This. Book. Was. Everything. I had heard about Christina Lauren because my friend was reading Roomies and she raved about it. I saw this book on goodreads and immediately entered the giveaway. Luckily, I was given the opportunity to read it through NetGalley and I read it in less than 24 hours, even during the intermissions of a hockey game I was attending. Millie's character was so likable and easy to connect too but that's probably because I, too, have a weird fascination with serial killers. I felt like the friendship dynamic was incredibly realistic and I could sense the vibes that the characters would've been feeling. I love Reid, Chris, Ed. and Alex, all for different reasons and they brought their own flavor. They had a hilarious back and forth and the journey of online dating was too true for words. I didn't expect so many twists but I thought they were tasteful. It definitely had me wanting a follow up!

A novel that gives the reader conflicting emotions particularly best friends-to-lovers is a classic trope that is a fan favorite. That being said, there was a lot of other tropes that ruined the enjoyment of this novel.

First and foremost, the characters were pretty cringy. It didn’t matter if it was their out of place dialogue or awkward antic, as a whole they felt just cringy and unlikable. Not to mention the drama/conflict of the story is brought about because the heroine catfishes her best friend. People can be awkward, that’s normal. But instead of letting him know it’s her, she continues to lie to him. The whole scenario just leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth.

Based on the author’s track record, she seems to be a beloved contemporary romance author but this novel just didn’t do it for me.

This book totally made my little geek heart happy. A fabulous friends to lover tale that will have you swooning and wishing for your own Reid.

I couldn't put the book down and I loved all the secondary characters - her best guy friends.
I want a book for each of them.

This the second book I've read by Christina Lauren and I'm definitely adding the rest to my TBR!!

A pack among friends to try online dating turns up the jealousy and spins into the best sneak around ever. Until the truth comes out.

Another fantastic story from Christina Lauren! The story and characters hooked me right away, and I couldn't wait to get to know them better. The close group of friends have great, witty dialogue, and DANG can these ladies write some good sex scenes. I'll be recommending this one to everyone I know!

This was a fun romantic read, in which the author used very good character development to get the readers engaged. Not only was their the relationships, there was plenty of laughs, Overall, I enjoyed this book and thought it was a nice break from my normal thriller genre.
Will use in a daily challenge as well as recommending to members of chapter chatter pub.

Christina Lauren's books have such funny yet emotionally complex characters, and My Favorite Half-Nigh Stand is no exception. The central couple was cute and believable. I personally eye-roll at the main female lead having all male friends, but to each their own. I loved the chat exchanges between members of the friend group as it captures funny and authentic conversation. I'll definitely be recommending this book to fellow contemporary romance fans.

I adore this author duo, love reading the stories they create flawlessly. So of course I couldn’t wait to read this new release by them.

If you love best friends to lovers stories this is one you don’t want to miss. Reid and Millie have been friends for a few years, inseparable, the best of friends. So their group of friends decide with an upcoming campus gala, they all need to bring a plus 1 date. This is a stretch for most of the group, when most of them don’t date, don’t get out because they are always working, or always with each other. So what better way to find someone than signing up for a dating website. Sparks of jealously are quickly ignited and lines are crossed.



How hard would it be to just be honest??

Hard. When you have closed your feelings off, when you haven’t talked about your past, your problems, your fears, you name it, it’s hard. And with the threat of sharing your best friend with another woman, what steps will Millie do to stop it. Millie finds herself lying and betraying her best friend, getting herself deeper and deeper into lies. What will it cost her? And what will she lose when she admits her wrong doing but at the same time finally admits her deep love for her best friend?

So my big PRO for this book, is the growth of these characters, reading about how they both change and realize the mistakes they make and change things to prevent it from ever happening again.

My big CON, gimme more. Gimme more to Reid & Millie ❤️

“I have never read anything like this.”

I say the same thing every time I finish a book by Christina Lauren.

I said it about Roomies. I said it about Beautiful Stranger. I said it about Love and Other Words.

It’s a pattern.

The premise of Half-Night Stand may be familiar to you: two people, who have been friends for years, realize that they’re in love with each other.

I have read some terrific Friends-to-Lovers books:

Head Over Heels by Serena Bell

Truth or Beard by Penny Reid

Some Sort of Crazy by Melanie Harlow

But I have never read a FtoL book like this.

