A 3.5 star read rounded down. I think I’m coming to terms that this series is just never going to achieve what both I and the author would like it to. The whole premise is a great concept - men read romance novels to better understand what their romantic partners want! - but most installments just can’t quite get to the point they’re trying to make. The romance novels are inevitably treated as a cheat code, rather than a path to understanding why women value emotional intimacy, and it’s irritating. 

AVMB has a sunshine country singer hero with a grumpy immigration lawyer heroine and too many subplots. His career is floundering, hers is financially unstable, her family sucks and wants him to be their new spokesperson and she’s got to convince him to take the job or lose a spot on the family charitable board, his family was poor and he feels responsible for their wellbeing. None of these, minus the horrors of the US immigration system, are fully fleshed out (and as a side note - where were these Very Good Politics in that horrific second book?). Things are running along nicely and then the conflict at 85% is so ludicrous it almost defies imagination.

As much as Adams tries, there’s still a real undercurrent of misogyny and some homophobia, too: men “bitch jokingly” about how much women pack, Colton’s friends are horrified by his naked body, and how terrible Gretchen’s family is is reinforced by comparing the traditional gender norms Colton’s mother fits into and hers does not.

And look, I’m being nit-picky here. None of these issues rise to the level of making me not want to recommend this book. But when an author sets out to do this much work with their books and repeatedly falls short, it seems like the kind of thing one should point out in a review. I wish that the author and her team would put in the effort to really take these books over the finish line, and that’s all I have to say about it.

Thank you Berkley and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

the shitfire that is the US immigration system, alcohol consumption, financial insecurity remembered and on the page, physical abuse by a sibling remembered, emotional abuse from family members remembered and on the page, a physical altercation, an arrest, infidelity of a non-narrative character