I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would! I've always liked the "brother's best friend" trope, and this was light and easy to read.

This book honestly felt like two different stories. The boyfriend bracket, which is what the book is named after, primarily makes an appearance in the beginning of the book and then is only mentioned when they walk past it a couple times in the rest of the book, The second half of the book is mostly the MC trying to hide her relationship with her brother's best friend from her brother--this relationship did not even come from the bracket, so I'm really not sure what the purpose of that was in the first place. The lack of cohesiveness in the storyline made it quite a disappointment to pick up.

I loved this book! The full review will be posted soon at kaitgoodwin.com/books! Thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity to connect books to their readers!

I'm gonna be honest I skimmed majority of this book. It was beyond cheesy. Nothing special about it. If I was still a pre-teen I probably would have loved the "forbidden" crush on the brother's best friend troupe but now as a functioning adult---Ain't nobody got time for that! However, I do want to give a shoutout to the friendship between Stella and Franklin. I would have enjoyed it more if it was just focused on them and their precious friendship. Otherwise, not many redeeming qualities.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The title has very little to do with the plot of The Boyfriend Bracket, which was very disappointing. I loved the premise of the hijinks that might ensue when a girl set up an actual bracket to date boys and find Mr. Right. But really the bracket takes all of 5 minutes, and then the girl gets the boy she's been longing for, but only in secret.
The writing is uneven. The characters are wishy-washy and the older brother is so obnoxiously sexist that I couldn't force myself to read past 70%

This was such a delightfully sweet, super cute, and absolutely charming book. I smiled and swooned so much reading this and had such a great time.

The Boyfriend Bracket by Kate Evangelista is a wonderfully written story about love, family, friendship, and being brave enough to do what truly makes you happy. It’s fast-paced, hilarious, and entertaining. I thought the writing was really good — light and fluffy, but also genuinely heartwarming. The plot was well-written, engaging, and really fun. Being Filipina, I also loved the cultural references and could totally relate. Oh and be prepared to get hungry…cause I certainly did. Definitely craved some delicious home-cooked adobo and sinigang.

The characters were witty and lovable. Also, I just have to mention that it was incredibly refreshing to read a story with a strong, talented, and sassy Filipina MC. I truly admired Stella’s determination and passion. Will frustrated me a few times, but he did win me over. Not going to spoil anything, but I was definitely charmed by Will. Franklin was an awesome best friend and my absolute favorite. Cam was the annoyingly overprotective brother, but his intentions were good and as much as I would like to say I didn’t like him, I can’t fault him for trying to be the best big brother to Stella. And Nana… loveeeed her to pieces.

The romance, while a bit slow burn in the beginning and a little cheesy at times, was adorably cute and just swoontastic! There were many moments that gave me butterflies and even if the brother’s best friend trope has been done plenty of times, it’s still one of my favorite and this one did not disappoint. The romantic gestures, no matter how big or small, made me smile and melted my heart. Will and Stella just fit so well together and I totally shipped them!

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was easy to read, lighthearted and beautifully affecting. The unique and fun storyline, adorable characters, endearing relationships, and the heart-melting moments had me wanting more. And the ending… so pleasantly satisfying and left my heart full and bursting with so much happy. If you’re looking for a sweet and entertaining YA contemporary romance, then I recommend you check this out or add it on your TBR.

I recevied an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher, Xpresso Book Tours and Kate Evangelista via Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

You can find this review and many others on my blog - https://sincerelykarenjo.wordpress.com/2018/07/06/blog-tour-the-boyfriend-bracket-by-kate-evangelista/

Love the touch of Filipino-American culture. It's totally like what I see in every Filipino-American family vlog on YouTube. It feels very homey for some reasons. :)

Cute, charming, and sweetly romantic!

The Boyfriend Bracket is an engaging, heartwarming tale that takes us into the life of Stella, a young, Filipino senior who is determined that with the help of her best friend Franklin this is the year she will get over her longtime crush on her brother's best friend, Will and find herself the perfect boyfriend.

The writing is witty and light. The characters are diverse, supportive, loyal, and endearing. And the plot told from differing perspectives is a unique, uplifting, coming-of-age tale about overprotective brothers, teenage struggles, dreams, goals, Filipino culture and traditions, first love, and the power of friendship.

Overall, The Boyfriend Bracket is an entertaining, easy, enjoyable read and even though I would have liked the romance to be a little more gradual, the amusing characters, heartfelt moments, and happy-ever-after ending still left me completely satisfied.

