Review – The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
Publisher: Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books
Publication Date: May 14, 2019
Date Read: May 19, 2019
Length: 432 pages
Source: NetGalley
★★★★☆

For two sworn enemies, anything can happen during the Hawaiian trip of a lifetime—maybe even love—in this romantic comedy from the New York Times bestselling authors of Roomies.

Olive Torres is used to being the unlucky twin: from inexplicable mishaps to a recent layoff, her life seems to be almost comically jinxed. By contrast, her sister Ami is an eternal champion . . . she even managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a slew of contests. Unfortunately for Olive, the only thing worse than constant bad luck is having to spend the wedding day with the best man (and her nemesis), Ethan Thomas.

Olive braces herself for wedding hell, determined to put on a brave face, but when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. Suddenly there’s a free honeymoon up for grabs, and Olive will be damned if Ethan gets to enjoy paradise solo.

Agreeing to a temporary truce, the pair head for Maui. After all, ten days of bliss is worth having to assume the role of loving newlyweds, right? But the weird thing is . . . Olive doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, the more she pretends to be the luckiest woman alive, the more it feels like she might be.

With Christina Lauren’s “uniquely hilarious and touching voice” (Entertainment Weekly), The Unhoneymooners is a romance for anyone who has ever felt unlucky in love.

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I had fun with this romance!  I have seen so many glowing reviews for books written by the writing duo of Christina Lauren over the past couple of years.  I have really wanted to give their work a try but for one reason or another, this was actually the first time I actually fit one of their books into my reading schedule.  I will be honest in that this was not earth-shattering in any way but I thought it was a fun enjoyable read.

Romance with a bit of humor and great banter?  Sign me up!  This book did have a lot of great elements despite the fact that there really weren’t any big surprises in the story.  This wasn’t the kind of book that had me laughing out loud but I found several sections of the book rather amusing.

Olive and Ami are twins.  The book opens on Ami’s wedding day.  Things go poorly at the wedding leaving everyone ill.  Since the bride and groom can’t go on the honeymoon, the Olive and Ethan, the groom’s brother, go in their place.  Oh yeah, Olive and Ethan don’t exactly get along so it should prove to be an interesting trip.

I liked Olive and Ethan and thought that they worked well together.  I thought that they had some great chemistry and I enjoyed their banter.  It was very eye-opening to learn a bit about their history as they dealt with some of the situations they encountered on their trip.  I think that this story was really at its best when the focus was completely on Olive and Ethan without mixing in any of the complications they had to contend with.

I thought that there were times where the story got a little unnecessarily complicated.  I really would have loved to see these two at the resort without dealing with people from their lives popping up all of the time.  I am also not completely sure that I wanted Olive to forgive Ethan at the end of the book.  His mistake was a pretty big one and I am not sure that I would have been able to get over it if I were in her shoes.  These are really minor things that didn’t have a big impact on my enjoyment of the book.

I would recommend this book to others.  I found myself wanting to take a trip to Hawaii because of some of the descriptions in this story.  I had a great time watching Olive and Ethan fall in love and can’t wait to read more from this writing duo in the future!

I received a digital review copy of this book from Gallery, Threshold, Pocket Books via NetGalley.

About the Author

Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of longtime writing partners/besties Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA TODAY, and #1 international bestselling authors of the Beautiful and the Wild Seasons series, The Unhoneymooners, My Favorite Half-Night Stand, Love and Other Words, Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, Dating You / Hating You, Roomies, The House, and Autoboyography.

Author Links: Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter

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