I appreciate what the author was trying to do here, I really do, but . . . I struggled with this one. A lot. While the concept was cool, I never really felt like it delivered what it was trying to sell. For all the secrets and dangerous mob family business, there never seemed to be much urgency or danger - or at least the writing never felt that way. When I saw part thriller, part romance - I think I was expecting more balance between the too, especially because, based on the summary, the thriller and romance seemed so interconnected. I think it just added to my disappointment when this book felt less thriller and more an overly dramatic teen love story, with just a dash of thriller. Additionally, there were a lot of plot holes that had me scratching my head, because they were either overly simplified or too convenient to help drive the narrative forward.

In addition to this - and this might seem nit-picky, but I get it. Jason is hot. The hottest. There has never been anyone hotter in the world. In fact, we must now change our whole concept of what hot is. I get it. I get it, because every page tells me how hot Jason is, multiple times, too many times. I understand that this is new territory for Matt, but I can't remember anything else about Jason except that he's hot and plays video games. I'm sure there is more to Matt's feelings/attraction to Jason than just the physical - but I don't know that because the only thing that I'm continuously being told is that Jason is hot and I don't think I was ever really shown how exactly their relationship evolved - told? Maybe. But shown? I can't say that I was.

Once again, I appreciate what the author was trying to do here, especially with Matt's struggle coming out and not feeling he can be who he is because of the family he was born to and the mob culture he is a part of. But I almost wish that would have just been the story. None of the twists or turns or trying to be a thriller - because ultimately these elements didn't add to the story, but took away from what could have been a really excellent romance, one that I've never read before, but would have really liked to.

For fans of:

- Mafia vibes
- Escapist stories that take your mind off everything going on in the world
- Pop culture references
- Will-they-won’t-they romances

Review:

“Boys, man. They’ll be the death of me.”

What a difficult book to review! I feel like I read two different stories, to be honest – the first thirty percent of this was engaging, poking fun at some of the mafia stories out there and showed Matt, who isn’t out to his family or friends, trying to navigate his sexuality and fumbling all while keeping his friendship with Jason a secret. Then there was the other half of the book that was just out of character, the tension cranked up to one hundred percent and some things happening that made absolutely no sense, even in this nonsensical world.

There are quite a few plot holes concerning the world building and logic – so go into this with a heavy suspension of disbelief. I had a hard time believing that Matt, who has been groomed to eventually become the leader of the crime family, would just up and leave with someone he doesn’t know and follow them to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere.

There’s lots of back and forth between Matt and Jason and whereas I enjoyed that will-they-won’t they drama in the first half, in the second it was just redundant. Matt would wonder whether he could trust Jason, then describe him as friend, then as his first love, then back to acquaintance who he didn’t know how he felt about – that could have definitely been edited and made more cohesive to fit the inner journey Matt goes on.

Despite that, I enjoyed Matt’s character and the overall plot of him navigating this life that he doesn’t want to lead and how to live up to his father’s expectations while envisioning an entirely different future for himself. His struggles with understanding whether he wants to be like Jason or be with Jason also reminded me a lot of a few Netflix movies out there and gave me a good chuckle.

There’s also something to be desired when it comes to characterisation and some of the conversations just translated as stilted – I know that these guys are supposed to get to know each other but the way they were talking was as if they were reading from a script. I did like the popular culture references and the two geeking out over their shared love of books, video games and movies!

While I wasn’t too happy with the rushed ending and the characters doing a 180 just to give the protagonist a happily ever after, I still appreciate that Matt manages to make his own way in the world. I just wanted so much more from this book in the end – more world-building, more in-depth personalities, more finetuning of the romance. Nevertheless a quick and easy read, The Friend Scheme shows a lot of potential and will certainly keep your mind off the current news cycle!

I think that Cale Dietrich is one of those authors that's just going to improve and improve as he keeps writing! I enjoyed this one soooooo much more than his debut novel. It was fast-paced, had good moments of humor and seriousness. There were still some moments where the writing seemed stilted and I'm sure there will be edits to move the book from this version to the finished one, but I still liked it enough to preorder it! I think that people trying to decide if they should go for this one or not definitely should.
Also, just the idea of the son of a mobster and the son of a police commissioner falling in love is everything I've ever wanted in a novel.

*Book Received in Exchange for Honest Opinion/Review*

As soon as I read the synopsis for this story, I knew I had to read it. The cover and story line had me so intrigued, I love a good read when sworn enemies fall in love and where lies, deceit, and betrayal are around every corner. That's exactly what this book delivered; however, I have some issues with the execution.

