The Unhoneymooners
By: Christina Lauren
Published Year: 2019
Publisher: Gallery Books
Pages: 432
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This in no way shape or form influenced my opinion of this book.
Summary (Provided by Goodreads ): Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, 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.
First Impressions
Over the past year, Christina Lauren has (have?) easily become one of my favorite authors (or two of my favorites since they write together?). I have read 3 of their prior novels and have loved 2/3 of them. They have become a must-read for me so I didn’t even read the summary before requesting to read this one early. I do love the cover too.
What I thought
I wasn’t as crazy about their most recent book, My Favorite Half-Night Stand, as I was the other two that I read, so I almost got a little nervous about this one. Luckily, it turns out I had nothing to worry about.
Ami and Olive are identical twins but polar opposites. Ami has always had great luck and wins every contest she enters. She even won the majority of her wedding and her dream honeymoon to Maui. Olive on the other hand, claims to have terrible luck. But on the night of the wedding, that changes. Everyone at the wedding with only Olive and Ethan (the grooms brother and her nemesis) being the exceptions gets food poisoning from the seafood buffet. Because the honeymoon was a prize, they can’t reschedule so Ami insists that Olive takes the honeymoon in her place. Unknowing to Olive, Ethan’s brother Dane insists the same thing.
The love to hate trope is my absolute favorite in romance novels. The sparring that always occurs always makes me smile and I just love seeing the development when characters realize that they didn’t really dislike each other but instead were trying to bottle their sexual tension.
Olive and Ethan are a great pair. I like that while Olive insists that she is unlucky, she’s not bitter or grumpy about it. sometimes characters that are negative can become annoying and Olive did not. Ethan is also nothing but charming from the beginning. Even when he’s being “mean” he’s not off-putting.
I connected to these characters immediately and love the setting too. The book did follow a few storylines that were unexpected but worked so well together. The only negative I have to say to about this book may be that the conflict resolution was a bit abrupt.
This book was fun from beginning to end. There was no waiting for the action to start. It’s hard to find much to say because I didn’t love this book because it was unpredictable or unique or whatever, but it was still unputdownable. It’s hard to put what I loved about this book into words other than the fact that Christina Lauren are great authors who know how to tell a fun story.
I flew through this book and could not put it down. I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this story and want everyone who needs a smile on their face to read this book. I think I would put it second behind Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating in my ranking of Christina Lauren books which is saying a lot. If you’re looking for a fun read or if you have enjoyed other books by them, I would highly recommend checking this one out.