My first introduction to Christina Lauren was Beautiful Bastard, a tome that I definitely did not love, and one that my fellow Cannonballers appear to also not love. But, I’m a sucker for an easy read, and The Unhoneymooners came pretty highly recommended, so I thought I’d give the duo another shot.
And it was fine. In fact, it was pretty good. It’s not high literature, but sometimes you just want a goofy enemies to lovers hate romance with some pretty quality bow chica wow wow scenes. And The Unhoneymooners delivers.
Olive Torres is the drab, unlucky in love and in life sister of the beautiful Ami Torres, who is engaged to Prince Charming and has managed to get her fancy pants wedding nearly entirely paid for by entering a million contests (and maybe doing some Star Jones-type sponsorships?). But Ami’s good luck is about to turn the tables on her when she, her husband, and every single one of the wedding guests – except for Olive – get some sort of crazy food poisoning from eating bad seafood at the wedding. The food poisoning scenes start out kind of funny and then move to gross and then move to extraordinarily graphic, by the way.
Because Ami can’t leave the bathroom floor for her all-expenses paid honeymoon to Hawaii (another contest won), she begs Olive to take her place, but that means she has to pretend to be Ami, which means she needs a pretend groom. Enter Ethan, brother of the groom and best man, and Olive’s mortal enemy. Ethan missed out on the Great Food Poisoning Wedding Debacle because he’s weird about eating at buffets and skipped the meal at the wedding.
So Olive and Ethan head off for Hawaii, where the encounter Olive’s brand new boss and his wife, and Ethan’s former girlfriend and her new boyfriend (the one she left Ethan for, natch), and about a million awkward situations ensue, along with some pretty good sexy times. But soon their ten days are up, and reality comes roaring back and trouble between Ami and her new husband tears Olive and Ethan apart.
This is a classic enemies to lovers story, but the dash of family loyalty and sister bonding fleshed it out in to something a bit more, and I enjoyed it. It’s a perfect light-hearted beach read.