There are two tropes I’m not really a fan of when it comes to romance: the fake boyfriend and vacation romance. For the first, I don’t like fake anything, and for the second, I don’t want an expiry date on my romances. I want my romances to have forever-ever-after in sight, not “two weeks, then we go back to our normal lives.”
Despite that, I just read and loved a book with both those tropes: Honeymoon Sweet by Allison Temple. The reason I even tried it was that a while back, I read a post on my friend Addison Albright’s blog, one of her “what I’m reading on the treadmill post.” In these posts, she always includes her favorite quotes from the book she’s currently reading, and for the Honeymoon Sweet post, I fell in love with every single quote. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. So I went to Amazon and downloaded the sample, loved it, so I bought the whole books.
Doug is a cheese pizza kind of guy. A honeymoon cruise around the Caribbean is the most adventurous thing he’s ever done. Going on that honeymoon alone is unthinkable, but here he is, with a luxury suite and a broken heart.
Tripp is a hopeless romantic. He’s in a sinking relationship that’s been taking on water for months. He’d throw in the towel if he had one, but he’s naked and locked out of his room.
No one should be on a cruise alone, and Tripp has a simple solution: he and Doug will pretend to be husbands and enjoy everything a week of sea and sun has to offer. But as the days and nights heat up, can a cheese pizza kind of guy be brave enough to give love a second chance?
And oh my god, the book was fabulous. Tripp is a hilarious character, and Doug is a sweetheart and I loved them together. There were several laugh-out-loud moments in the book, and my husband looked at me fondly when I laughed so hard I almost fell out of the couch, and asked “Is it a good book, honey?”
I mean:
Sometimes half the problem with sex is people take it way too seriously, when it’s really just bodies flopping around like seals and making noises your mother would tell you aren’t polite at the dinner table.
But it’s not only funny. There are many serious, heartbreaking moments, too, when the laughter got stuck in my throat and I had to hide my trembling lower lip from my husband who likes to gently tease me when I cry to books. And that’s one of my favorite kind of books: the ones that can both make you laugh and cry and that leaves you feeling happy when you’ve finished it.
Another thing I really loved about it was how distinct the voices were: the story is told in first person alternating point-of-view, and it’s really easy to know which chapters are told from Doug’s POV and which are from Tripp’s. That’s not always the case with stories told in alternating first person POV, but Allison Temple did a great job with Tripp and Doug.
All in all, this was a very satisfying read and I’m very happy that I ignored the fact that I don’t like the fake boyfriend or the vacation romance tropes. I would have missed out on a great book if I’d stuck up my nose at it just because of that reason.
I give it my warmest recommendations and send my thanks to Addison Albright for pointing me in the direction of this wonderful read.
