I absolutely loved this book. Lately Christina Lauren has been hit or miss in my opinion and I haven’t loved any of the more recent books since The Unhoneymooners. The Paradise Problem broke the cycle of mediocre. The book was funny and heartwarming. The characters and their interactions were hilarious. The setting made me want to go away on vacation (even though I was just on one). It also made me want to revisit all the previous Christina Lauren books I have loved in the past. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a witty contemporary romance.

Forced proximity, fake relationship, & second channel romance all wrapped in in Christina Lauren’s brilliantly witty banter = 5 STAR Read!

What goes around, comes around. And for Liam and Anna, it’s their years-ago fake marriage for university housing benefits. Now they must fake their fake marriage for Liam’s family at a wedding on a private island to save face and Liam’s inheritance.

Add this to your summer TBR!

Publication date: May 14, 2024

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for allowing me to be an early reader!

Christina Lauren is back with a hilarious romance that was funny & spicy & my favorite of theirs since "The Unhoneymooners" & "Josh & Hazel's Guide to Not Dating". I loved this story. I have been slugging through books lately, but I read this one in 48 hours because I didn't want to put it down! Easy to devour, perfect for a vacation or when you need something fast paced! Things get a little steamy!

If you love movies like "Crazy Rich Asians" & "The Proposal", you'll love this one!

Thank you to NetGalley & Gallery Books for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review!

This is only the second Christina Lauren Book I’ve read but I can promise you it won’t be the last.

The Paradise Problem opens with Anna‘s husband moving out. they’ve been living together for two years and she’s just signed the divorce papers, and she’s thrilled: after all, she got the couch and the TV.

Now you might think she got beat, but since it was an arranged marriage, and she got two years living on campus which she never could have afforded before marrying Liam and gaining access to family housing, it seemed fair to her.

Now, three years later, in order to fulfill the terms of his grandfather as well and inherit a $100 million, Liam has to be married in a love match for five years. The catch is that if the weddings are not for love, if they arranged, the terms of the will are null void, and the money goes to charity. They decide to put on the front and convince everyone that they’ve been together for five years and in Love for five years, supposedly an easy thing to do since Liam has been estranged from his family and not seen them.

The whole family gets together on a private island and shenanigans ensue!

This is most definitely not a closed door, romance book, but the love scenes were great, and I also loved getting to know the characters.

I received this advanced reading copy from Simon and Schuster. through netgalley.com and all opinions are mine.

LADIES, y'all have done it ONCE AGAIN!! I was lucky enough to snag this as an ARC and had the pleasure of reading it in January! What a treat for the longest month of the year! Ha! It made me laugh out loud SO MANY TIMES!! This is a darling story of broken people loving each other through the pain! Such a real life love story but with the added flair of someone being a billionaire!

AMAZING. AMAZING. FANTASTIC. HAWT 🥵😮‍💨.

I think this is the best CLo I’ve yet to read. There was soooo much humor that I honesty wasn’t expecting to laugh sooo much. I’ve highlighted so many things out of this book. I absolutely loved it. These characters were real to me and now I need a movie or series or something cause I can’t unsee them.

A very fun read with lots of good banter and fun side characters. Would read a book about the best friend for sure.

They have hit it out of the park AGAIN!!!! The imagery was fantastic!! I loved how the paintings were described. The sex was so hot, I needed to skip over it or burn my eyeballs!! And the father of Liam was so awful!! Great characters, I love the kids in their books too.

Christina Lauren rarely disappoints and once again knocked it out of the park.

While I can often be annoyed with "fake marriage" tropes, the twist on this one was too good. The background of Liam and Anna that led to the space they were in felt new and fresh.