I think my biggest issue with the story is the timeline. On the east coast, baseball is a spring sport. If this story line is set in the spring, then how was Matt able to apply to and get into college in the same year? There was never any transparency on when the story was taking place but college isn't something you can just magically put together, there are letters of recommendation, personal statements, etc. that need to be compiled.

My next issue is that throughout the story, there were what seemed like "hints" about Jason's identity, but they never amounted to anything. For example, Matt saw a leather bound book at Jason's house. It was exactly like his dads...but then this is never brought up again. Did Jason steal it from Matt's house, was the leather bound book in fact Matt's dads?! This happens several times over the course of the story and leaves me wanting closure on these details. Because when I know a book is going to be a thriller, the joy of reading is in those details.

Finally, I don't understand the continuous betrayal that occurs. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. It seems that Matt never learns from his mistakes. Some of Jason's plot twists left me with my jaw on the floor and in that regard, it's definitely a page turner. And while I did like how everything ended...I didn't like how we got there. There were too many linger questions, most importantly, how the heck did Jason find him?!

I did enjoy the book, but there were too many loose ends and little details that seemed to get lost. Matt and Jason have some top notch banter and chemistry but there were some unnecessary side stories and details lost that muddled up the plot line. I wish Cale would have focused on Matt and Jason and the family drama exclusively. It almost seemed like he was trying to make too much happen at once and then these little things got pushed to the way side.

This book want bad. It really wasn’t. I don’t think it fit my tastes, but that’s not to say no one will enjoy it. I think the author’s writing style is definitely one of the things I had a hard time reading. In terms of the story, I felt like, it was a bit of let down. I’m sorry. It spent the whole time building something up, and nothing became of it. As for the romance, there really wasn’t enough for me, but maybe I just need more than most. As I said, not bad, but not great

The Friend Scheme takes the reader into the seedy underbelly of an unnamed city in Florida. We see through the eyes of Matt, one of the heirs to the criminal underworld, who is uninterested in the family business. It begins with a heavy Romeo and Juliet feel, does have some interesting twists on this theme. Friend Scheme was a good, fast read. The characters were compelling, but the dialog seemed lacking. The conversations seemed at times to be stereotypical 80s valley girls, and I had a hard time not losing interest because of that. This will be good for some of my lower level readers. Because of some sexual themes I would recommend grades 9-10.

While this was super entertaining and had a ton of great one-liners, I had so many question marks left over at the end and overall was just… baffled by how much potential remained unused.

First of, a warning: For some reason whoever wrote the description thought it would be a good idea to include the major plot twist at the end right there, in the blurb???? Like, what????

The Friend Scheme has an amazing concept – high school student who is the child of a mob boss but isn’t interested in a life of crime is already great by itself, but make them fall for the enemy? Sign me up!

It started out a bit slow, but engaging enough. I found Jason’s appearance to be suspicious and way too easily accepted by Matt, but that was acknowledged on page, so I wasn’t overly bothered by it.

What I loved from the start and came kind of unexpected was the family dynamics: Matt’s dad might have been a crime boss, but he still cared for his sons! The casually domestic scenes were lovely, but also a stark contrast to the equally casual violence this family exhibits, except Matt was fine with the former but not so much with the latter.

Truly the star of the book for me was Matt’s relationship with his brother Luke, who might have been a bit of a douchebag, but also such a great older sibling. I adored their scenes and the love and support that Luke kept extending Matt’s way.

Unfortunately, that sibling relationship completely overshadowed the romance for me. Not that the romance was bad – the beginning was a bit awkward, but once that was out of the way, I actually quite liked how Jason and Matt opened up to one another and learn to be vulnerable with each other, which was important for Matt in particular. I also liked that Matt, who’s sixteen, was allowed to be horny, and express abundant admiration for Jason’s hotness.

But especially towards the end, I found the turns their relationship took baffling. The whole secrecy accusations didn’t make sense, and I was confused where Jason was drawing his conclusions from, and why was all the bad behaviour focussed on Matt when Jason was doing the exact same thing? It was strange and didn’t add up.

When it comes to the flaws I saw in The Friend Scheme, I curiously enough found them to be almost exactly the same things I disliked about the author’s other book, The Love Interest. One of that was about the romance, how the jump from the-big-drama-towards-the-end to happily-ever-after was exactly that: a jump. Nothing in between. No reconnection. No talking it out, making up for their mistakes scene. Just going pretty much straight from split-up to happy-couple in the epilogue with some plot-only chapters in between.