Kate Evangelista's new book, The Boyfriend Bracket, isn't at all like the title and description implies--and I'm okay with that. I chose this book thinking it would be about a girl who creates a boyfriend bracket in order to choose her first boyfriend now that her overprotective brother is off at college. And that's partly true, at least for the first quarter of the book. Then you find out that Stella has been in love with Will, her brother's best friend, her entire adolescence, but now that he's away at college she can focus on getting over him. Only he comes home for the weekends and is paying extra attention to Stella's love life. Soon Will and Stella are together and they spend the rest of the book hiding it from everyone, which was cute to watch. My favorite part ended up being Stella's passion for fashion design. I love when YA books take the time to show depth for the characters and Stella and her best friend definitely have a passion for their future career. I really enjoyed this book, despite the fact that I think it was not represented correctly. I still enjoyed Stella and Will and found them to be an adorable couple.

**3.5 Stars**

Stella has been in crush with her older brother Cam's friend Will for years, but knows he will never think of her as anything but an annoyance. But now that both boys are away at school, Stella is embracing her freedom from her overbearing brother and jumping into the dating pool. Her bestie Franklin fully supports this idea and comes up with a system of rating her dates and how to determine who moves on. Now with a plan and plenty of options, Stella is ready to take on her mission of finding "the One"- aka her senior year boyfriend. But Will has other plans...

I absolutely love the older brother's best friend romance trope (ok, I love anything that can kinda sorta be considered a forbidden love situation, and this certainly fits in there!) so I was interested in reading The Boyfriend Bracket when I discovered it. Let's be honest here, the ending is not a surprise, I knew right from the start who Stella was going to be with, the surprising part was the journey that it took to get there. There was some humor, some heart, personal reflection, a little bit of overreacting, a big dollop of angst and an overall happy ending. Kate's words made the perfect balance to keep me engaging and speeding through the pages.

Let's just talk a minute about the two hobbies turned career choices for the two main character. Will has been creating a webcomic for years about a super cool and kickass witch hunter and Stella creates all her own clothes from ideas she comes up with. I love how both are so dedicated regardless of their age and are willing to sacrifice and work hard to make their dreams come to life. Neither is really a traditional career but they have the passion to succeed and their families support to help back them and I thought it was really inspiring to see...Also, I really needed images of the outfits and dresses that Stella made because I pictures them in my head but I really wanted to experience it as well. And I wish that the comic had been included, at least a little snippet, because it was super hard to picture and such a huge part of the book. But that is just me and I am a super visual person and I am pretty sure my imagination did not do justice to the creations.

This was a very character driven book, where not a lot of action happened but we got to know the people very well. I love dual narrated romances and this fit the bill since it was through Will and Stella's perspectives. Both character had personal demons to conquer before they could fully be invested in the relationship but I absolutely loved them together. I can understand Stella's hostility towards Cam at the start of the book because his attitude and commands made me want to smack him (repeatedly) and the fact he expected Stella to jump at his ridiculous orders was insane. Franklin and his personality and flamboyant outfits stole the book for me, I loved his outlook and loyalty- everyone needs a friend like him.

Overall this was a cute, very fast read- something you can easily sit down and read in one sitting. Kate makes realistic approachable characters with flaws and issues just like anyone has. This was a perfect read for any lover of contemporary romance, age teen all the way on up.

I voluntarily reviewed an advance complimentary copy of this book. Come visit me at https://smadasbooksmack.blogspot.com/

If the titular "boyfriend bracket" doesn't end up playing as prevalently in the story as the title suggests, perhaps the book should not be titled as such.

Best friends and neighbors, Hannah and Emory haven’t spoken since a fight, during which they said things they can’t take back. Emory, who is in public school, focuses on theater and her boyfriend Luke. Hannah, the daughter of the principal of her Christian school, begins questioning her faith and gets dangerously involved with an adult mentor. Then Hannah sees Luke crash his car outside her house, and she saves his life, motivating him to turn to her to make sense of his near-death experience. This forces the girls to reenter each other’s lives, moving them toward a reconciliation. The book explores the topics of friendship and religious beliefs in a thoughtful way that teens will enjoy.

Overall, I liked the book. It is a perfect summer contemporary and for those in the single club, it is so adorable. It will make you wish you had a brother with a best friend. The writing was easy to get into and it allowed the book to fly by quite quickly. The plot was definitely swoon-worthy and lived up to that aspect but I wish there was little more content. The book was too short for character development but I did enjoy reading about the character's lives. Overall the book wasn't too bad. Definitely, the perfect book if you want to read something quickly or you want to beat that reading slump. Thank you so much to Xpresso Book Tours for providing me with a copy of the book.

(full review will be available on my blog on 06 July 2018)

Thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC. Unfortunately it wasn’t the book for me.