What I LOVED:
-Liam and Anna -- I loved them both! They had unique and unwavering personalities. Even when Anna was not supposed to be "Anna", she never hid her true self. Their banter, sexual tension (them both looking was FANTASTIC), and inevitable raw honesty created a relationship that I felt truly involved in.
-The setting -- everything about the island and the parties was beautifully written. I can only dream of ever being in a place like that, so it was definitely an "in their shoes" moment for me.
-The side characters -- Anna's best friend Vivi, her dad (wish we had more of him), Jake -- all wonderful people in their corner. Even the "villians" were multi-dimensional. And the children were so loveable.

Meh pieces:
-The "fake doctor" story they ran with. Come on. I thought of a solution for that as soon as he admitted that he told his family she was in Med School. All it takes is a couple of easy questions to find out this flighty artist isn't a med student in Cambodia.
-The ending felt rushed. After all of this beautiful development of their relationship, both between them and with the family, the conflict exploded and then "boom" done, epilogue.
-There were a couple of pieces that felt pulled straight from other novels (especially her art show situation).

But, I loved so much about this plot that I had to give it 5 stars. I started and finished the book in one day (reading way past my bedtime).

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Another fantastic piece from my favorite writing duo! I love the way they work together creating characters with depth and relatability. The banter between characters is always laugh-out-loud funny and genuine.

In The Paradise Problem, our fmc Anna, is unapologetically quirky, and I love that she stays authentic to herself in such a tough situation. Her emotional maturity shines through, making her a great support for Liam as he deals with his family and all the chaos surrounding them. The story has a perfect blend of humor and seriousness, keeping me hooked from start to finish. The banter between Anna and Liam was realistic, steamy, and had me cackling. And let's talk about the side characters – they're fantastic, well-written and adding that extra spice to the narrative. Although honestly, some of those family members were so unlikeable that I felt like giving them a reality check lol.


What I perhaps appreciated most? No miscommunication drama! Instead, we get a wonderful mix of marriage of convenience, fake "dating," tropical island with forced proximity, and opposites attracting. And speaking of tropical islands, the descriptions and details had me feeling like I was there soaking up the sun and not freezing my a$$ off in the Midwest!

Overall, while I think the premise is a bit far-fetched, it delivered on everything I could ask for. If you like rom coms or contemporary romance, this book could be a great fit for you!

Thank you Gallery Books and NetGalley for the DRC! Pub date 5/14/24

I enjoyed the storyline and it was an entertaining, quick read. The setting of the private island was great. I enjoyed the premise but it wasn't super original. Rounded up to 4 stars.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. The characters were well-developed, the setting was so much fun, and there were some interesting spins on classic tropes. The book slowed down from the middle to the end however and lagged a bit with all of the family drama. The epilogue rushed through so much of the relationship development that got left out of the rest of the book. I would have liked more focus on their falling in love than dealing with the fallout of their family issues.

Liam is a hard-working and respectable man, which is amazing when you figure out who and what he came from. Anna is a fun and out-there starving artist who has also taken on the responsibility for her sick dad, financially and physically. When the two end up on a sickeningly expensive private island for a family wedding, tensions are high between literally every character.

This romantic comedy had lovable main characters, relatable family drama, and a believable story of falling in love. Just spicy enough to be interesting without going too overboard. So often, I dislike the main man of a story because he is too closed off or controlling for it to be believable that a woman could fall for him so quickly. But Liam and Anna are both unapologetically themselves through the entire story and it was refreshing. While the amount of wealth that the Weston family has is not relatable to this librarian, the idea of family drama and the difficulties of navigating complicated relationships with people you love but have nothing in common with is something many of us can relate to.

I was so happy to get The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren and their story didn't disappoint! I've been a fan of theirs since they wrote fanfiction a long time ago. I know when I get approved for a Christina Lauren novel I know I'm in for a treat. Anna and Liam's story was so cute! An agreement from five years before that gives way to Anna having to endure a hellacious experience with Liam's family to help him out. Married, yet not really together, they have to fool his whole family (other than his younger brother who knew) and Anna and Liam, both of whom were blissfully unaware of the other and simply existed in shared housing before, through forced circumstances grow from really seeing the other, to needing the other, to wanting each other. Loved!

