Plot:

Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Amy, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man.

Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.

Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of…lucky.

Review:

Twoo twins: Olive and Ami who are complete opposites. Olive tends to focus on the fact she has much bad luck whilst Ami has the best luck

Why marry someone you barely know / fall for the fake show they have on for you? Well throughout this we will soon find out.

It’s the occasion of Ami’s wedding to Dane Thomas and Olive isn’t looking forward to her pairing with the groom’s best man and brother, Ethan. Their first meeting didn’t go so well, and it was just downhill since. What begins as a 24-hour tolerance turns into a 10-day honeymoon vacation when the entire wedding party suffers from food poisoning (bad shellfish) and Olive & Ethan replace the bride and groom on their non-refundable Maui trip. She’s allergic to shellfish and he won’t eat food on a buffet, so they avoided illness. This is their start to what becomes a hilarious and unplanned romantic getaway in Hawaii.

The events leading up to the wedding (almost free because of Ami’s skill at coupon collecting and luck with contest entries) had me in stitches. Olive and Ethan’s duplicity in having to pose as the newlyweds created some sticky moments while in Hawaii that served up some funny and often awkward situations, too.

With all of the above this made a decent enough base to get to know each other better as this wouldn’t normally happen. However, with the people they meet on vacation – both sets of people how can that all so much actually happen realistically when you are on vacation?

I enjoyed Olive’s character but needed some warming up to Ethan, just as she did so I was obviously immersed in the story.

Overall, it’s a delightful tale with some strong themes around family, loyalty and being true to yourself.

4/5 Stars