Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: Book Boyfriend
AUTHOR: Kris Ripper
PUBLISHER: Carina Adores
LENGTH: 294 pages
RELEASE DATE: April 26, 2022
BLURB:
A secret crush leads to a not-so-secret romance in this delightful romantic comedy from Kris Ripper
There are three things you need to know about Preston “PK” Harrington the third:
- He’s a writer, toiling in obscurity as an editorial assistant at a New York City publishing house.
- He is not a cliché. No, really.
- He’s been secretly in love with his best friend, Art, since they once drunkenly kissed in college.
When Art moves in with PK following a bad breakup, PK hopes this will be the moment when Art finally sees him as more than a friend. But Art seems to laugh off the very idea of them in a relationship, so PK returns to his writing roots—in fiction, he can say all the things he can’t say out loud.
In his book, PK can be the perfect boyfriend.
Before long, it seems like the whole world has a crush on the fictionalized version of him, including Art, who has no idea that the hot new book everyone’s talking about is PK’s story. But when his brilliant plan to win Art over backfires, PK might lose not just his fantasy book boyfriend, but his best friend.
REVIEW:
PK Harrington, III works for a publishing house. He like his job Ok and he’s got a work BFF in Maggie who is funny and keeps him grounded when he goes off the rail. One night he gets a call from the lobby that his BFF since college has arrived and is in bad shape. PK has not seen Arty in a while since he has moved in with his artist boyfriend, Roman. Roman is not someone PK likes. Mostly because he has had feelings since college for his BFF since they shared a drunken kiss. Arty invites him to stay because of course it’s his best friend.
Once Arty moves in, PK has great hopes that he will be able to convince Arty that he would be a great choice of boyfriend. He’s had this crush on his BFF for years and he’d really like to move things along. Arty accuses of him of being anti-romantic and so he sets out to prove Arty wrong. He writes a secret romance that he has his work BFF look at and next thing he knows, he has a book deal. Which he doesn’t share with anyone. This turns out to be somewhat problematic and makes things between Arty and PK very strained. There are some twists and turns that push them together, but there is a lot of groveling and making up to do.
So I’m giving this a very conditional recommendation. I will be share that at the 20% mark I wasn’t sure I’d be able to finish this book. The constant stream of consciousness staccato first person POV that is mainly PK’s internal dialogue was killing me. It took me some time to warm up to ANY of the characters to be honest. And what does it say that Wade is probably my favorite character. He’s the most honest with everyone except his parents because they are not worth his bother. I could totally believe that his parents trot him out like a show pony and have literally no idea who he is as a person and they aren’t really interested in finding out either. I loved that he just did his own thing and mostly kept those parents at bay 😉 I did really like PK’s parents – frankly they were the only ones of the bunch that had their act together. I did love Maggie, PK’s work BFF and her bird! Not sure how realistic it is, but the publishing house folks were sure entertaining.
My other niggle with this story is the fact that there actually isn’t a lot of interaction between PK and Arty for such a long story. Like they might be living in the same apartment, but it seems as if they don’t actually spend time together regularly. Arty is in his room playing his games, doing his social media stuff and PK is writing the secret book in his room. There are some pivotal scenes – with Arty’s brother Ches, the Book Club meeting, some meetings with Wade, etc. But there are large sections of the book that are totally PK and the chaotic thoughts in his head. I honestly don’t feel like I knew Arty. I know their family kind of sucks, they love their job at the bookstore, they are a complete romantic and they are sad about their breakup. There is a lot of pining – Arty for what he had hoped for with the last BF and PK for what might never be with Arty. I just didn’t feel like I had a sense of them as a couple. The ending was really kind of abrupt when I had really looked forward to seeing them move forward.
If you don’t like first person POV, then you will not enjoy this. It took me some time to get somewhat comfortable with the voice of the narrator. It’s a lot. If this poor guy’s head is always this busy, well no wonder he’s having trouble communicating. While a lot of the internal monologue is somewhat humorous and entertaining, I was overwhelmed at times. All that noise is quite distracting 🙂 This is the first book I’ve read by this author, so I don’t know if this is the style of all the books, but I would have to think about taking on this type of voice again.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
Carina Press