The Unhoneymooners

The Unhoneymooners
by Christina Lauren
Recommended Ages: 15+

Olive and Ethan are the sister of the bride and the brother of the groom and also, not coincidentally, the maid of honor and best man. They're also sworn enemies, since Olive took offense at him the first time they met and is now convinced that he takes offense at her at every meeting since. What totally is coincidental is that they're the only people at the wedding who didn't partake of the seafood buffet. So, when everybody but them comes down with a stomach bug, the sexy anti-couple has to share the all-expenses-paid, non-refundable honeymoon on Maui that their wedded siblings can't go on.

Removed from the madcap antics of their families, Olive finds Ethan surprisingly not-terrible company. But caught between a hotel staff that must never know that they've appropriated someone else's honeymoon, and a brand new boss who just happens to be staying at the same hotel at the same time, Olive tells a little white lie ... and hijinks ensue. Now she and Ethan must pretend to be really married, and – well, as happens in this kind of novel, a real romance begins to bloom.

Three things surprised me about this novel. First, despite being pitched as an erotic romance (and the main characters do, indeed, have sex outside of wedlock), it doesn't provide a beat-by-beat, clinical description of their sex acts. It draws a tasteful curtain across the scene, eschewing the lurid details. Second, the third-act dramatic twist that has become such a structural necessity in this genre is developmed more deeply and meaningfully, and resolved less easily, than the typical "15 minutes before the end of the Hallmark movie" misunderstanding. Third, and what made this book really work for me, it's truly funny, with Olive narrating most of it (the point of view shifting only in the epilogue) in a smart, self-deprecating, witty voice. The nerdy quality of her pop-culture references kind of made me fall in love with her. Ethan is a lucky bastard.

Christina Lauren is the erotic-romance-novel writing team of Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings. Under their shared pen-name, they have also written the 10-book "Beautiful" series, starting with Beautiful Bastard; the five-book "Wild Seasons" series, starting with Sweet Filthy Boy; and about 20 other novels, including such titles as Autoboyography, Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating, The Honey-Don't List, The Soulmate Equation and The True Love Experiment.