BOOK REVIEW : THE UNHONEYMOONERS

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.

Christina Lauren are a pair of authors who you can not afford to lose your trust over after one bad release. They always come back stronger after a not-so-strong book.

I was not entirely happy with their previous release. But with this book, they go back to their hit formula of the quirky heroine and the serious broody hero, and my favorite enemies-to-lovers trope! I tell you, you can never go wrong with this combination.

The one thing the authors manage to get perfectly right with this book is the humor. Their books always have humor in them, but this might have been the funniest book that I’ve read by them. The pairing of Olive and Ethan also didn’t disappoint. They had oodles of chemistry. And so much steaminess! The build-up was also done perfectly. You could feel the tension between them. I always love it when romances deliver a lot of tension before getting the couple together.

I liked that the authors brought on the “He said, she said” conundrum into the mix. It’s not something we usually see being explored in romances. Olive’s Mexican family members were also very endearing. The relationship between Ami and Olive also surprised me. After reading the blurb, I thought that there would be bitterness and distance between them. But I loved how despite their differences, their bond was indisputable.

Now, let’s come to the unpleasant part. I always feel that including serious issues in a lighthearted story can be a tricky thing. You can’t let one overshadow the other. Here, the authors bring in issues of body image and cheating.

We get a big inner monologue at the beginning about Olive’s issues with her body and problematic relationship with eating. But the authors don’t do justice to this important subject in the end. I feel that they were  lazy with resolving it. Like another reviewer mentioned, she seemed to get over her issues pretty easily.

Then, there’s the cheating part. While the insertion of the whole ‘He said, she said’ debacle was a good tool to create conflict between the characters to provide for an interesting climax, I felt that it compromised with Ethan’s character. His moral compass bugged me a lot. Olive seemed to me to be too forgiving. I get what the authors were trying to do. But like I said, the thing with inculcating serious themes in a lighthearted story can compromise on the storytelling if not executed well. My enjoyment from the first half of the book was marred a little by what I felt was an unsatisfying resolution

Ultimately, though, I enjoyed the romance a lot. It was fun, cute, hilarious and steamy. If not for the issues I mention earlier, this would have been a 5-star read.

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★★★★☆

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