Generally, the ending felt way too rushed. Things happened fast, and they way they came to pass was unexpected – and very anticlimactic. Granted, probably pretty realistic, but it completely threw me, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

My overall bafflement (which, really, was disappointment, except I was too stunned to feel that) stemmed less from that and more from all the surrounding things.
Over the course of the book, so many small threads of side plots, hints and info are given and developed. The most exciting thing about reading The Friend Scheme for me was taking all these hints and bits of info and try to piece them together in my mind, try to figure out where things were headed, who was planning what and had which secret and how it was all connected. I had so many theories and ways it could go, ideas about how things might converge and how they would wrap up.
The thing is, I’m not mad that none of those things ended up happening. I’m always happy to be surprised by a book’s ending, when I couldn’t foresee the way things end. I also don’t dislike the actual ending as it turned out.
No, my bafflement stems from how all of those little side threads, hints, information, little plots at the side…. where all dropped cold. None of the had any sort of conclusion, factored in any way towards the ending, or had any lasting influence on the plot.
That just seems like such a weird storytelling choice to me. Like, why include all those little things and hints that created so much lasting tension and conflict just for them to fizzle into nothing, to not matter in any way?

It’s totally possible I was reading too much into things, but this wasn’t just one or two things but so many! Like, what was up with Cassidy? Was Ryan a Donovan or no? Did the dad ever make the allies content again? Who/what convinced the dad to not go through with the ambush? Any sort of consequence from Jason being who he was? Anything about the moms? And so many others.

All that aside, I think the author’s writing style also just isn’t working for me – I noticed that I tended towards skimming over whole pages a lot. At first I thought this might be due to the slightly awkward formatting of the ARC I received, except I had the exact same issue with the author’s other book, which I bought myself, so I know it wasn’t that.

Overall, the book was still entertaining. I absolutely loved the concept and the characters, and the themes of friendship, discovery, family and obligation it explored. My issues lie solely with the execution, and are probably pretty personal due to my reading preferences.

Next to Luke and Matt’s sibling relationship my favourite thing were the hilarious and on-point one-liners the book had. A lot of them were centered around queerness, but also around sexism and toxic masculinity, as well as other things.

To end my review, I want to briefly talk about the cover. It’s absolutely gorgeous. It gets several small details of the characters right…. and others really wrong. Since it’s illustrated I assumed it would depict the main characters as they are described in the book, which also made me assume that one of them would be a POC. That’s not the case – both Jason and Matt are white and described as very pale on multiple occasions.
It’s strange, because some of the details perfectly depict what’s written on page, while others are really off. I don’t know enough about the process behind getting covers to make a firm judgement, but I was definitely bummed out when the cover didn’t fit what I assumed would be inside.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely wish I had better news regarding this book. In fact, this was one of my most anticipated reads…and well, it fell flat. The unfortunate thing is I don’t have much to say about this book. It wasn’t a DNF, but it was close. There were a few redeeming characteristics of this book.

This was an enemies to friends to lovers trope, queer Romeo and Juliet style. All of which were good things. Sadly, as I said, it all fell flat to me.

The biggest problem to be honest was the writing. I did not like or enjoy the writing. Something about it bugged me the whole time. It just wasn’t for me. If this hadn’t been an ARC it would have been very likely a DNF for me on the writing alone. However, I decided to continue to give it a chance and hope the plot made up for it.

The plot was fine, but the characters were one dimensional in terms of their development individually.

I liked the relationship, and their dialogue but again, I wish I had felt more for it. The rep was really good in this book, and I think it was prominent and naturally developed.

Overall, this book lands at a two star rating for the rep and the potential that it had.

The biggest thing was this was OwnVoices and had a queer relationship, which I thought was well written.

Note: I can’t speak to if the rep is accurate or good, as I am not a part of the target audience, although I did enjoy the rep as it was written.

I think that this story's plot held a lot of potential but the world and character building left me wanting more. The interactions between the characters felt a bit repetitive and overall I just wanted to know more about their motivations and the world that they lived in. If you are into books more for plot than characters, you'll probably enjoy this.

I love reading everything Cale Dietrich. His plots are glamorously outlandish and everything you craze from a well done 90's rom-com. His writing style fits perfectly with his big-hearted characters and the pop culture references are keeping me alive. I mean, You Me at Six? Musical genius. This book was just believeable enough to keep it troupe-y and I loved all the troupes. Bonus points for unapologetically feminist mobsters.