Rating: R
52 Book Club - Prompt #44 - Includes a wedding

Perfect if you like:

Fake relationship
Family Drama
Fantastic locales
Feisty, fearless heroines
Forced proximity romance

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. Actually, I mean THANK YOU! An early look at Christina Lauren’s book? Is there any better way to start 2024?

Does anyone do strong, feisty heroines that are true to themselves quite like Christina Lauren? I would argue no - they are consistently writing characters that are grounded in the real world. They create the possibility of the fairytale for their female characters but show that the fantasy might not be all that it is cracked up to be. A little Into the Woods.

Anna Green and Liam Weston got hitched four and half years ago, a marriage of convenience that allowed them to obtain cheap married student housing. After Liam finished graduate school, they went their separate ways, but Anna didn’t read all the legal docs Liam gave her and it turns out that they actually aren’t divorced. And Liam needs Anna’s help - he has to convince his family that he and Anna have been happily married these last four years in order to receive his inheritance. Oh and they have to pretend while at Liam’s sister’s wedding at a private resort in Singapore. Sharing a bungalow with one bed - and no door to the bathroom. There might be peeking.

As this is a Christina Lauren’s romance there is a lot of heat, so much sexual tension, but also deep conversations, true vulnerability, and warm cuddles. I’ve loved this writing duo from their very first book and though there were a few books that didn’t resonate with me, their last two novels (this one and The True Love Experiment) highlight all things that make them such an amazing writing team. I’m still not sure how they do it but I hope they keep going for years.

So next on my list, the ARC for Kate Clayborn’s new novel, am I a lucky b*tch or what??

I own a few Christina Lauren books, but this was the first one I’ve ever read! I don’t know how I’ve been sleeping on her for so long! Immediately added all of the books I have of hers to the top of my tbr! I loved how this book played out in the end! Amazing banter! Great characters! Only thing that could have made it better is if I was reading it on a tropical island LOL
Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this! I’m obsessed!

This book was hard for me to put down! The chemistry between Anna and Liam was electric. I loved the premise of Anna being down on her luck and Liam being a secret billionaire! Anna really knew how to put the Weston family in their place. She is a strong woman!

Solid romance, but the first half of this book was slowwwww. Not my favorite Christina Lauren, but still a fun read!

No one writes a better rom-com than Christina Lauren!This book is funny, charming, sweet, and sexy. Plus the setting in literal paradise is dreamy AF.

Anna, the FMC, is one of my new favorite leading ladies, right up there with Fizzy Chen (The Soulmate Equation/The True Love Experiment). I love that Anna is unapologetically herself, with a heart of gold and calls other people on their bullshit. The MMC fell a little flat in comparison, I sometimes got annoyed with his reactions and withholding information, but with a horrible family like his, it’s understandable.

Overall, I really loved this book and highly recommend reading this when it hits shelves in May!

Thank you Christina Lauren, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for the ARC.

This was my first, "can't wait to see what happens next, finished in a day" reads in a long time. Christina Lauren delivered a charming story that gave the perfect vacation escape vibes. A brief summary: in college Anna and Liam/West entered into a marriage of convenience to secure affordable, married-couple housing. Anna thought she signed divorce papers, but years later West shows up at her doorstep with a surprise; they are still married and he needs her to attend his sister's destination wedding as his wife.

I found both MCs likeable and the setting was fantastic. Anna helps West navigate the complicated dynamics of his super-wealthy family and, of course, feelings develop between the two. Although there was an element of insta-love here, Christina Lauren did a great job in not rushing the happily ever after, and wrapping up all plot points in a satisfying way. Four out of five stars because some of the plot was a bit too predictable. This would be a great beach read, or anywhere read for someone who is looking to escape to paradise and enjoy a fun (and spicy) romance.