Genre: Romance
Publisher: Gallery Books
Pages: 432
Release Date: May 14, 2019
Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Amy, 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.
The Unhoneymooners is a fun and flirty romantic comedy that just misses the mark of a five star read.
The opening chapters set a fun and lighthearted tone for the novel quickly as readers are introduced to the chronically unlucky Olive in contrast to her twin who is the luckiest person in the world. Olive is fun, clumsy, and quirky. I’m usually not a fan of these types of main characters as I find them endlessly annoying. However, Lauren pushes Olive to the edge of these traits without going over.
Ethan is an underwhelming love interest. He carries the typical traits of a swoon worthy love interest without an interesting or engaging personality. There are moments when something interesting about him shines through, but those are far and few between.
The driving force of the novel is the enemies to lovers romance where they fall in love while on a honeymoon meant for their respective siblings who recently married. The setting and the characters’ interactions are perfect. Their banter is fun and flirty and had me grinning from ear to ear for most of the novel. Unfortunately, this all comes to a halt when they leave the vacation and return to the real world.
Once Olive and Ethan arrive home the realities of their relationship to each other and what it means for everyone around them become an obstacle. These final few chapters were a chore to read and what made me rate the novel four stars instead of five.
Overall, The Unhoneymooners is a fun read that I’d recommend you pick up while on the beach.
***I received and ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for and honest review.
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