I cannot wait for his next book!

While this was better than Dietrich's debut effort, I had a hard time with the amount of suspension of disbelief needed to justify the plot as well as yet again, more weak characterization and world building. Most of the book involves the two guys circling each other, thinking each other is hot, and then backing off, leading to a lot of filler and wasted time that did not develop the characters. I really want to love Dietrich's novels because they always sound so intriguing. But again, the writing really needs to be better to make the book work.

Story: Matt is the son of the local crime family, the Millers. They deal in robberies and extortion but also have a rivalry with the Donovans, who corner the narcotics market. When Matt meets Jason in the bathroom of a local bar hangout for the Millers, he thinks he has found a kindred soul. But then the Millers find out that the Donovans have a strategy to take down the Millers from the inside through infiltration - a friend scheme. Is Jason a Donovan in disguise? Is he grooming Matt to find out Miller secrets?

If you are entertaining reading this book, I recommend avoiding reviews since the original blurb gave away a huge twist in the story (and so reviewers felt confident discussing the twist). The publisher has since fixed the description but you should be aware before reading so you don't spoil the story.

The biggest issues I had with the book are logic and world building. It is hard to believe the son of a mob boss would walk off with a stranger (especially one who came on to him abruptly in a bathroom) since sons are prime targets for kidnapping and extortion by rival gangs. But our protagonist is rather clueless - a little lamb who hates the family business and just wants to play video games. To be honest, the whole mob aspect of the story is barely present and only occasionally rears its ugly head. Mostly, it is Matt feeling like he is a disappointment to his father, wanting to see the hot Jason again, and then going on various 'dates' to get to know Jason better. It's really hard to justify Matt bringing Jason over to his house when he suspects Jason is a Donovan - the last thing you want to do is give the enemy a full layout of your home (as well as other important info like who lives there and where) so they can make a hit on you easier. And I find it REALLY hard to believe that the Donovans and the Millers have no idea about the children of the bosses - that Matt's family wouldn't know if there was a Jason Donovan and that the Donovans would not be aware of Matt. But yeah, out sweet little simpleton has absolutely no regard for safety or security and blithely goes to deserted beaches and lonely alleys with each other as if everything is AOK in the world. It began to veer into the ugly "too stupid to live' category, sadly.

Since most of the book was the dating/getting to know each other, it got kind of old having Jason hit on Matt and Matt pulling back. Rinse, repeat. I felt there was a lot more story that could be had for 80% of the book (the 80% of the boys going out, going to each other's houses, etc.). There are some mob hits and one scene of an execution/torture but that's about it. The twist at the end isn't explored and so there is a LOT of tell but no show.

At no time did I believe in either Matt or Jason as real people. Nor anyone else in the book - from the laid back older brother of Matt to the fellow mob family girl Cassidy. Matt's brother Luke is pretty much a surfer/stoner stereotype (which doesn't scream 'hard bitten mob eldest son' and Cassidy looked to have been able to have real impact but she only came in for brief scenes that gave us only a glimpse of what could have been.

What I can say is that it is an easy, if unsatisfying, read. The romance is silly, the plot twist not really interesting, and the end is so abrupt and so unrealistic as to be a real head-scratcher. There is just so much potential here but the writing aspects of world building, character growth, development, and plotting need to continue to improve. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

This novel is one of the best I’ve read this year! The characters are so dynamic yet relatable. I loved the flow of the story. It held my attention the whole time.

Let’s start with the positives...
The characters are cute! The MC is super sweet.

Unfortunately that’s about it. The writing is just.. immature? Like reading a Wattpad story? Honestly, I’m not really sure how to explain it. I STRUGGLED to read this book. I didn’t want to DNF because I feel like that’s all I’ve been doing lately but it was definitely a struggle-read. There’s no depth. The whole ‘mob/gang’ schtick is very poorly done. But I could see this book and it’s writing style appealing to a younger demographic, maybe 12-16.

I give The Friend Scheme 2 stars.

Matt and Jason meet in the most unconventional way, the bathroom at a bar. Both agree not to exchange last names because if Matt and Jason knew who the other was then they wouldn't be able to hang out. However, simple friendship grows into something much more and wanting to know more about the person that you are interested in gets messy and complicated.

Overall this book was a very quick read and had a lot of gut punches and twists but towards the end it became a little repetitive and finished way too quickly and little too neatly after a lot of build up. A solid read with some romance and family tension and is good for anyone looking for a fast paced novel.