Quick Synopsis – Juniper O’Reilly is good at only two things: demolishing a pint of mead and finding the perfect skincare routine. Everything else—taking care of the farm, bartering for goods, any sort of manual labor—falls to Juniper’s best friend, the absurdly capable, endlessly patient Mo Elmthorn.

But when Juniper accidentally volunteers them both for a quest to kill a fearsome monster, he knows he’s finally gotten in over his head. Juniper hates camping, he hates the dark, and there’s no way all these foraged mushrooms are going to sit well in his stomach. One thing he doesn’t hate? How good Mo’s thighs look in his questing pants—he doesn’t have time to think about that, though, with a monster to hunt and their futures on the line.

Song This Reminds Me Of – Crave by Olly Alexander

Publication Date – May 26, 2026

Bookshop Link – Bromantasy by Maire Roche

Content Notes – There is some light violence and blood throughout the novel. There is also referenced child abuse, child neglect, alcoholism, and abandonment.

Spicy Rating – 🌶️🌶️

Overall Rating – ⭐⭐.5 out of 5

Review – I wanted to like this book. I wanted to love this book. But I just couldn’t. Probably one of the biggest reasons I couldn’t enjoy this book was all the heavy-handed pop culture references. I think it was meant to be tongue in cheek, but it took me right out of the story. For example, one of the main characters Juniper likes to read the gossip sheets. These sheets come on scrolls and so of course he refers to it as scrolling. GET IT. Like how we scroll? The author actually mentions scrolling more than once and there are several other references to current culture and it just didn’t feel like it blended into the story.

Juniper and Mo are best friends who live together and there is no sexual tension between them ever. When Juniper gets into a bar fight with the wrong person, he gets both himself and Mo signed up for a quest to hunt a dragon. While Mo seems energized, Juniper is apprehensive. What if this quest makes Mo realize that Juniper is holding him back? Throughout the story there is a reference to some mysterious event that happened between Juniper and Mo 10 years ago. This gets called back over and over until about 80% through the book. And that felt way too long to be dragged out.

The last issue I had is a personal preference. I hate the miscommunication trope and, in this case, the miscommunication has gone on for 10 years! Also, it’s never clear if Juniper and Mo had ever even talked about their individual sexualities before. It’s also not clear if the characters are gay or are on the asexual spectrum. I just felt like there was so much more that could have been explained instead of wasting time referring to pop culture.

This wasn’t for me, but hey you might like it!

Thanks to NetGalley and G. P. Putnam for the gifted book, all opinions are my own.