the writing and I’m going to go back and read the other books in the series.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4936383936
https://www.bookbub.com/reviews/1445863426
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