The main characters are Millie and Reid. And Ed. And Alex. And Chris. A friend group that includes four guys and one girl. At first, I thought, oh no, I’ll never keep track of that many main characters. But I did!

Chris has it all together.

Alex is a player.

Ed is a 30-year-old kid who only has beer in his fridge, and answers the door in his bathrobe. (Ed is my spirit animal!)

Reid is loyal, and hard-working, and passionate.

And then there’s Millie. She’s quirky, and closed off, and not comfortable talking about her feelings. (Millie. Is. Me!)

These five friends are generally satisfied with their lives. They have jobs that they enjoy, they have a group of good friends, they have a comfortable routine. The shenanigans begin when one of them decides that they should bring a “plus-one” to an upcoming event, and figure the best way to find one is by using a dating app. This is very relevant to today’s environment, as it seems to be the only way to find a partner in this day and age. (I love that this book delves into this topic, as I’ve had some experience with online dating in the past few months, and I haven’t found many books that even bring it up as an option! People in books seem to meet other people “the old-fashioned way.”)

Each of the friends has a different experience with the dating app, called IRL. When Millie is matched with one of her best friends, she starts to look at her relationship with that friend in a different light.

I always see something new when I read Christina Lauren book. We see the group text conversations among the gang, each accompanied by an icon of each character. I’m a very visual person, so it helped my brain to have a picture to connect with each member of the friend group. This is unique, and fun, and very Christina Lauren.

With every CL book I read, I fall more in love with the style of this writing duo. They are clever, the sexy times are steamy, and they always make me cry at some point. There's not much more that I require of a good book than that.

Absolutely funny book about a group of friends that all want to find "that someone". So they all sign up for a dating app and create profiles. Millie's profile just doesn't do it, per her guy friends so she creates a new one that is more her, but doesn't tell them. She ends up matched with one of said guy friends who she really likes, and the hilarities ensue! I hope this is the start of a series, I’d love to see who the rest of the guys end up with!

This review is based on an ARC from NetGalley, courtesy of the publisher. All opinions are my own.

I have read a few good reviews for My Favorite Half-Night Stand, so I knew I had to move this up my TBR list. It did not disappoint! This was a funny, honest look at online dating “and it’s 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.

I’d give this one a 4/5 and will read again. I couldn’t put it down and read this book within a day 😂👍🏻 Add it to your list!

Thank you to @netgalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review. #netgalley #bookreview #myfavoritehalfnightstand #christinalauren #currentlyreading

“Sometimes, the thing we want is right in front of us, and we’re the last ones to see it.”

I have to say this year is officially a #ChristinaLaurenYear for me. I read and loved all three books they released in 2018. All three made it onto my #TopReads this year. They are on fire!!! This duo is creating unique storylines with my favorite kind of mature characters with flawless writing and storytelling. My Favorite Half-Night Stand was no different.
Every book, every word has touched me in so many ways and I’m in awe of their talent. I never thought I could smile while my heart was breaking till I read My Favorite Half-Night Stand!!! They created a rom com with so much depth and all the feels. My heart is full.

While on the surface we get this fun “Cyrano De Bergerac” vibe story, as I dove in, I quickly realized there was so much more!!!

Best friends to lovers perfection. Once I started the book I just couldn’t put it down, the story just draws you in. The banter, all the interactions. The plot, the back stories and to die for characters. Reid & Millie and their friends, Ed, Alex & Chris, they were this group that effortlessly just worked and they had this incredible friendship I wanted to be a part of.
They were so real, with real life issues. Work, family, relationships, heartbreaks.
Millie and Reid are the “stars” of the novel, and God, I loved them so much. They share a bond like no other, and after having a “half-night stand”, they decide it’s a bad idea as they don’t want to ruin their friendship. Diving into the dating pool is no easy feat, but they all decide to try online dating, hoping to find dates for a work function and possibly their happily ever afters. What ensues is an adventure that you will not forget anytime soon. You’ll smile for sure because hello.. it’s Christina Lauren, but as I mentioned before while there was never shortage of the fun stuff with these five, there are also plenty of heartfelt moments, the ones that make your heart squeeze painfully.

Reid is truly perfect book boyfriend material, dreamy but also a real man with flaws. An amazing friend, son and brother. The whole package really.

