What is it about?
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. (goodreads)
Book: The Unhoneymooners | Authors: Christina Lauren | Publisher: Gallery Press | Published: 14.05.2019 | Pages: 400 | Genre: contemporary romance | Rep: hispanic, gay side character | TW: cheating
What did I think?
This book came in the mail a few days ago and what can I say? I paused my other reads, grabbed The Unhoneymooners and started reading. And boy, did I have fun! Not only are there all of my favourite tropes, they’re wonderfully executed as well. I really do love me a fake dating enemies-to-lovers, paired with a good ol’ “oh my god, there was only one bed”. Christina Lauren definitely know how to make a woman happy.
The story start’s at Ami’s wedding where Olive is confronted with Ethan. Everyone knows they dislike eachother and the reader gets thrown right into their arguments and bickering about anything you could imagine. When everyone falls sick with food poisoning except for Olive and Ethan, they take the newly-weds’ place and fly to Hawaii. While they still argue about everything that happens around and to them, Olive notices some things about Ethan she didn’t before and didn’t expect to find either. That they supposedly don’t like each other was made better by the fact that they had to pretend they were in love hwich made for sometimes awkward, other times funny situations that warmed my heart.
I liked that there was an actual process of “I hate you” over “I hate you but maybe I like you too” to “I like you”, little things that Olive kept noticing and her feelings slowly changing.
I loved their arguments, they were hilarious. There were bad puns and innuendos, there was flirting, there was eye-rolling. Both Ethan and Olive took every chance to get on each other’s nerves despite being exhausted by it. It was so much fun to read and I laughed and grinned a lot.
The characters instantly captured my heart. Olive has bad luck and is more realistic-pessimistic than optimistic though she still doesn’t give up and lives her life in the best way possible. She’s warm and adventurous and has a nice sense of humor. Ethan is charming and cute. They both make mistakes, they have flaws and they fit wonderfully.
Another aspect I absolutely loved was Ami and Olive’s family. It is HUGE and they’re all into each other’s business all the time and they talk and cook and are there for each other and reading about them made me all warm and fuzzy. To be honest, I’d read a book just about their every day lives and just talk and go to each other’s houses and chat to each other.
So yes, I enjoyed this book a lot and if you want a cute, sexy laugh-out-loud romance, this book might just be the right thing for you.
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