My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren

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Title: My Favorite Half-Night Stand
Author: Christina Lauren
Published by: Gallery Books
Release Date: December 4, 2018
Format: eARC
Pages: 384
Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Romantic Comedy
Source: NetGalley
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 Netgalley and Edelweiss Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 New Release Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Winter 2018
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound
My rating:

Blurb:

From the New York Times bestselling author that “hilariously depicts modern dating” (Us Weekly) comes a sexy romantic comedy about online dating, and its many, many fails.

With a world-famous speaker at their university, Millie Morris and her four woefully single male colleagues make a pact that they’ll all find dates. Unfortunately, Millie has more success helping them make matches online than she does navigating the onslaught of lewd pics in her own feed. But when she creates a fictional name for a new account, Millie finds herself vying for the online attention of a man she sees every day in the flesh.

My Review:

I received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.

4.5 stars — This book was just really endearing.  I laughed a lot, but I also felt a lot, and it made me think about myself a lot…which in my opinion makes for a pretty great book.

I had a hard time with our heroine, Millie, but I loved her all the same.  What’s weird is that while I had a hard time with her, I also empathized a lot with her struggles and how her childhood loss affected her.  I have this strange balance of too many emotions over fictional things, and not enough emotions over real life things.  There was a moment in the book where she talks about after you’ve gone through this huge a tragedy, nothing else seems big enough.  I get that.  I feel that.  I still wanted her to do better though.  But I do understand distancing yourself from loved ones to protect against another huge loss.

So yeah, I guess I found her fascinating.  Even the way she interacted with friends, constantly diverting attention back to them…wow.  I’m like 50% Millie I think.  Just without the smarts and fascination with serial killers.

I think it’s weird how you can be frustrated with a character, and the choices they’re making and how they’re hurting the other main character, but still understand how they got there, even if you’d like to believe you would have chosen differently.

Reid was absolutely adorable, if a little clueless.  But I loved that he was the genuinely caring, cuddly person in the relationship (another real life similarity?).  I loved how much he loved his family.  I grew frustrated with him too, because he got frustrated with Millie, but I felt like his expectations were unrealistic at times.

They had such a weird relationship…it’s not often you read a friends to lovers story where they mostly didn’t see each other as more (at least consciously) until sex was on the table.  What a strange twist.  Fantastic chemistry right from the start, both in friendship and steamy-wise.  My heart hurt for them.  There is a part of me that felt like the ending was longer than necessary, but I can’t get into details without giving away spoilers.

The true star of this story was actually the whole group of 5 friends.  They were all so different, but they melded together into their friend group just so seamlessly.  I could honestly picture them all, and I loved how they genuinely cared for one another, even if a lot of their interactions were pretty light.  I also loved that we got glimpses of depth in a lot of these secondary characters…  My heart particularly went out to Ed.  I just really wanted to hug him.  And the funny thing is, while I would always enjoy a book about any of the 3 other friends, it was kind of nice that I didn’t feel I needed one.  I felt like I could be confident in their happiness.

On a side note, I actually loved the way all the group chats were laid out…that’s something not a lot of books make super clear, and it was really cutely formatted in this one.

So yeah.  This is a kind of weird rambly review…not that that’s new.  I was sucked into this one from the first page, and invested until the end.