Early Review | The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
Contemporary Romance
Gallery Books | May 14, 2019

About the Book:

Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Amy, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man.

Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.

Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of… lucky.

I’m plowing through Christina Lauren’s books! I’m addicted! I was so excited when I was approved for a copy of The Unhoneymooners, since I’m such a damn superfan. I knew I’d love it. I’ve loved all of them.

Getting exactly what I expected is the BEST!

That’s how I felt when I finished The Unhoneymooners. I expected the best, and I ended up feeling fulfilled. I needed the light contemporary romance, and I knew going in I could trust Christina Lauren to give it to me. They have such an ability to create two characters, never exactly the same, and take me on a wild hilarious ride resulting in a serious romance.

Olive was unlucky. She was prickly. She’d decided she didn’t like Ethan; decided he’d prejudged her due to her curvy figure and love of food, and she kept him in that box for years. It’s your basic enemies to lovers story, one of my favorite tropes, you can devour in one night. I did it. Once the story started rolling, I couldn’t put it down. I kept reading even when I was on a work trip and knew I needed to get my ass to sleep. It’s what these books do to me. When I know they won’t end up as one of my favorites, I still can’t put them down, even for my own good.

And that’s the truth.
The Unhoneymooners was good, but it doesn’t touch my favorites.

I really liked both characters, Oliver and Ethan. I liked them individually, and I liked them as a couple. That’s another thing this duo always does well. They make their couples interesting, but they also keep me invested in them individually. They were great characters. My hangup wasn’t about them; it was about the subplot.

I have a rule, or at least I try to, where I don’t talk about anything not in the synopsis. Basically, I can’t get into what it was about the subplot. Let’s leave it at how I felt like those secondary issues that developed were serious to me. I’m not sure their redemption and subsequent forgiveness measured up to the crime. Their actions deserved a much bigger consequences in my eyes, I guess. The book ended and I was left still feeling disappointed in the what the character had done.

Really good book, but lukewarm ending.

It’s okay, because next up is Roomies!

Thank you to the publisher for providing an ARC, in exchange for an honest review.