Thanks to Entangled Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC copy in exchange for a fair review. This post contains affiliate links, meaning if you purchase something through one of these links, I’ll earn a small commission at no cost to you.
Honestly, when you pick up a book entitled Wrong Bed, Right Brother, you kind of deserve anything it throws at you. And throw it, it does. If you’re under the misapprehension that it’ll be a serious romance book then let me disillusion you quickly….
The premise is thus:
Amanda has had a crush on her co-worker, Luke, for as long as she can remember. She sort of thinks he’s interested but she’s not sure. And he’s about to move to the other side of the country…
Seizing her opportunity on a weekend away, she sneaks into his bedroom to make a move. It all seems to be going so well, until she realises – it’s not Luke! It’s his twin brother, Noah.
Of course it was a mistake, but why is their chemistry so hard to ignore?
I think that tells you all you need to know about what you’re letting yourself in for. I’d love to say it gets less ridiculous from that point in but… I’d be lying.
Still, I didn’t hate it. I went along for the ride. It was silly. The characters were underdeveloped, there wasn’t a great deal of what we might call realistic plot. But, it kept my mind off the way the world is falling apart for a couple of hours so, there is that.
I didn’t really warm to the characters very much. They annoyed me a bit (but not enough to stop reading the book), towards the end I didn’t really care whether they got together or not. Probably because I knew they would (not really a spoiler alert – you only read these books for the happy ever after, right?).
I would have liked the romance story to be a bit more developed. The drama seemed a bit strained – the whole concept of Noah moving to LA simply to be with his brother was seemed a little forced, but I’m not going to pull it apart completely because it did the job it needed to do well enough.
When I read it, I didn’t realise that it was part of a series. I don’t think that matters particularly to the enjoyment of the book, but does help you understand why some things are just never explained. It’s tricky to get the balance right when you write something that you want to work as a standalone piece and as part of series because you don’t want to repeat yourself too much. That being said, Wrong Bed, Right Brother errs a bit too far the other way and I think the reader does need a bit more backstory before your two protagonists end up against a barn wall. (That is just my opinion and perhaps I didn’t have an exciting enough youth). It’s never really explained why Amanda and Noah don’t like each other, but you’re expected to understand it’s a long standing feud. In that respect it gallops along too quickly to build up the necessary tension for the pay off to really be effective.
Overall, it was okay – a bit of fun, a quick read and nothing too serious. It did lack a depth in storytelling and characterisation, but honestly that’s not what you’d read this sort of book for anyway. You can predict the end from the first page (I mean, quite frankly from the title!), but there’s no harm to it. It’s not written in the most sophisticated way, but also not in a way which irritated me too much either.
On balance, I won’t re-read it, and I probably won’t seek out anything else by this author, however it kept me amused for a few hours and honestly, that’s all it was designed to do.
2.5 stars