Review: The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

Author: Christina Lauren
Publisher: Gallery Books
Date of publication: May 2019

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.

I was a little wary going into The Unhoneymooners.  I did not like Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating.  But I'm always willing to give an author another try.  I was happy to see that this book lived up to all of the hype that I have been seeing online.  The book is an enemies to lovers story and I really enjoyed it.  

Olive and Ethan were so much fun to watch fall for each other.  Their disdain for each other was humorous and led to a lot of really funny banter.  They were perfect for each other. I just wish we got more than fade to black bedroom scenes.  That was kind of a let down. I don't want to spoil anything, but toward the end Ethan does kind of mess up. But, I thought it was an honest reaction to what he was being told.  And he did redeem himself in the end.  I also loved Olive's family  They made for some great comic relief.   

One of the things that is explored in the book is the concept of luck.  Is there really good and bad luck; or do things just happen to us and it depends on the way we look at them?  Olive thinks she has bad luck, but Ethan tried to help her see another side.   If you are looking for a fun and not too serious romance, I highly recommend this one.  It was a lot of fun.