I found it to be a tad too immature for my taste. It often felt like a soap opera, overly dramatic, and too fast paced. I know that Stella and Will have known each other for many years, but we never got any flashback scenes, so it felt like their declarations of love came too soon and weren’t built on a strong foundation.

I was not a fan of Stella. She was very shallow and only wanted a boyfriend so she could parade him around her peers. I liked Franklin because he was a great, supportive friend to Stella. Will wasn’t a bad character. He just felt too typical, like I’ve seen his type of character many times before.

I only read about ½ of this book before I had to put it down. I’m apart of the Xpresso Read’s Boyfriend Bracket blog tour. Because this wasn’t the book for me, I’ve opted out of posting a review during the tour. Instead of the review, I will be posting a general promo post. I’m sure there are others out there who will enjoy this book.

This book was fun - I know younger high school students would enjoy. The only thing that was strange was the title - the bracket was not important to the story at all.

Rating: 3.5 Stars

After years of having her brother scare off any potential boyfriends, Stella was finally free of his romantic meddling, and was ready to officially embark on her love life. After a very transformative summer, many young men were showing interest in Stella. In order to determine, who will fill the role of "boyfriend", Stella and her best friend, Franklin, come up with the boyfriend bracket, which seemed to be working well until her brother discovered she was dating, and resumed his meddling.

I thought the premise of this book was great, but the bracket falls apart about a third of the way through the book, when Will, her longtime crush and her brother's best friend, starts spending more time with Stella. I have to admit, I was ok with this, because I loved watching Will and Stella navigate their feelings for each other.

Stella was a great heroine. She had ambition and drive, and her passion for fashion was contagious. She also had spectacular taste in best friends, because Franklin was the best. He was supportive, but honest, and his affection for Stella was so obvious. He was also super witty, and added a lot to every page he inhabited.

Will. *heart eyes* It was easy to understand why Stella adored this man. He was so kind, sweet, smart, talented, and generous. I was glad he made a few mistakes, otherwise he would have been too good to be true. He also had this stupendous Nana, who I have nothing but love for.

There were a few things that seemed a little rushed, especially the ending. I would have liked to know a little bit more about where things went, though, Evangelista did fill us in on the major things, which were all good.

Overall: A fun and fluffy brother's-best-friend romance, which was sweet, swoony, and satisfying.

Apparently I’ve been on a contemporary YA binge lately. They’ve been my go-to reads for my lunch break, when I just need something cute and not-so-heavy like fantasy can get. Don’t get me wrong: I love a strong female (or male!) lead who is ready to overthrow the system or ruler or whatever the case may be. I live for that. But in the middle of my workday, give me so teenage troubles of love and high school and dances.
Enter The Boyfriend Bracket. It was the perfect (and quick) read for me. To be honest, I was a little thrown off by the book at first because, based on the cover and the plot description, I expected there to be a greater focus on the bracket (hey, it’s in the title. I can’t be fully blamed for my assumptions on this one!), but I quickly discovered I was wrong. That being said, I didn’t hate the new direction of the book at all!
This book revolves around one of my favorite tropes: the overprotective brother. Typically it’s something I see more in the New Adult books lately (in fact, I’m struggling to name another YA book in this trope right now), but I’m sold at the plot of the girl crushing on her brother’s best friend – and crushing hard. Because what could go wrong…right?
The Boyfriend Bracket met most of my expectations for what I look for in a contemporary YA romance: there was a relationship to root for, there was an awesome best friend, and as previously mentioned, there was the overprotective brother. However, I could have done with a few more “swoon” worthy moments. Make my heart hurt! Make me teeth ache at the sugary sweetness. Give me more! Instead, I felt like the relationship went from zero to sixty very quickly, and I missed the big payoff of a slow-burn buildup.
If you’re looking for a quick, fast-paced YA contemporary, The Boyfriend Bracket is a cute read to pick up. If you’re looking for a little more punch, this one might be better saved for another day and another reading mood.

Kate Evangelista’s The Boyfriend Bracket offers a unique take on dating in high school as seventeen year old Stella finally finds herself out from under the protective thumb of her big brother and ready to date ALL the boys. With her best friend Franklin, she constructs the boyfriend bracket, a sure fire way to find the perfect guy to spend senior year with. Eight boys enter, but only one will come out victorious. Unfortunately for Stella, there’s the little problem of kind of already being in love with her brother’s best friend Will. Uh oh…

Overall, this story was really cute. I liked Stella and her headstrong nature, and I liked Will, and his sweet cinnamon roll personality. Their chemistry was cute and it was easy to see why they liked each other. Franklin is also great, and I totally want him to be my best friend. As far as plot however, this is kind of lacking in development. The cover of the book touts “8 boys. 16 dates. 1 perfect boyfriend” but there is really so very little of that actually going on in the book. It’s pretty clear from Stella’s first interaction with Will that he’s the one, since clearly Stella is already into him, and from his POV, we learn he has feelings for her as well.

