Review: Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

The Unhoneymooners
by Christina Lauren
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: May 14, 2019
Genre: Romance
Rating:

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.

This was a fun and quirky read. Olive seems to have the worst of luck, and that definitely carries on throughout the story. Then you have Ethan, who for some reason finds every opportunity to needle Olive whenever he’s around her. Let’s just say, putting these two together on a plane, and sending them off on a honeymoon getaway is maybe not the best idea. However, when Olive’s sister, and Ethan’s brother get food poisoning at their wedding, Olive and Ethan decide to not let the honeymoon package go to waste and take their spots on the trip to Hawaii instead. Which of course forces these two together at every turn since they have to pretend to be newlyweds. Let’s just say it makes for some interesting reading.

We’re never given any real backstory on why Ethan and Olive dislike each other. Something about cheese curds at the state fair. Apparently Ethan made a face at her when she got cheese curds and that cemented that he had a problem with her. So, she decided she loathed him right back… and they’ve been like that for years. However, forcing them together during this unhoneymoon has caused some truths to come out. Like, for instance, Ethan never hated her, in fact he liked her but between his brother telling him to no go there, and Olive’s clear disdain for him, he kept his distance. You know, the typical, “if you just talked it out in the beginning, you wouldn’t be where you are right now” situations. But, whatcha gonna do about it? :shrugs:

This is one of those slow… very slow romances. There’s no instant fireworks when they get to Hawaii. In fact, I felt like it wasn’t until the last quarter of the book that we finally got somewhere. However, with that being said, that made me like the characters and their story that much more. I had a chance to learn about them and see them slowly change over the course of their vacation. You see them start to relax, become less tense, and open up. Once the romance finally happened, it just felt natural.

Let’s be honest, I’m not surprised I enjoyed this book so much. When it comes to this amazing duo, Christina Lauren always know how to hook me in. I’ve enjoyed every book I’ve read from them, and this one is no exception. If you are looking for an enemies-to-lovers slow burn romance, then definitely pick this one up.