Millie is one of the funniest heroines I’ve ever read but once you get to know her… sigh. This girl uses her funny as a perfect shield to keep herself protected. My heart took a serious beating as I saw past her easy going side into the side she kept hidden from the world. Her character development truly makes this book shine as she opens up and faces her demons.
Their chemistry is incredible and their friends to lovers transition is impeccable.

“I don’t want to examine too closely that this is Reid, and that doing this with him is somehow just as easy as doing anything else together. The way he smiles up at me is the same way he always looks at me: like there is nowhere else he’d rather be. There’s no awkwardness or tentative touches. It’s just us.”

This story is everything I hope for when I start a new book. Great dynamic, characters to die for (in this case all 5 of them), laugh out loud moments mixed with just the perfect amount of angst and heartache to keep me invested.

Christina Lauren’s My Favorite Half-Night Stand, which explores the many ups and downs of online dating, is another book I picked up because I wanted a light and fluffy read. It follows Millie Morris and her all-guy friend group as they try to use online dating apps to find themselves dates to a university function.

My Favorite Half-Night Stand really delivers with the laughs. I honestly lost track of how many times I laughed out loud at Millie and the guys as they bantered back and forth while trying out these apps. In fact, the dynamics of this group was my favorite part of the whole book. All I kept thinking while I was reading about them in action using these apps was that this whole premise would make for such a great episode of Friends. Everything about how they interacted with one another actually made me think of Friends, which is a good thing since Friends is one of my favorite shows.

I also really liked Millie. She’s kind of a mother hen to the guys in her circle of friends, which is funny to watch. What I liked most about Millie though is how much emotional growth there is with her character throughout the story. When we first meet her, she’s very closed off about anything personal. Even her closest friends can’t really pry any personal details out of her. As the story progresses, however, she starts to have romantic feelings towards her best friend, Reid, and so she does slowly start to open up. She unfortunately makes some questionable choices along the way as she explores her feelings for Reid, but when her choices threaten their friendship, she vows to change her ways. I liked that Millie was kind of a mess and trying to sort herself out. That made her feel very authentic to me. I’m also all for a good friends to possible lovers story, so My Favorite Half-Night Stand really hit the spot in that area as well.

This was my first time reading anything by Christina Laurent but it definitely won’t be my last! 4 STARS

Christina Lauren will always and forevermore be an auto buy for me. I absolutely adore this duo and equally adore all of their books. If they are writing I am reading.

I laughed so much in this story. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was fun and sweet and even emotional at times and I couldn't put it down. I love Christina Lauren. They never disappoint and this book was no different. It is everything you come to expect from them and more. The characters were so well done and I definitely hope we get to see more of them in the future and can't wait to read more from these authors.

I will say this again and again, I love Christina Lauren books and have yet to find one that I haven’t liked. Most I’ve loved. This was a super cute and fast read. I will admit that I’m not a huge fan of the catfishing themed books, and this one was one big convoluted mess, but CL made it work in the end. The heroine could be frustrating at times but I really liked her growth and development through the book. The last 10% was absolutely amazing and completely consumed me! Super recommend!!!

I devoured this book. I am a life long Christina Lauren fan. The author team knows how to create snappy, fun dialogue. They know how to create characters a reader will fall in love with.

Don't let the title of this one fool you! This is an excellent friends to lovers story with a good dose of comedy and a little "how did they think that was a good idea?" Our story focuses on Millie and Reid with heavy support from their group of friends.

Millie and Reid are characters that I liked. They are a little quirky, a little flawed, and a perfect for each other even if they don't realize it. I appreciated that their relationship started in a deep friendship and the changes were like flickering light bulbs for both of them. The pitfalls of navigating a change from friends to more while also existing within a larger group was very present and felt very real.

While this is a couple story and told in dual POV, I felt like more of the focus was on Millie and how her changing relationship with Reid (and the related hi-jinks) were a catalyst for her emotional evolution. It was refreshing to see the male lead be the naturally more emotive character and have the female lead struggle with this facet of her personality and the need to "be a grown up."

My Favorite Half-Night Stand was a fun and entertaining take on dating in your 30's, dating within a group of friends, and learning to be the best version of yourself. The very active secondary cast has me curious and I would love to see what happens to them also - maybe we can cross our fingers that this will be the beginning of a series?

