Going into The Unhoneymooners, I expected this to be a light, fun rom-com based on all the gushing reviews out there. After all, I enjoy a good love/hate relationship as much as the next gal. Instead, coming out of it, I'm left wondering if I read the same book everyone else did.
The initial pages were bubbly and charming as events unfold that lead to Olive and Ethan going to Maui together. Then, bam! The awkward train arrives, and my enjoyment of this book completely falls apart. You guys, I don't understand this coupling at all. There is no chemistry between them. It was odd how they were cold towards each other one moment, then hot the next. Love/hate relationships are only fun if I can understand the whys of one and the other, but all I got was whiplash trying to follow along.
As far as I can tell, Olive likes Ethan solely because he's attractive. On every page, Olive mentions his muscles, his abs, his biceps, his beautiful face, his long lashes, his blue eyes. Please, someone make it stop. And Olive hates Ethan because she thinks he doesn't like her. And the only reason Ethan gives for liking Olive is her boobs. *facepalm* Can we just try a little harder here to make the reasons more than skin deep?
The supposed flirty banter between these two made me cringe in embarrassment for them, especially Olive. She tries so hard in their interactions to be snarky, but it comes across as forced, inappropriate, and awkward. And she reads into everything he says, and ends up incorrectly interpreting almost everything. It was exhausting to read. And Ethan doesn't help, giving signals he's thinking about his ex, then acting like a clueless dumbass when Olive is hurt.
Usually a romance either has a few explicitly steamy scenes or the author can chose to let all those happen behind the curtains, and either is fine with me. But this book oddly tries to straddle both. There's no explicit scenes shown, but instead we are told constantly at random, unrelated times that they happened A LOT. It's so awkward.
But for all this, it wasn't until the last 100 pages that this book took a complete left turn to somewhere stupid, for no reason. The story was wrapped up, and then it kept going, right off of a cliff. When someone you care for tells you that they got an unwanted advance and it made them uncomfortable, your response should not be in the vein of "I don't believe it. Really it's he said/she said. And what does it matter what the truth is anyways?" Umm... say what?
I found this book to be an odd mix of boring and awkward, with a good dose of "Oh hell no!" thrown in at end. This is my second book by this author duo, and I'm starting to think that they aren't for me. In both books, silly main characters acting on questionable calls make it hard for me to see them as viable romantic leads, which ultimately defeats the whole purpose of a romance.
Readaroo Rating: 2 stars
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