This book was my first stint into the modern romance genre and, I’ll be honest, it was a bit of a disappointment. The two major tropes within the book (fake relationship and miscommunication) are some of my least favorite so the book didn’t hit the mark for me.

Synopsis (from Barnes & Noble)

Olive Torres is used to being the unlucky twin: from inexplicable mishaps to a recent layoff, her life seems to be almost comically jinxed. By contrast, her sister Ami is an eternal champion…she even  managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a slew of contests.  Unfortunately for Olive, the only thing worse than constant bad luck is  having to spend the wedding day with the best man (and her nemesis), Ethan Thomas.

Olive braces herself for wedding hell, determined to put on a brave face, but when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan.  Suddenly there’s a free honeymoon up for grabs, and Olive will be damned if Ethan gets to enjoy paradise solo.

Agreeing to a temporary truce, the pair head for Maui. After all, ten days of bliss is worth  having to assume the role of loving newlyweds, right? But the weird thing is…Olive doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, the more she pretends to be the luckiest woman alive, the more it feels like she  might be.

My Review

This book, unfortunately, was not for me simply because it involves one of my least favorite tropes: the fake relationship. I find this trope to be so unrealistic (yes, I realize that I read fantasy primarily which is, of course, incredible unrealistic but that’s the genre). With modern romances, I hate when the fake relationship trope is used to get two people together because this simply does not happen in real life. There’s also an inherent predictability to this trope which makes it even more predictable than the usual modern romance.

Basically this story is told from Olive’s point of view and her internal (and I suppose external as well) hatred towards Ethan. He had mentioned something about her weight when they first met when her sister and his best friend started dating. There was a hell of a lot of miscommunication (another trope I absolutely despise) in the early stages of their “relationship” (I put that in quotes because there really isn’t much of a relationship).

Anyway, Olive is a vegetarian and Ethan is a picky eater so at the wedding of Olive’s sister and Ethan’s best friend (or maybe it’s his brother – I can’t remember), they don’t eat the crab (I think it’s crab or some sort of seafood). The crab gives everyone food poisoning except for, obviously, Ethan and Olive. Ami (Olive’s sister/the bride) tells Olive she should go on her honeymoon because at least someone will enjoy it. Turns out Ethan was also offered a chance at the honeymoon so both Olive and Ethan end up going. They have to pretend to be married (not sure why this is though but I think the author just wanted to make it work somehow which also sort of annoyed me).

Lots of stuff happen throughout the fake honeymoon and, spoiler, they get together and realize all the miscommunication that had occurred prior.

My rating is 3 out 5 stars simply because I hated the tropes. If those tropes are your thing, you’ll like this book. The writing wasn’t anything award-worthy but good enough and typical of most modern romances.