Brother's Best Friend
Not to be confused with "best friend's brother"..... coming soon probably!
My brother is younger than me and I found him and all his friends extremely irritating for most of my life so this trope roundup was never really personal to me. However, I did always fantasize about having an older brother (really an older anything- fellow eldest siblings you know what I’m talking about), so I can certainly imagine getting to be around hot protective older boys as a teen, and books like the three following ones really scratch the itch for that version of me.
The Plus One by Mazey Eddings. Jude is Indira’s brother’s best friend. They’ve been at odds since childhood (though this book is billed as enemies to lovers, it’s not QUITE that dramatic in my opinion considering our other options of the trope), and though he’ll be back in town for an extended period to attend Indira’s brother’s wedding, they shouldn’t have to interact much. Because Indira’s got it all- a great boyfriend, a great job as a psychologist, etc etc.
So naturally, Indira walks in on said “great” boyfriend with someone else and ends up crashing with her big brother until she gets over her heartbreak and finds a new apartment, which is where Jude is also crashing for the time being. He’s been all over the world doing doctor stuff in warzones and amidst humanitarian crises, and, to put it lightly, he’s not doing great back in his hometown.
To put it less lightly, Jude’s got pretty severe PTSD that he’s not dealing with, that’s exacerbated by all these wedding leadup events, and that’s further exacerbated by the fact that he has to go back to work soon, something he’s dreading but feeling deeply guilty about dreading.
These childhood nemeses find themselves with a common cause, because Indira’s brother’s wedding activities is also putting her back in the crossfire of her ex, so they team up to fake date to save Indira’s pride and give Jude a partner to help when things get overwhelming.
It turns out, they’re even better as allies than enemies, and far better as lovers than allies. Because of course they are.
This book will put you through the ringer. As with all her depictions of mental health so far, Mazey Eddings does a tremendously impressive job balancing the realities of her characters’ diagnoses with empathy and unflinching detail. It’s frequently brutal to be in Jude’s perspective, and it gives the romance element even more weight because you’re just so relieved when Indira shows up in his POV, because he’s so relieved. Love is a lifeline Jude desperately needs, and Indira’s sharp edges are weirdly what provide it for him.
Oh I guess because this is the brother’s best friend roundup (I forgot, whoops) I should mention that the brother in question is a bit weirded out by the whole thing but he’s a good egg and gets over it relatively quickly in light of all the other chaos. This feels like an important thing to mention, because sometimes with a BBF (Brother’s Best Friend) the brother will lose his entire shit at one or both of the pair, or he’s got a history of “keep your damn hands off” that explains why the best friend stays away despite a growing attraction. Having read so many of these now, I will say I’m starting to really appreciate books that subvert the “grumpy protective older brother” trope or force said brother to really soul search about what it says about how he feels about his sister as a woman with agency AND about his best friend as a man who allegedly he respects and trusts. This book doesn’t do that, but it’s something in my head whenever I pick up a BBF book, and is the lens through which I look at all the rest of these books!
Rating: 4/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
Now or Never by Stella Rhys. Holland has had a crush on her older brother’s best friend, Iain, since she was a kid. Was it because she grew up with a deeply controlling and toxic mother and craved positive attention, which Iain bestowed (however rarely)? Probably. But she also loves her brother, though they’re ten years apart which made it tough for them to develop a close sibling relationship, and trusts his best friend for that reason as well.
So when Holland finally breaks free of her mother’s control and reappears in Iain’s life as an adult (albeit an adult a decade younger than him, gasp), suffice it to say he is Not Prepared. What begins as a one night stand that, per genre requirements, Iain must proclaim as a Huge Mistake, slowly blossoms into a love story that can heal them both of their troubled pasts.
While I really liked this book, and this pair, there are a few things that stood out to me. One, another seeming genre requirement, Holland’s character as the much younger woman necessitates her being extremely mature and emotionally regulated. Some authors, when writing age gap romances with the woman as the younger one, revel on the macro level in the taboo-ness of it all, and don’t feel the need to give the younger woman quite so much Beyond Her Years maturity. But most contemporary authors who write fairly broad-appeal books (see Beautiful Player by Christina Lauren for a good example) seem to either feel (or assume their audience will feel) the ick if the much younger woman shows even a shadow of being at a maturity or emotional disadvantage, and these books as a whole (which I’m including Now or Never in) and the male protagonists have to put up much more of a fight against what’s Right and Ethical. I don’t think I have a preference one way or the other, but it’s something I’m conscious of and I’m sure there’s a lot more to be said about taboo in pairings.
