The Bromance Book Club

With the help of a romance book club for men, a baseball player sets off on a clever crusade to save his marriage.

It takes two people to fall in love, but it also "takes two people to ruin a relationship." Such is the case for Gavin Scott--a second baseman for the Nashville Legends baseball team, who suffers from a stuttering problem--and his loyal, devoted wife, Thea, the mother of their young twin girls. The couple married when Thea became pregnant. What started as a happy union settled, over time, into a sexless routine as "the daily necessities of dealing with the kids and the house and his game schedule" wore down their relationship.

When Gavin learns that Thea's been faking it in their marital bed for years, the revelation pits them against each other, resurrecting more truths and slights, until their faltering marriage comes completely undone. Gavin seeks the support of his friends, a group that meets covertly to eat, drink and discuss Regency romance novels. They refer to these books set in 18th- and 19th-century England as "manuals" that coach them in their romantic dealings with their partners and spouses.

The Bromance Book Club is the opening installment of a fun and funny, sports-related romance series. It unspools a dual-threaded narrative that juxtaposes Gavin and Thea's story alongside that of a Regency countess and her knight in shining armor. Through a series of clever, entertaining plot twists and striking parallels in the relationships of both couples, centuries apart, Lyssa Kay Adams (The Prospect) depicts how love--and the complications and ecstasies therein--never really changes or goes out of style.

The Bromance Book Club (a novel) by Lyssa Kay Adams

Berkley, $16.00 Paperback, 9781984806093, 352 pages

Publication Date: November 5, 2019

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NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (November 8, 2019), link HERE

Late in the Day

A moving, multifaceted novel explores how a sudden death changes the lives of two British couples and their children.

More than 30 years of love and friendship--and the loyalty and betrayals therein--are central to Late in the Day, a psychologically astute novel by Tessa Hadley. The story launches with a death that disrupts the lives of two British couples bonded inextricably since their college years.

Zachary Samuels, one of the four, dies suddenly from a heart incident. The death of this middle-aged gallery owner overwhelms his needy, helpless wife, Lydia. And this tragic news also shocks the lives of Lydia and Zachary's closest friends: Christine, an artist who had many showings at Zach's gallery, and her husband, Alexandr, a poet who gave up his writing dreams to become headmaster at a progressive primary school.

Zach is absent throughout the narrative, but his presence looms large in these three lives--and those of the offspring of each respective couple. In Zach's wake, roads not taken are reconsidered, affections shift and old wounds and jealousies are resurrected. This all leads to responses and actions that ultimately upend these once seemingly settled lives.  

As in her other work, Hadley (The Past) has a firm grasp on the complexity of grief and the strengths and foibles of human nature. This exquisitely rendered, character-driven novel probes emotional depths of an ensemble cast of ordinary people who are forced to come to grips with the meaning of life through loss and death.

Latein the Day: A Novel by Tessa Hadley

Harper, $26.99, Hardcover, 97800062476692, 288 pages

Publication Date: January 15, 2019

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NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (January 15, 2019), link HERE

Siracusa

An intimate, suspenseful story of two American couples--whose marriages are in crisis--vacationing in Sicily.

Delia Ephron (Sister Mother Husband Dog: Etc.) turns an idyllic Sicilian vacation upside-down in Siracusa, a novel about two sophisticated American couples in their 40s. Told through shifting timelines and four points of view, the story reveals the couples' shared history and the restlessness they are facing in their respective marriages. 

Lizzie and Michael, struggling writers, are a childless couple from New York. Lizzie is a long-form journalist, and Michael is a famous author and riveting raconteur who secretly wants out of the marriage, as he is in love with a younger woman. Finn and Taylor are from Maine. Their daughter, Snow, is tagging along on the trip; she is a beautiful but deeply repressed--and impressionable--10-year-old, with a condition called "Extreme Shyness Syndrome." Finn owns a restaurant and is resentful of Taylor, a cultured heiress who smothers their daughter with care and attention. Finn, too, harbors secret romantic longings of his own. Upping the ante is the fact that Lizzie and Finn were once an item. The two perpetually flirt with each other, provoking the ire of their spouses.

Ephron writes colorful repartee and backhanded insults, revealing the foursome's jealousies, lies and betrayals that further ignite when an unexpected visitor crashes their holiday. The atmospheric details of historic Sicily serve as a remarkable backdrop to the characters' personal conflicts, rendering Siracusa as a dark, psychologically astute story about the limits of marriage and friendship.

Siracusa: A Novel by Delia Ephron

Blue Rider Press, $26.00 Hardcover, 9780399165214, 304 pages

Publication Date:  July 12, 2016

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NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 22, 2016 ), link HERE