Tuesday 9 July 2019

[Review] THE UNHONEYMOONERS by Christina Lauren

Source: Received an ARC from Indigo Books & Music
Publisher: Gallery Books
Release Date: May 14, 2019
Number of Pages: 400 (Paperback)

DESCRIPTION

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 fiancĂ© 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.

REVIEW

First Impressions...

I loved Ethan and Olive, and the story and premise were light, fun and rom-com perfection, but I have to admit that I was a little underwhelmed. The chemistry between Ethan and Olive was phenomenal and I loved their hate-to-love dynamic, but the sexy parts of the story just didn’t deliver and it felt like they were totally brushed over. I also wish we’d gotten more of Ethan’s POV—super weird to read a CLo book without dual POV to be honest. I do think this story was super fun and I would recommend it, but it’s definitely not my fave CLo book.

This Book In 5 Words:

Summery. Funny. Light. Sweet. Dramatic.

What Did I Like: 

- Olive and Ethan! I absolutely loved both characters. Olive was ridiculously funny, and I loved Ethan's brooding, kind of cool demeanor...especially when we got to see him warm up and be all charming...and drunk, goofy Ethan was absolutely adorable. :D

- The hate-to-love/enemies-to-lovers dynamics. I thought they were fabulous and the chemistry between Olive and Ethan was super sexy...I just wished that the actual romance aspects of the story followed through with this.

- The writing, banter and characters. I love Christina Lauren's writing! It always pulls me in and The Unhoneymooners wasn't an exception. They also write fabulous banter and wonderful characters. While I felt like it wasn't their strongest book, it did still have me smiling, laughing, and swooning.

What Didn't I Like:

- Not sexy enough. I'm getting sick of fade-to-black scenes in self-described romance books by authors known for their sex scenes...so this book was super disappointing when it came to that. It's Christina Lauren's least steamy book by far and I've honestly just gotten really disappointed with how their books have handled steam in the last while...where has it gone?!

- Not enough Ethan---why wasn't this dual POV throughout? CLo ALWAYS writes dual POV stories, but for some reason we only got Ethan's POV in the epilogue and I was super disappointed with that. I loved Ethan, and I loved Olive, but I wanted more of Ethan's POV.

- My least favourite CLo book so far. I honestly just felt like this book needed more in general. More steam, more Ethan, and honestly a few more passes through edits to tighten it up. The beginning dragged too long and the ending was too rushed. *shrugs*

Star Rating:

★★★.5 to ★★★★

Read If You Like:

Light-hearted rom-coms, hilarious banter, and the hate-to-love trope.

Overall, I really loved the characters in THE UNHONEYMOONERS and I thought that it was a funny, light-hearted read. If you love lighter, less steamy rom-coms then I definitely recommend this one!



What do you think?
Have you ever read one of Christina Lauren's books?
If so, which is your favourite?

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