Reviewed by Valerie
TITLE: The Inconvenient Love
SERIES: Better With You #4
AUTHOR: Briar Prescott
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 266 pages
RELEASE DATE: March 14, 2022
BLURB:
Max:
He’s funny, smart, dorky… and all grown up.
Isac. My best friend’s little brother. He kissed me when he was nineteen and told me he was in love with me. I shut him down, telling him he was too young and didn’t know what he was saying. That damn kiss is coming back to haunt me now. The softness of his lips and the hopeful look in his eyes—I remember it all too clearly, and it’s getting almost impossible to tell myself I don’t want a repeat of that kiss…
Isac:
You can only make a complete ass of yourself in front of a guy so many times. Luckily for me, I’m not the same pathetic, starry-eyed kid anymore. Max and I are better off as friends. Now, if only I could figure out why he’s looking at me so intently. And why he kissed me. And why we’re suddenly doing all sorts of other things friends don’t generally do.
REVIEW:
The Better With You series continues with book four, The Inconvenient Love, an age gap, brother’s best friend romance. The beginning overlaps with end of The Underdog, the story of Isac’s big brother, Anders. Isac and his twin sister, Cassi, graduate high school and at their party, Isac kisses his long-time crush and Anders’ best friend, Max. Max shuts that down real quick; he’s eleven years older than Isac and regards him as a little brother. Next thing he knows, Isac makes the decision to bypass college temporarily, take off for San Francisco, and do some growing up.
Six years later, Isac returns home to Boston as an all grown up twenty-five-year-old. Before going away, he and Max were close friends with a penchant for “fantastically awful” bad movies and trying out weird foods. Now, they’re barely acquaintances. Isac returns with mixed feelings: confusion, annoyance, happiness, and perhaps above all, a determination to close off all of his emotions from Max. Max, after all, will always view him as a kid, a surrogate little brother. But they can only resist each other for so long until years of building attraction take over. When their resistance breaks, they start fooling around, but it’s just temporary, right?
“I’m in too deep, and I know it. This was not how it was supposed to go. I wasn’t supposed to care this deeply. I wasn’t supposed to want him this much. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him. Same mistake, different year. Only this time I’m not alone.”
Max is a larger-than-life physical therapist. All he’s ever wanted was to fall in love, as he’s seen Jamie and Anders do. Max dates and dates and dates but has never found the one. When Isac took off for California, Max was incensed but didn’t know why. He gradually comes to recognize his attraction for Isac but there are plenty of obstacles.
This is a sweet story but I feel it’s lacking depth. Isac and Max move forward from being friends to lovers without enough time shown building their relationship. Also, I missed the outrageous level of humor Briar Prescott suffused into The Happy List and The Dating Experiment. I’ve come to love that feature of her writing. Overall, though, this is a cute book which I recommend.
RATING: 
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