Film and television scholars as well as readers interested in pop culture and queer studies will enjoy the insights of Reading the Bromance.

Amazon Book Review's No. 1 Best Romance of 2019 and one of Bustle's '21 New Rom-Coms Out In Fall 2019 To Give You Warm And Fuzzy Feelings All Season Long'! If you love Jasmine Guillory, Sally Thorne and Helen Hoang, you'll LOVE Lyssa Kay Adams! Readers can't stop raving about The Bromance Book Club! 'Romantic comedy at its finest' 'Completely lived up to the hype' 'The perfect blend of funny, wacky moments and also sexy and angsty moments' 'I didn't expect to read a new favourite but The Bromance Book Club has gone and done it!' 'I would recommend this to anyone who wants to escape into a book for a few hours and come out with a smile' 'This book made me feel warm and fuzzy. It was like being hugged, but in a sexy way - what more could you want?' 'I loved the emotional range it took me through, from laugh-out-loud moments to real tear-jerking scenes' The first rule of book club: You don't talk about book club. Gavin Scott's marriage is trouble. The Nashville Legends baseball star has recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. His reaction to the revelation is the final straw for their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he's let his pride and fear get the better of him. Welcome to the Bromance Book Club. Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville's top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency called Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it'll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his beloved wife. Praise for The Bromance Book Club: 'A you're-gonna-burn-dinner book because you will not want to put it down. Laugh out loud with tons of heart, this is an absolutely adorable must read' Avery Flynn, USA Today bestselling author 'A delight!...I raced to finish this book, but still never wanted it to end!' Alexa Martin, author of Intercepted 'A delightful, fast-paced read with the perfect mix of laugh-out-loud and swoony moments - every town should have a Bromance Book Club' Evie Dunmore, author of Bringing Down the Duke 'It is the reading aloud in this story that ultimately wins my heart, and shows that everything worth knowing can be learned from romance' kc dyer, author of Finding Fraser Don't miss the next Bromance Book Club reads! Undercover Bromance is out now and Crazy Stupid Bromance is available to preorder! 9781472271686

One of OprahMag.com’s Best Romances of 2020 Braden Mack thinks reading romance novels makes him an expert in love, but he’ll soon discover that real life is better than fiction. Liv Papandreas has a dream job as a sous chef at Nashville’s hottest restaurant. Too bad the celebrity chef owner is less than charming behind kitchen doors. After she catches him harassing a young hostess, she confronts him and gets fired. Liv vows revenge, but she’ll need assistance to take on the powerful chef. Unfortunately, that means turning to Braden Mack. When Liv’s blackballed from the restaurant scene, the charismatic nightclub entrepreneur offers to help expose her ex-boss, but she is suspicious of his motives. He’ll need to call in reinforcements: the Bromance Book Club. Inspired by the romantic suspense novel they’re reading, the book club assists Liv in setting up a sting operation to take down the chef. But they’re just as eager to help Mack figure out the way to Liv’s heart. . .even though she’s determined to squelch the sparks between them before she gets burned.

This comprehensive work presents a thorough exploration of celebrity ‘bromances,’ interrogating how bromances are portrayed in media and consumed by audiences to examine themes of celebrity persona, performativity, and authenticity. The authors examine how the performance of intimate male friendships functions within broadly ‘Western’ celebrity culture from three primary perspectives: construction of persona; interactions with audiences and fans; and commodification. Case studies from film and television are used to illustrate the argument that, regardless of their authenticity (real or staged), bromances are useful for engaging audiences and creating an extension of entertainment beyond the film the actors originally sought to promote. The first truly interdisciplinary study of its kind, this book will be of great interest to scholars and students of communications, advertising, marketing, Internet studies, media, journalism, cultural studies, and film and television.

Unraveling the stereotype that men’s friendships are unemotional and shallow, this book provides the first detailed account of the bromance that exists among young men. Drawing on one year of ethnography and 20 in-depth interviews among a university sport team, the authors show that these men reject traditional masculine boundaries, instead prioritizing an emotional and tactile form of friendship. Chapters detail the cultural shift in society’s views on bromances, showing that bromances exists as an elevated, more emotional and intimate form of friendship, existing as a further positive consequence of decreasing cultural homophobia. By focusing on sport—which has traditionally been seen as a homophobic environment with toxic constructions of manhood—the authors show that even in the most traditionally masculine of settings, young men are rethinking what male friendship looks like, what it means to be a man, and the positive impact this can have on their mental health. This book will be relevant to a number of audiences including scholars and students in masculinity studies, queer studies, and friendship studies; LGBTQ+ activists and allies with interest in straight men’s friendships and sports cultures; and men’s mental health advocates.

Status and gender are two closely associated concepts within medieval society, which tended to view both notions as binary: elite or low status, married or single, holy or cursed, male or female, or as complementary and cohesive as multiple parts of a societal whole. With contributions on topics ranging from medieval leprosy to boyhood behaviors, this interdisciplinary collection highlights the various ways “status” can be interpreted relative to gender, and what these two interlocked concepts can reveal about the construction of gendered identities in the Middle Ages.

The Routledge Companion to Romantic Love is a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary reference work essential for students and researchers interested in the field of love, romance and popular romance fiction. This first-of-its-kind volume illustrates the broad and interdisciplinary nature of love studies. International contributors, including leaders in their field, reflect a range of perspectives from cultural studies, history, literature, popular romance studies, American studies, sociology and gender studies. Comprising over 30 chapters by a team of international contributors the Companion is divided into 12 parts: Love, romance and historical and social change Love and feminist discourses Love and popular romance fiction Love, gender and sexuality Romancing Australia South and Southeast Asian romance communities Nation, place and identity in US popular romance novels Romantic love and national identity in Chinese and Taiwanese discourses of love Muslim and Middle Eastern romances Discourses of romance fiction and technologies of power Writing love and romance Legal and theological fiction and sexual politics This is an important and unique collection aimed at researchers and students across cultural studies, women and gender studies, literature studies and sociology.