This was a good friends to lovers story and a new to me author. I would recommend reading Millie story. I can’t wait to look for other reads by Christina Lauren.

Casee: I listened to this book on audio & the narrators were not very good. I was very disappointed with that part.

I really like the friends to lovers storyline. I loved Reid. I thought he was a fantastic hero. I didn’t really care much for Millie. I understood her hang ups, I really did. They just got old after awhile.

Holly: It’s funny, because I expected to dislike Millie. I thought what she did, the way she catfished her best friend, would kill her character for me. That wasn’t the case, though. I really sympathized with her. I think, in part, because she fully expected him to figure it out in the beginning. She didn’t start it to be malicious or get one over on him. She thought he’d know it was her. I also understood why she created a second profile to begin with. I do think it went on longer than it should have, and I didn’t agree with her choice to act like it never happened, but I couldn’t not like her. She was so real and down to earth. She reminded me of us. She could have been any one of us.

Rowena: Same. I thought that I would hate the catfishing thing a lot more than I did because it reminded me of the Netflix movie that I watched a few months ago, Sierra Burgess is a Loser, and I freaking hated that movie. I was so happy that I didn’t let my feelings for that movie keep me from reading this book because Millie was no Sierra and I really enjoyed seeing her and Reid fall in love.

Millie was such a likable character and from the jump, I liked her. She was so normal and so funny that I just fell in with whatever she had going on. I didn’t agree with how long she kept the catfishing going and I also wanted to smack some sense into her when she thought she’d keep the whole thing from Reid forever but man did I like the way that she redeemed herself to Reid. She was just great.

I also adored all of the boys. They all had me cracking up.

Casee: I also agree about Molly not having malicious intentions with her second profile. I completely understood why she created it, but I really thought it went on too long. I disagreed with her decision to keep it from Reid at the end. Especially when it was Millie that wanted to tell him the truth.

What was hard for me was that she was so unavailable. How did Reid like her that much when she never shared anything personal? That didn’t make sense to me.

I loved the group dynamic when they were all together. The instant IM’s cracked me up.

Rowena: I wanted to strangle both Ed and Alex for wanting to keep everything from Reid. I was glad that Millie wasn’t on board with their plan even though everything blew up in her face anyway. I thought Reid was going to figure everything out a lot sooner than he did. I mean, he didn’t even catch the “tit” typo that was all Millie. I mean, come on dude!

I did like Reid’s family and was super glad that his sister Rayme got her man because I was low key waiting for Chris to open his damn eyes. Ed and his boo were cute too.

Another thing that I really liked about this book and with this writing duo is that this is a standalone romance. Everything was wrapped up in this book and there weren’t any loose ends, no teasers for books for the other characters in this book, just a straight up romance all in one book. I dug it.

This book was a 4 out of 5 star book for me. What about you guys?

Holly: You know what, that’s actually something that really bothered me. At the end, Alex and Ed told her to delete the profile and act like it never happened. She argued that she should tell him. They convinced her otherwise. Yet when Reid found out, both Alex and Ed were like “We told her to tell you!” Something about how quick they were to deny their part in her keeping it a secret really frustrated me.

Man, my heart broke for poor Reid when he found out. To lose his best friends and the woman he loved all at once? I felt for the guy. I really liked Reid all the way around. He was a stand up guy.

I loved all the group messages between the friends. Hilarious.

I also liked that this was a standalone romance (a real one this time).

4 out of 5

Casee: I was really disappointed in Millie when she didn’t stand her ground about telling Reid the truth. Ed and Alex really frustrated me as well. They talked her into not telling him then didn’t have her back when push came to shove.

I felt so bad for Reid when he found out. All he wanted Millie to do was be honest with him. At that point, I almost couldn’t stand her and how closed off she was. I was just so sad for him. I still don’t understand why Reid ever saw her as more than a friend.

I was super happy that this ended up being a stand-alone. Not too many authors do this these days and I really appreciated it.

3.5 out of 5

This one hits it out of the park. Millie and Reid are so great together. They are the perfect example of why I adore friends to lovers stories. The supporting cast of friends are also pretty great. I hope they all get their our stories.

It’s a winner folks. Enjoy!

I received an ARC of this book, from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.