A review by leahfoko
The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

emotional funny lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book was fun and cute, enjoyable enemies to lovers fluff. I don’t have a whole lot of unique stuff to say about it since it was what you would expect from an enemies to lovers romance but I am a sucker for enemies to lovers romance so I don’t have any complaints about that. 

I do however have complaints with everything involving Dane. I was high key stressed by everyone gaslighting Olive about Dane. Spoiler territory about how this was resolved that I had issues with.
I will say what brought my rating down so far was that I felt the resolution between Olive and Ethan after the fallout of the literal gaslighting and not believing her about his dude bro brother that he was doing was kind of lackluster and incomplete feeling for me. I felt like he barely apologized for believing she was lying and gaslighting her basically about how she is just so negative and sees the negative in everyone. I was like, are you kidding me? Idk I felt like he said like one line about how he was going to regret not believing her for a long time and she was just like, okay that’s fine then. I felt like I needed more groveling from him or like a more thorough acknowledgment of what he did wrong and I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get that. I just felt like it wrapped up too fast. Also, it was always excused as “well he loves his brother and can’t imagine he’d do anything wrong” and I have two issues with this. One, if my brother was being a lil shit and doing what Dane was doing I would’ve immediately questioned him on it. I wouldn’t have just gone along with it because he’s my brother and I love him. I can sort of understand why he wouldn’t be inclined to believe Olive about the flirting thing at the bar who he hasn’t known as long because he could think she read it wrong but he has been around Dane all this time and should’ve known something was not adding up and called him on it. I don’t feel that brotherly love excuses it. And in that thread and context of the story is my second point. Olive was willing to acknowledge that maybe her sister had known about this and maybe she was wrong. Olive was willing to admit that she might be wrong and give him the benefit of the doubt. And he continued to do the wrong thing. Ethan wasn’t really giving Olive the benefit of the doubt ever. And then it just worked out at the end? I just really felt like he handled that whole thing horribly and the fact that they went back to normal happy trust almost immediately just drove me crazy. This relationship has already hit one of the biggest trust hurdles and they just said well, too bad, the sex is good? I just did not like the way their relationship got fixed way too easily.
 

I loved Olive and Ami’s family, I found them all so wonderful and appreciated the latina main characters. I enjoyed the show down™️ at Ami’s house near the end. I love fake marriage tropes. I love enemies to lovers tropes. I enjoyed all this stuff. So overall I enjoyed the book. But that stuff with Ethan fully not believing Olive about his brother was just not it for me. 3 stars. 

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