BOOK REVIEW: The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren @gallerybooks @christinalauren #theunhoneymooners

The combination of enemies to lovers and a fake relationship—with outstanding characters, fantastic writing, and a bit of a twist—made this book a quick favorite for me! This is the second book by Christina Lauren that I’ve read, and I enjoyed The Unhoneymooners even more than the last one! This is a must-read vacation book, or even just an after-work unwind sort of book. I can’t recommend it enough!

About the Book

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.

Reflection

In the spectrum of romance, this one is more rom-com than anything else. It has a bit of heat, a lot of laughs, and so much charm! I love how spunky the women in Christina Lauren books are—they always have that great mix of intelligence, sass, and imperfection.

Olive and her sister Ami may be identical twins, but these two couldn’t be more different. Ami has it all together—the job, the man, the poise. Olive is a bit more of a mess—she is chronically unlucky, both in love and in life. She recently lost her job and she is in a skittle green satin bridesmaid dress serving as her sister’s maid of honor, when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from infected seafood.

Everyone, that is, except for Olive and Ami’s husband’s brother Ethan, both of whom avoided the seafood (Olive is allergic and Ethan is bougie about buffets, of course). Now they find themselves pushed into taking the all expenses paid honeymoon that Ami won in a sweepstakes, despite the fact that they pretty much loathe one another.

But as they arrive in Maui as fake husband and wife, they soon realize that maybe they don’t hate each other quite as much as they thought. Maybe they misjudged one another, took signals the wrong way over the years. And pretty soon witty banter and teasing may start to turn towards something more… But there are some twists headed their way and it may throw a wrench in everything!

One thing I really loved is that Olive and Ami don’t resent one another even a bit. Despite the fact that Ami had it all most of their life and Olive was the mess, only for things to turn the other way on them, these sisters love and support one another above all else! I’m a girls girl so I was so happy to see such a strong female bond! I also found their entire family to be absolutely hysterical and charming!

Ethan is also a really great character. He was a bit hard to figure out at first, mostly because we see him through Olive’s eyes. Getting to know the real him throughout the story was wonderful. I’d have to say, really every character (even the ones I didn’t like) were outstanding! On my second book by Christina Lauren, it seems creating likeable characters that feel like people you’d know in real life is one of their strengths.

I can’t recommend this book enough! Thank you to Gallery Books for my copy. I read this with the book besties, and we all loved it!