Mini(bot) Reviews: The Honey-Don’t List

Unfortunately, The Honey-Don’t List wasn’t a hit for me like The Unhoneymooners was.

The Honey-Don’t List by Christina Lauren
Not My Edition: Library e-book – I’m too lazy to look up how many pages since my Kindle won’t tell me – 2020 – Galley Books – ISBN: 9781982123918 (paperback)

This is a book about two people who are at the beck and call of a celebrity powerhouse designer couple, a la Chip and Joanna Gaines (I think, I honestly know next to nothing about those two), to the point where their own lives are on the back burner, a la The Devil Wears Prada. They fall in love and also there’s a useless subplot that revolves around a crime you don’t know the details of until the end of the book, and doesn’t really impact the story in any way.

The Unhoneymooners was a treat, with very little for me to gripe about when all is said and done, but Christina Lauren’s newest release just didn’t do it for me. The main characters are fine – in fact, they develop a pretty healthy relationship after their casual dislike turns to love. They have decent communication skills, are tender and funny, and have a couple steamy sex scenes.

There is, of course, a Misunderstanding and, as a result, the characters uncharacteristically stop communicating with each other because that’s how a lot of romances seem to work. But it wasn’t totally egregious and the Gesture at the end was less Grand and more Realistic and I appreciated that.

I just wasn’t interested in the overall plot. I’m not big into interior design shows and reading about Entitled Rich Assholes Manipulating and Taking Advantage of People Who Feel They Can’t Stand up For Themselves isn’t my thing. Throughout the story there are little interludes with tweets about the couple, excerpts from their book, and news stories. Those were fine, but didn’t do anything for me. Then there was this crime mystery shoe-horned in via a handful of police interviews with our two MCs. I was 99% sure this wasn’t a murder mystery and even if it had been, I didn’t care about any characters other then the MCs so it wouldn’t have been a shock if someone died. It’s not a murder mystery though. And the “crime” plot just felt extraneous.

This wasn’t horrible, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I think if I read anymore Christina Lauren I’ll check out their smut, rather than their romances.