The other thing that stood out to me about this book is that, given I’ve read all of Stella Rhys’ other books and she’s not shy to bring the drama, I’m surprised the controlling mother has so little to do on the page. The way it’s described, the way Holland is presented as a woman who has basically escaped a cult of two, I basically kept waiting for the mom to appear (whether within Holland’s head because we didn’t get to watch her get deprogrammed, or IRL). But I suspect that she couldn’t because of the paragraph above regarding Holland’s maturity. If Holland is actively deprogramming or in genuine danger of sliding back into her patterns as a Good Daughter, Iain would be more wary of their relationship and there would have required more unpacking of if they’re on equal footing as romantic partners or if Iain has to rescue her in a way that could be construed in unfeminist ways. I don’t agree, broadly, that that would have had to be the case, but that’s my assumption based on how this book breaks down. All I’ll say is that I do wish we’d gotten more internal deprogramming from Holland rather than her appearing fully mature and emotionally regulated so Iain’s protests would be easily written off as him being a dumbass.
I’ll be honest, I don’t super remember the brother’s reaction to all this, so I imagine it was mostly benign after a bit o’ weirdness.
Rating: 4.25/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
The Last Real Cowboy by Caitlin Crews. I really enjoyed my adventure in Cold River, Colorado. Caitlin Crews is a new to me author this year, and there’s always going to be a part of me that particularly enjoys books set in my home state, but also, her modern cowboy romances are EXCELLENT. The Last Real Cowboy is no exception.
Brady and Amanda grew up as neighbors, though in a mountain town of ranches “neighbor” means the next farm over separated by fields and dirt roads and sometimes half an hour of driving. Brady is older, and her older brother’s best friend (natch), and has been in Denver for the past few years to the dismay of his older brother who’s been struggling to keep the family ranch afloat. His book will be reviewed in a few months as Brady and Amanda’s story is the last in the trilogy, but this emotional journey is important. Because when Brady’s terrible dad died in book 1, all the brothers came back to Cold River to help revive the ranch, and Brady in particular wanted to do more than just the same ol’. He got some Big City Ideas he’d like to implement to modernize and diversify their family’s land and business, and his oldest brother (big fan of tradition, just wait till we get to his book y’all) is constantly at odds with him over it.
You know who else has some Big Ideas? Amanda, the youngest of the Kitteridge clan and known Good Girl. However, is she a good girl because of who she is, or because of the role she’s been forced into by a mother who FINALLY got a girl after like a million boys and a million older brothers who insist on keeping her in a box because to them she’ll always be a kid? In a fit of independence many years in the making, she moves out of her family’s home, gets a job at the rougher bar in town, and takes the apartment the floor above.
Her brothers start camping out at said bar (where they’re regulars, the hypocrites) and when she’s like “I will kill you if you keep scaring off customers, get the fuck out of here” they’re like “Brady! Secretly look after our grown adult sister please, she won’t let us do our jobs wahhh” and he’s like “I will do this as a great friend and not because your grown adult sister is so hot I want to gauge my eyes out.” And when Amanda entices Brady into an arrangement to help teach her about sex and sexuality? That’s the good shit right there.
What I liked about this book’s exploration of the BBF trope is how much it forced Amanda’s brothers to come to terms with their complicity in infantilizing her, and the sexist undertones to a lot of it. THEY are explicitly the problem, which even Brady internalizes pretty quick when he actually spends time with Amanda, not around her. I also didn’t find that Amanda had to be so much more mature in order to be “allowed” to get her HEA with Brady, which was much appreciated. This was just an excellent BBF, sex teacher, small town cowboy romance about letting go of past preconceptions and allowing yourself to be open to what changes the future can bring.
Rating: 4/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Next week, I’ll be recommending books set at wineries!
What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!
I often steer away from this trope, specifically because of the weird and gross "keep your hands off her" but I did read one once where the brother was like "you'd better not, because when this goes south I gotta side with her" which I appreciated as a realistic and tasteful reason to object to the relationship.
Ooh, ooh, Artistic License by Elle Pierson. It's not really set in a winery, but the heroine's parents live at a winery, which the couple visit in the book. Elle Pierson is a pen name of Lucy Parker. A bit of a stretch for your theme, but this one is absolutely lovely.