A review by booksabrewin
The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

3.0

Olive can't stand her maid of honor dress almost as much as she can't stand the best man, but she will do just about anything for her twin sister, Ami. When she stands up to give her toast at the wedding and her entire family starts puking like they're understudies for Linda Blair, her sister asks her to take the non-refundable honeymoon vacation that she couldn't attend. The only catch? She has to go with her arch-nemesis, Ethan Thomas, the groom's big brother and best man. Hawaii is a fairly big place, perhaps they can keep their distance from each other and she can simply soak up the sun as she contemplates where to go with her life after having been laid off. But fate would have other ideas. It would seem both Olive's new boss and Ethan's ex-girlfriend who tore his heart out and fed it to him, are here to force the couple to pretend their scathing hate is unequivocal love. And somewhere along the way, in all the pretending, it starts to feel a lot more natural than it should. Could Olive and Ethan's first impressions of each other have been way off the mark?

I listened to the audiobook of this book and since it was my first foray into audiobooks I was a little curious how it would feel to have someone outside of my head voicing the characters. I don't know how much I like when female narrators try to put on a fake masculine voice. It's a bit cheesy. But that's the audiobook and has no bearing on the actual story.

I was kind of on the fence with Olive. I did feel like she was super sensitive and was quick to snap at Ethan in particular any chance she got even when he didn't outright do anything to warrant the attack. I can understand her motivation and the anger and hurt she probably felt when she thought their first meeting had turned out badly because he was fat shaming her (even though Olive is described as curvy by way of a big butt and boobs... not exactly BBW territory). Once she started to open herself up to Ethan I grew to like her. I even liked that she took a stand when she felt she needed to even thought it cost her dearly. I think she was very well developed and a spitfire for sure.

Ethan felt a bit underdeveloped, most likely because he wasn't the main perspective of the book. I wasn't a huge fan of his despite how charming he seemed to be portrayed. But, I liked Olive enough that it made up for any smarmy feelings I had toward Ethan. And them as a couple was definitely better than when they were apart.

The book reads like a typical rom-com. It is something you would expect on the big screen and for someone coming off a reverse harem erotica spree, the fade-to-black sex was a little jarring and frustrating. However, once I took a step back and realized not all great stories have heavily described sex scenes. Some are just delightfully light reads. That was what this was for me. A delightfully light read with no raunchy sexy scenes but still a lot of heat between the pages.