Review: The Brotherly Shove

 

I really thought my second review would be short.

Guess not.

Media type: Short novel, just over the length of a novella

How much completed: 43 percent of the book

Genre: sports romance, MM romance novel, rom-com style book

Rating of sport/s in the piece of media: 2/10

Rating of book overall: 3/10

I know there is a thing you do when something extremely embarrassing, like cringe-inducingly awkward happens while you are watching a movie or television show. Maybe you cover your face, maybe you yell or groan.

Me? I make a face like I just sucked a lemon and look away from the screen.

I found myself looking away with a lemon face multiple times while reading this book.

Maybe, maybe the book isn’t actually as bad as I think. I was excited to read The Brotherly Shove when I read the premise, and the author can effectively move through scenes with competent writing, from a technical perspective.

Our story is about two former teammates, and former best friends, who unknowingly fell for each other in college. They end up on the same team, and while their relationship off the field has some twists and turns, their on-the-field chemistry carries them and helps them rebuild their relationship and, eventually, confess their feelings.

That sounds great, right?

Well, not really!

The worst thing about this book is the football. And there are a lot of other very not-good things.

First, and honestly most important, is the play that gives the book its name; The Brotherly Shove.

The play involves one main character, a quarterback, literally climbing onto the back of the other main character, a center, and riding him into the end zone. This is their magic play the two ran time and time again in college, without extreme injury, without a fucking flag, and apparently it could not be beat by like, any D-line in college ball.

And they then convince their coach on their NFL team to let them use the same play over and over again.

If the author acknowledged that this is very silly, like there was some reference to Air Bud, i.e. there’s no rule against it, so I guess the dog can play basketball, I mean, yes you can ride your center like a noble steed across the goal line, then I could go along with this weird world.

But no.

It never happens.

Everyone just acts like this is normal.

There are other very weird things. One of our players is Mr. Irrelevant, and it isn’t the center, it’s the quarterback who previously led his team to multiple championship appearances.

What?

Most of the interactions between the characters also leave me cringing. Originally, I wrote multiple paragraphs about the general immaturity and just weird interactions between the characters, especially the many older side characters who one would expect to act as guides and provide sound advice.

Nope, not once.

The conversations just don’t quite make sense. The older adults often act and talk more like college kids, specifically college kids who were very, very cool in high school.

Our main characters are also pretty immature for their age. They are about 22 and 23 years old, so I wouldn’t expect them to be very mature, but they both read more like a typical ‘your name’ insert in a Wattpad story than young men in their early twenties.

The main characters are also weirdly obsessed with Taylor Swift, and it seems like the only other football player they know outside their own teammates and friends is Jason Kelcie. Even though the rest of the league is filled with fictional players and teams.

And, AND, that doesn’t even cover the casual homophobia placed here and there. There is a reason to include inappropriate and even offensive locker room talk in a book. It doesn’t bother me on principle if you use those occurrences to explain the environment and show why characters are the way they are. But in this book’s forward the author states that our players will not be experiencing stereotypical homophobia in her world’s version of college and major league football culture.

Then she has one of our main characters tell the other, an out bisexual man, that they lost a game because someone on the other team must have offered to suck the cocks of all the referees. Our out bisexual character just nods and agrees. No inner flinch, no uncomfortable heaviness in his chest. He just, ‘yup, totally’, not at all affected by the wildly homophobic comment from his teammate and best friend.

I was going to push through. I was 43 percent through the book and, according to my chosen reading app, I only had an hour left.

But that would be an hour of my life I would not be able to get back, so I decided to love myself and DNF.