Title: BFF
Author: K.C. Wells
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Length: 200 Pages
Category: Contemporary, Friends-to-Lovers
At a Glance: All in all, BFF was a nice read, light and easy to get through.
Reviewed By: Ky
Blurb: I’m about to do something huge, and it could change… everything.
I met Matt in second grade, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. We went to the same schools, studied at the same college. When we both got jobs in the same town, we shared an apartment. And when my life took an unexpected turn, Matt was there for me. Every milestone in my life, he was there to share it. And what’s really amazing? After all these years, we’re still the best of friends.
Which brings me to this fragile, heart-stopping moment: I want to tell him I love him, really love him, but I’m scared to death of what he’ll say. If I’ve got this all wrong, I’ll lose him—forever.
Review: This was kind of a weird book… The author was inspired by a true story posted online and decided to tell her version of the story, with some main points unchanged. I’m assuming she took some liberties and made the characters her own, but the bones of the story were the same: it was the experience of a straight guy falling in love with his best friend, who happened to be a guy. But that’s not the weird part.
The weird part is that almost the entire book is supposed to be written by one of the two MCs—it was like a book within a book. When the story began, I thought there would be only a couple of chapters in the past, or that it would have some flashbacks to show how they met and became friends, but that the core of the book would be set in the present. After a while I clued in that what I was reading was actually the book David was supposed to write, but I still didn’t think we would get all 50k words of it. Well, we got them….
The fact that the author decided to show us the friendship between Matt and David before she got to the point where they got together as a couple helped to connect with the characters and be more invested in what happened to them. We got to see how close they were through the years instead of just being told, and I could see their connection. The blurb, however, hadn’t prepared me for this kind of story. I was expecting to read about two friends in their twenties who have known each other all their lives and are slowly realising that they want more out of their relationship. What I actually got was the life story of Matt and David, their adventures as kids, their struggles as they grew up, their transition from high school to college, first jobs, first dates, first house and so on. Don’t get me wrong, it was an interesting story, but it was all in the past, and we didn’t get a whole lot of interaction between them in the present. Mainly, this was a story about how strong and beautiful their friendship was, and if the book was about two guys tackling life together, it would have been perfect.
One of the things that bothered me most of all was how their elementary-school-selves didn’t read as such. Their dialogues were those of two grown people, and they used words, phrases and trains of thoughts that weren’t compatible with how young they were supposed to be. The romantic aspect of the story was stilted and uncomfortable. I was thinking that after so many years as close friends they would be able to have a more natural conversation when they transitioned to a couple. I’m not talking about nerves here, that’s to be expected and if that was the case, I would have found it perfectly fine. In Matt and David’s case, they seemed to me like they were plain uncomfortable, and they recited obvious and common lines.
The secondary characters were very nice, and I ended up liking all of them. We don’t get any big insight into any of them, they are all superficial and act solely as a supporting crowd for the story, so I can’t say who I liked the most as we didn’t really get to know them. The positive on that is that we didn’t run the danger of any of them or their issues stealing the spotlight from the main couple; that’s a serious pet peeve of mine when it happens in a story.
All in all, BFF was a nice read, light and easy to get through. I was expecting something else when I picked it up, but what I got in the end was still okay. It’s a friends-to-lovers romance and a slow burn, so if you like those two tropes maybe you’ll like this story too. Just be aware that almost the entire book takes place in the past. We have the prologue and the epilogue that are set in the present, but the rest starts from twenty years ago and covers the whole time until the present; okay, there are many time leaps, but the fact remains that the whole story is basically David telling the story of him and Matt.
You can buy BFF here:
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