As the boyfriend bracket is developed, the boys Stella plans on dating are introduced, but really that’s all they are. We learn who they are by name, but never actually get to experience a date Stella has with any of them. It’s always just mentioned that it’s Friday night and she has a date with so and so. There’s never any explanation of how she got these dates or why all of a sudden eight boys are asking her out at once. We get Stella after the dates, in which she comments on if the boy moves on in the bracket or not, but that’s pretty much it. Of course as the story progresses, Will and Stella admit their feelings to each other and the bracket pretty much goes out the window. I was fine with that seeing as I liked Will best anyway, but that’s most likely because there was absolutely no development of dialogue from any of the other boys she was spending time with. From there, the relationship gets even more convoluted because of course Stella’s brother Cam can NEVER find out. How realistic…

The book is still really cute though, despite its flaws. It’s a really fast read with a sweet ending, and I’d definitely recommend it for a hot summer day spent by the pool or on the beach.

*Thank you to Swoon Reads and Netgalley for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.*

I liked this book, but it needs some major polishing. It reads like an author debut and I was really surprised to see how many other published works the author has. Still, the characters are so fun, and I love the idea of setting up a tournament style bracket to figure out which boy is most worthy of being Stella's date to the senior dances.

The rough spots come with the transitions between scenes, and how abrupt some of them are. This book reads more like watching a PowerPoint presentation, or maybe a YouTube playlist of clips of various scenes. One clip ends and abruptly you're launched into the next clip, rather than the smooth continuous flow of a full movie. Sometimes it feels like the author wrote a bunch of scenes, and then went back and sort of shuffled them into an order that sort of made sense to tell a story. Which is fine, don't get me wrong, but the next step would be to then go through and do some edits to put in smooth transitions and edit the scenes themselves so they flow together more. It also switches POV between Stella and Will really abruptly in a way that totally threw me off kilter and out of the story. I feel like the editing on this one just didn't get taken through all the steps it should have, and it reads a lot like a first or second draft, rather than a fully polished and edited book. Had this gone through some more thorough editing and rewrites, it would have definitely been a 4 star read for me. However, there's enough promise there to keep my rating at a solid 3 stars, and I look forward to reading more from Kate Evangelista once she's got a little more experience under her belt.

Will and Franklin are by far and away my favorite characters. I went back and forth with Stella, sometimes liking her and sometimes thinking she needs to get over herself. Will's Nana is also really great, and someday I am going to be a cool grandma like Nana is - it's my life's goal! Stella's brother Cam was also really one dimensional for me. I wish there would have been more of a focus on the boyfriend bracket (especially since that's the title of the book…?) but it was kind of tossed to the side pretty quickly and only brought back as a plot device.

The Boyfriend Bracket is super predictable and tropey - you've got your overprotective big brother, the little sister with a crush on her big bro's best friend/guy with a crush on his best friend's little sister, the high school mean girls clique, the gay best friend who is super into glitter - but it's still a fun, quick, light-hearted read. This is a great summer romance for a day the beach when you want to just disengage your brain and indulge in some cotton candy fluff.

This is a cute contemporary about a girl who just wanted to have a boyfriend but her overprotective big brother made it difficult for her to do so. When her brother finally graduated from high school, the main character, Stella finally felt free. Stella along with her best friend used the boyfriend bracket as a method to find Stella the perfect boyfriend. While the premise of the story sounded interesting, I'm afraid the story sets up a relationship between Stella with her long-time crush and it wasn't subtle. The interesting part about this book was the change of perspective between Stella and Will. I didn't have to think to know that Will plays an important role in this book and what his role meant for the boyfriend bracket system. I just wished the development of their relationship had not been rushed. I wanted a slow burning romance but it didn't feel that way for me. Then again, it depends on the reader's interpretation.

I'd give an extra star for the description of the overprotective brother because it tends to be a common trope I rarely see in YA novels nowadays. However, I noticed this trope many times in multiple Filipino tv shows while growing up. Reading about a character that embodies the characteristics of a long-forgotten (in my opinion) trope was an interesting experience. I didn't think the 'overprotective brother' trope was overly done and I thought it was the only trope I can stand in this novel besides the "brother's best friend trope." And like other YA novels, this book had many clichés like the mean girls trope. Needless to say, this was a cute light-hearted contemporary read meant for entertainment. I'd recommend this book to teens who enjoy reading cute and fluffy contemporary reads.