The Restricted Section

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
Published by Gallery Books on May 14, 2019
Pages: 416
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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.

Christina Lauren regularly bring us masterful romances with emotional depth and swoon-worthy characters. With The Unhoneymooners, they remind us of their origins with this fun and sexy romp. It was a refreshing and light palate cleanse from their recent string of heavier publications, and frankly, it makes me want to jump on a jet plane myself.

I wish I knew what was happening, both between us and inside my heart. It feels like the organ itself has gotten bigger, like it’s demanding to be seen and heard, reminding me that I am a warm-blooded female with wants and needs that go beyond the basics.

Olive and Ethan are the stuff of dreams for an enemy-to-lovers trope. I am talking The Hating Game vibes, people. They hate each other so good. The tension *fans self*. And then they love each other real good. Seriously, they were perfection. Sadly, the entire book couldn’t live up to the hot hot heat Olive and Ethan were putting out.

“Unfortunately,” Ami says, “you don’t get to choose the circumstances. That’s the point of luck: it happens when and where it happens.”

Enter Ami, Olive’s twin sister, and Dane, Ethan’s little brother, who are married at the start of the book, and then struck DOWN with demon poops from a sketchy buffet at the reception. Without them, Olive and Ethan wouldn’t be headed off to Hawaii for boinkfest…I mean fake honeymoon. But as we follow Ami and Dane’s minor story arc, it becomes more and more troubling. Ultimately, the subplot prevented me from fully giving my heart over to this book. It was like a gorgeous walk on the beach with a ragged rock in your shoe. Ami and Dane become so integral (and so skeevy), that it dulls the shiny, happy story.

I know now that it’s a waste of my time looking for reasons, or fate, or luck. But I’ve definitely come to embrace choices in the past month or so, and I’m going to have to figure out which one I’ll make.

All ends well, as is typical in Christina Lauren books. If they had just toned down the extremes of the subplot (and mostly Dane), this would have been damn near perfection.

XOXO