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The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren [arc review]

Christina Lauren is the penname of longtime writing partners Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA Today, and #1 International bestselling authors of The Beautiful Series, Roomies, and others. I absolutely love their work and so it is unsurprising that I also loved The Unhoneymooners! It had the perfect blend of humor, romance and drama. Give me more!
Blurb:
Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Amy, 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.

The review: 5 Stars

Olive is very unlucky, always has been. And she is not in a particularly good place in life right now either. Going on holidays on her sister's place sounds like heaven... If it just wasn't for the tiny-itty-bitty fact she has to share the trip with her now brother in law of-course... 
Ethan Thomas seems to despise Olive from the moment they met. They are now in-laws, so they should try to get along right?

There is more to it, but with that and the blurb you get the idea. 
The writing was clever, witty, and gave just enough insight into each and every character to make you invested in their story. 
Olive and Ethan's relationship evolved beautifully. Due to some unfortunate circumstances and a lot of misunderstandings they slowly figure out that maybe, just maybe they don't despise each other all that much.

While this is a romance book and that is the overarching theme, the book is also about Olive learning to love life and not letting the negative take over. She is super smart, has a fantastic sense of humor, a loving family, loves cheese curds -that just had to be shared-, and is all-around a good person. Life often throws some curve-balls at you, but you gotta make the most of it, and she is slowly learning to do that.  

Perhaps one tiny little negative is that it takes a while for the story to develop. But once things get moving it really is spectacular! 
What Christina Lauren often does best is adding humor to their stories. They just know the perfect balance of romance and humor that works and The Unhoneymooners was another masterpiece by this fabulous duo!

Release Date: May 14th, 2019
Find the book at: GoodReads - Amazon

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