The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

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Title: The Unhoneymooners
Author: Christina Lauren
Published by: Simon & Schuster Audio
Release Date: May 14, 2019
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Cynthia Farrell, Deacon Lee
Length: 9 hours and 7 minutes
Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Romantic Comedy
Source: Libby
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2020 Audiobook Challenge, Lenoreo's 2020 Diversity Reading Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ IndieBound ✩ iTunes ✩ Book Depository
My rating:

Blurb:

For two sworn enemies, anything can happen during the Hawaiian trip of a lifetime—even love—in this witty and swoonworthy romance from the New York Times bestselling duo who “hilariously depict modern dating” (Us Weekly) and authors of Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating and Roomies.

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.

With Christina Lauren’s “uniquely hilarious and touching voice” (Entertainment Weekly), The Unhoneymooners is a fun and charming romance that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt unlucky in love.

My Review:

4 stars — Ah enemies to lovers…you always have me wary.  Honestly though?  This was one of the more real enemies to lovers I’ve ever read, and mostly I was totally onboard with Ethan and Olive.

This is a book that perhaps I shouldn’t have listened to instead of read.  First of all, don’t let the inclusion of Deacon Lee mislead you, he’s only there for the epilogue — and personally, that’s not enough time to really form an opinion, but I enjoyed what I heard.  So this was all about Cynthia Farrell’s narration.  And it wasn’t bad…I’m just not sure if I would have read things the same way she narrated them, so it might have indirectly influenced my opinions about some of the things that happened (or the way things were said — how teasing vs serious).  I also really wasn’t a fan of the “bro” voice she used for Ethan.  That’s not going to get me swoony.  I eventually got used to it, but I really disliked it in the beginning.  I also felt like she wasn’t completely consistent in her voices for different characters, and sometimes they weren’t distinct enough.  And since our dear Olive loves to have internal thoughts, I often found it hard to distinguish what she said out loud vs just thought…which makes a big difference.  Now, on the plus side?  Her pronunciation of the Spanish words, or with a Spanish accent, was OUTSTANDING.  It made me really hear it like Olive and her family would have said it.

I appreciated the way Olive grew in this story…how she learned some truths about herself, and while it took her some time to come to grips with it, she actually strived to change and be better.  I don’t think you can ask for better for a character.  Even though her jumping to conclusions was a bad habit, I probably have a similar one, so I got her on that.  It really is something I need to change, just like Olive.  This is going to sound so strange, but I loved the way she struggled with what she thought, what she was willing to do, holding on to her long-held beliefs, etc.  It made her so real.  And as always, I loved her snarky nature and ability to banter with the best of them.

I found it harder to fall in love with Ethan — again, having only Olive’s perspective, we have an unreliable narrator when it comes to what he is about.  And the *actual* narration in this audiobook really made him sound like more of a dick than perhaps I would have read it myself.  I get why it was single POV, otherwise the turn around would have been ruined.  But honestly?  I would have loved to have this one be dual POV.  I would really love to have seen Ethan’s struggle.  In the end he was a lot more gentle and kind than he came across.  I struggled with forgiving him for his loyalty at the end — on the one hand, I totally got where it was coming from.  On the other hand, I was pissed that he wouldn’t look at some behaviors and open his eyes.  It was an interesting character arc in that way.  Not one that you usually see, but one that is very real.

I’m not normally a huge enemies to lovers fan, just because of the mean thoughts that generally go with them…but I actually survived their “hate” and arguing at the beginning more than I normally would.  I think because it was kind of light, and they tolerated one another for the sake of their siblings.  I really loved the way it slowly changed, and all the little steps forwards they made.  It had me sighing with excitement.

I LOVED Olive’s hilarious and large family.  They were all such characters, but you could really feel their love.  I wasn’t expecting Amy’s story — it was a lot bigger than I had anticipated, and it made my heart hurt.

So yeah.  Surprisingly, I kind of loved this enemies to lovers…and I think I will maybe come back and read it sometime in the future to see if I’m right about loving it even more as just the book.