I was jazzed when I saw Devon Daniels had a new book coming out because I thoroughly enjoyed Meet You in the Middle [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM]. The concept of The Rom Con seemed like a good time, but I’m not entirely sure how to feel about it. Maybe writing it out will help me settle things.

The Rom Con [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM] is completely told from Cassidy’s perspective. She writes for a women’s website called Siren. She makes a promise to her grandmother that she’ll try out some rules for getting a man from the 1950’s and decides to turn it into a story. Once she tries the first move, it seems to work, but then this attractive and confident man named Jack comes out of the woodwork to run the first guy off and take over.

Turns out, Jack is the co-founder of Siren’s competitor and mysogynistic male webstie, Brawler. Cassidy tells her boss and they decided to turn it into a Brawler take down piece as well. Cassidy says and does things from the list that she wouldn’t normally do, thinking it’s exactly what a Brawler guy is looking for. But she has him all wrong.

At first glance, this is a fun setup. But something just didn’t fully work for me. It’s cute and fun and Jack is great, but the only way I can think to describe it is that it feels too forced. It’s too insta-love-ish and the drama, which there is a lot of, feels too forced to be real. They go from 0 to 100 and back and forth a bit too much.

My least favorite thing about this book is all of the forced pop culture references. There are so dang many, omg. I love a good reference that fits, but there were so many, it became distracting. It was also weird to see so many “How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days” references in a book that feels like it was snatching the plot from that movie. I dunno. It just felt weird.

I wouldn’t say to skip this one outright, because it does have some interesting points and again, Jack is a great hero. Just go into it eyes wide open and maybe it won’t throw you off as much as it did me. I really wanted to love it like several of my bookstagram buddies did, but it’s just okay for me.

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