By the New York Times bestselling author who "hilariously depicts modern dating" (Us Weekly), My Favorite Half-Night Stand is a laugh-out-loud romp through online dating and its many, many fails.
Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she's a female-serial-killer expert who's quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.
So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they'll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There's only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.
But online dating isn't for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie's first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter "Catherine"-Millie's fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she's ever been in person. Soon "Catherine"and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship...but Millie can't resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear-intimacy-or risk losing her best friend, forever.
Perfect for fans of Roxanne and She's the Man, Christina Lauren's latest romantic comedy is full of mistaken identities, hijinks, and a classic love story with a modern twist. Funny and fresh, you'll want to swipe right on My Favorite Half-Night Stand.
I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Millie meets her match in this adult contemporary romance.
This book is essentially a cross between Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating and Love and Other Words, which is interesting considering I loved one and disliked the other. My Favorite Half-Night Stand has a very similar premise to the first – two best friends try to find love elsewhere only to discover they love each other. Yet despite the fun premise, this book had the same problematic characters and overly dramatic story line as Love and Other Words. While the main characters, Millie and Reid, obviously connect to one another, I honestly didn’t think their romance was necessarily healthy for either of them. The novel’s last chapters lifts some of my concern over their problematic relationship, but not enough to justify a “happily for now” ending.
This is the second CLo story I’ve read where one of the main characters loses a parent at a young age, stunting their emotional development as an adult. I just don’t connect to these characters. Granted, I’ve never lost a parent. When I do lose a parent (’cause it will happen), I’ll be well past my formative years. Do most adults having lost a parent at a young age struggle with connecting on a deeper level to others as adults? God, I hope not. The story would be more enjoyable to me if it focused more on Millie’s emotional growth not with just Reid, but with her other friends and family. Less romance, more character development please.
tl;dr With a cute friends to lovers premise, I should have loved it; but the emotionally stunted main characters and overly dramatic story line didn’t cut it for me.
