Welcome back to Reading, Reading, Reading!

I have been LOVING contemporary/romance books lately, and when I first heard about this book I practically squealed! This book has honestly one of the best synopsis’ I have ever heard, so to say that I had high expectations was an understatement (especially after hearing other people rave about Christina Lauren’s previous books)! Thanks to Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with an eARC!

Synopsis (Goodreads.com):

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.

This book contained basically every trope that I love in contemporary/romance books all wrapped up in one book! I absolutely adored this novel, and enjoyed it even more than I expected to! Since this one was provided to me as an eARC and I normally read eBooks extremely quickly, I actually read this one all in one day even though it is over 400 pages!

I loved all of the characters in this novel! I felt so emotionally attached to all of them, and cared so deeply about all of the things that were happening to them. I literally cried three separate times over the last 15% of the book, which definitely shows you how much I enjoyed reading about these characters! Olive and Ethan are two of my new favourite bookish characters, and I absolutely fell in love with their relationship. One of my favourite things to read about in all novels – no matter what genre they fall into – is having a great family dynamic. I love reading about large families with a lot of either love or hatred towards each other, and the family in this book was all full of love! This trope was actually very unexpected (as it doesn’t say anything about a large family) in the synopsis, but I thought it added a lot of love into the story. Additionally, Olive and Ami’s parents’ relationship was hilarious to read about!

Two of my favourite tropes in novels are fake dating and hate to love relationships. This novel included both of them, and Christina Lauren wrote them so well! While Olive and Ethan had quite a toxic relationship at the beginning of the novel, they (very) slowly started seeing the light in each other (no spoilers here, though!). Overall, their relationship was written so well and with so much passion.

Since most of the novel takes place during the honeymoon, the setting of Hawaii was exceptional and so beautiful to read. Hawaii is on my “dream vacations” bucket list and I hope to get there one day! In the mean time, I love reading books that are set in Hawaii, and this one featured so many amazing places (from tropical beaches to a paintball facility!).

The plot of this story was so unique and quirky! I enjoyed every second of it, and thought that it was super creative. I also enjoyed the comments about the theme of “luck”, and whether or not luck is a true thing, or if it all depends on peoples’ perspective and outlooks on life. Every single person I have talked to about this book brings up that they think it sounds like a great rom-com movie, and I hope one day this book is made into a movie since I think it would be fantastic!

As I said before, the writing in this novel was so charming and fantastic! I loved reading from Olive’s perspective, since she was written with great wit and humour. The writing was very descriptive, but also concise. All of the events that took place in the story were all relevant and necessary to advance the flow of the main plot, which I always think is so important in all books.

Overall, I loved every second of this novel and gave it 5/5 stars! Thanks to Simon & Schuster Canada for providing me with an eARC!

This book is scheduled to be released TOMORROW, so make sure you pick it up in your local bookstore!

Good Night Book Owls!