“The Unhoneymooners” is a charming and captivating adult romance novel by the duo known as Christina Lauren that was published in May 2019. The principal character and narrator of the novel, Olive Torres, is a twin who feels as if her life is a product of bad luck whilst her twin sister Ami has the exact opposite fortune. After all, Ami is getting married and her wedding consists of items and services she won in various contests, competitions and sweepstakes, making her wedding extremely cost-effective. Meanwhile, Olive is single, out of a job and seemingly has no prospects in career or romance. That is, until her luck begins to turn around.
The rest of this blog post may contain mild spoilers that a reader may not want to see, so if you haven’t read the book and want the main plot point to remain a mystery, then you might not want to continue reading this post.
Romance novels typically aren’t read for their captivating plots and twists-and-turns like fantasy novels are; they’re read because readers know what tropes they like, and find books that fit the criteria. With that being said, Olive Torres has a distaste for Ami’s husband Dane, and an extreme dislike for his older brother, Ethan. When the reception’s buffet results in everyone getting violently ill (besides Olive and Ethan) Ami insists that Olive take the honeymoon she had won in her place, as she won’t be better for a while. Circumstances have it that the only person that she could take on this sweepstakes honeymoon is Ethan. So not only does she have to take a trip to Maui with Ethan, but they’ll have to pretend they’re married. One can imagine how this might unfold.
I haven’t read fiction in a long time, but as soon as I picked up this book I couldn’t set it down. It was fast-paced, enjoyable and earnest. I enjoyed it so thoroughly that I immediately knew I had to write about it and make an accompanying playlist for the blog.
The playlist is as follows:
- “Never Been Wrong” — Waxahatchee
- “Future 86” — Bomb the Music Industry!
- “I Don’t Like You” — The Regrettes
- “Déjate Llevar” — The Marias
- “I Don’t Know Why I Like You but I Do” — The Wombats
- “Shut Up Kiss Me” — Angel Olsen
- “Who’d Have Known” — Lily Allen
- “Just like Heaven” — The Cure
- “I Wanna Throw Up” — Yasmin Nur
- “Common Denominator” — Nisa
- “Me & My Dog” — boygenius
- “Me and My Husband” — Mitski
- “Grounds for Divorce” — Wolf Parade
- “Interlude: I’m Not Angry Anymore” — Paramore
- “Baby I’m Yours” — Arctic Monkeys
As always, I’ve curated this list into a Spotify playlist for your enjoyment.
Happy Reading and Listening,
Caitlin
