Book Review: The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

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As the title suggests, this is a closed quarters trope. It's also an enemies to lovers trope. Body image plays a role as Olive is on the heavy side, which is a nice change. ~~~~ Olive Torres is used to being the unlucky twin: from inexplicable mishaps to a recent layoff, her life seems to be almost comically jinxed. By contrast, her sister, Ami, is an eternal companion... she even managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a slew of contests. Unfortunately for Olive the only thing worse than constant bad luck is having to spend the wedding day with the best man (and her nemesis) Ethan Thomas. Olive braces herself for wedding hell, determined to put on a brave face, but when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning, the only people who aren't affected are Olive and Ethan. Suddenly there's a free honeymoon up for grabs, and Olive will be damned if Ethan gets to enjoy paradise solo. Agreeing to a temporary truce, the pair head for Maui. After all, ten days of bliss are worth having to assume the role of loving newlyweds, right? But the weird thing is... Olive doesn't mind playing pretend. In fact, the more she pretends to be the luckiest woman alive, the more it feels like she might be. ~~~~ This is really a funny story, starting with the food poisoning at the wedding and continuing with Olive and Ethan's tenuous relationship. Actually, the humour starts with the prizes Ami won, free bridesmaids dresses the which are referred to as "shiny green Skittles". The food poisoning added great hilarity. But as Olive and Ethan get to know each other they realize that they were both attracted to each other all along. A honeymoon in Hawaii? Yes! I'm all for it. You wouldn't think they would have to pretend to be honeymooners while down there but since they just HAPPEN to meet people they know at the same resort, they continue with the charade for the whole 10 days. And as they get to know each other they realize there was some back story when they first met causing the distance between them. (I think they would have spent at least one day on the beach, though.) This is a funny story, a sweet love story with a wee bit of steam, and some major family drama. Olive's sister, Ami, actually married Ethan's brother Dane. So Dane's secrets become revealed during the Unhoneymoon, hence the family drama. This book is highly touted on Instagram (and I hear Tik Tok). I gave it 5 stars out of 5. I just didn't see any reason to cut a star or even half a star off. It was that good. As an FYI, Christina Lauren is actually two co-authors who write best-selling romcoms together. This book was fun and unputdownable for me. I highly recommend.