My Favorite Half-Night Stand
By: Christina Lauren
Published Year: 2018
Publisher: Gallery Books
Pages: 400
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This in no way shape or form influenced my opinion.
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.
So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.
But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine”—Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship...but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend, forever.
First Impressions
Earlier this year I read Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren. It was my first book of theirs (review here) and I greatly enjoyed it. As soon as I saw this one, it was an automatic read, regardless of cover or summary.
What I thought
I was worried at first that this was going to be too similar to Josh and Hazel, but luckily it wasn’t.
Millie and her four guy friends have decided to join a dating app together. One drunken night, she and Reid (her best friend of the bunch) end up sleeping together. They swear that their friendship isn’t going to change, but then they slowly realize they have feelings for one another. When Mille creates a second profile using her middle name to avoid creepers, she matches with Reid and decides to talk to him through the app.
I really enjoyed the friendship between Millie, Reid, Alex, Chris, and Ed. They had some group text interactions that were fun and I liked how much they cared for each other. While this book was a bit predictable it was still enjoyable.
Millie is emotionally unavailable, but finds that she can open up over text. I liked getting to learn a little more about Mille through these means. I also liked the relationship between Millie and Reid. It came off as a true friendship and I liked seeing how comfortable they were with one another. I thought that Millie’s emotional secrecy and Reid’s desire for her to open up more was going to be irritating, but it doesn’t go over the top.
In all honesty, this book isn’t ground breaking and I don’t have much to say about it. I enjoyed the story and found it confirmed that Christina Lauren is (are?) an author that I will add to be automatic read list. If you like friendship to more romance stories, I would recommend this book. I wouldn’t have minded it being longer if I could have had some more of the group friendship interactions because I greatly enjoyed them. I also wouldn’t mind getting books about each of the friends and their romances.