This was such a great (super spicy!) read that will be perfect for the summer reading season! I think Meryl Wilsner is going to be an auto-buy from here on out for me. I really enjoyed their book “Cleat Cute” and now this one. I liked how the characters, even though they had known each other for over a decade and both had been pining for the other, decided to ultimately take time to really stop and figure out what they wanted from their own lives without the other’s influence, before getting into a serious relationship. It was during that time that their characters really developed and came into their own and made the final payoff that much better.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for the eARC!

I liked this book! It took me a little bit to get into the book but I liked the inclusiveness and the setting. I didn’t really connect with the main character and thought the miscommunication was a little overdone. If you like best friend turned lovers trope then you will probably like this one!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this eARC!!

What a fantastic vacation and enjoyable summer read! It's a delightful blend of spice and sweetness, featuring memorable and well-developed characters!!!

2.5/5 ☆
3/5 🌶

I wanted to like this book so much and it had such a great premise & strong start...but I dont buy the romance. It went from a decade of pining on one side to an admitted desire and then immediate sex. For a good chunk of the first half.

Then the miscommunication. Can we PLEASE get a new trope for romance to cause tension? This wasn't even third act break up, this was 50%!! We spent almost the entire second half of the book where neither person would talk to the other and admit feelings. Im so over this trope and it really put a damper on my enjoyment of a novel I was really looking forward to this year- it was actually one of my most anticipated ARCs i had lined up. As a fat introverted enby, i really wanted to like the MC so much but...i really just couldn't and their love interest made me so mad at times.

Thanks to St Martin for the eARC.

Pretty much what I expected since I've read Mistakes Were Made - a spicy queer romance, nothing groundbreaking but still fun! I was lowkey getting annoyed that they were squandering their resort vacation by staying in the hotel room the entire time.

I enjoyed this book. Meryl Wilsner's writing was just as good as in her first book Cleat Cute and she is great at crafting a romantic story. I did feel as if this book was a bit harder to get into, but once I was into it, I was into it. This was the perfect book to read in the cold weather while wishing for warmer days ahead.

I am obsessed with Meryl Wilsner's writing style. One of my biggest complaints with romance is a lack of balance. All of their books have that perfect ratio of spice to sweet that I just love. I am a complete fiend for the friends to lovers trope, and Meryl wrote this one beautifully. I will definitely be suggesting this book to anyone looking for a great spring or summer vacation read.

The first Meryl Wilsner book I read was Mistakes Were Made. I adored it. I then read their debut novel, Something to Talk About, and adored it as well. Then Cleat Cute came out and WOW it was great. My Best Friend’s Honeymoon, makes their books a four for four for this reader!

Wilsner is excellent at creating a world where queer people are allowed to exist, live, and love. This book, their first with a non-binary lead, continues this trend quite successfully. It was refreshing to read a queer romance with this kind of representation. I loved the characters and found their relationship endearing. Was the book perfect? No, but they never are. There were moments where I found myself unsure of the pacing or character reactions, but Wilsner makes the pay off worth it. I’d recommend to anyone looking for a rom com!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

My Best Friend's Honeymoon tells the story of what happens when you call off your surprise wedding and take off on your honeymoon with your best friend. Elsie has been engaged to her college boyfriend for a few years and he's decided to throw her a surprise wedding. When Elsie calls off the wedding she is offered the honeymoon by her ex-fiancee. She takes her best friend Ginny who has been in love with her forever.

This was a very spicy book (in my opinion) with a lot of LGBTQ representation. Elsie and Ginny's story was lovely and had a lot of real-life problems with real-life solutions.

This was adorable!! Both the nbmc and the fmc were super lovable, the concept was fun and lighthearted, and overall it was a standard but well done little rom com. It doesn’t drag itself down in any one thing too long, and the only time I found myself really questioning if the characters’ actions made sense around a conflict, the story eventually acknowledges that they were being unreasonable. A friends to lovers trope mixed with “for one week, you have to do anything I say,” which was a cute dynamic.

This book started off strong, it was a bit slow, then the spice turned up. I like that the characters acknowledge they’re using their physical attraction to not acknowledge their deeper issues. I love a best-friends-to-lovers trope. This was very sweet and I loved seeing how much these two cared for each other since they were kids.

the ULTIMATE friends to lovers romance

Meryl Wilsner writes some of the best queer romances out there and My Best Friend's Honeymoon is no exception!! This book follows two best friends who go on a honeymoon together after one of them breaks their engagement. On the honeymoon, they begin hooking up but neither one wants to acknowledge that they've been in love for decades.

This book is fun, it's spicy, it's a fresh twist on the friends to lovers trope, and it really made me want to go on a tropical vacation.

By now, Meryl Wilsner has written enough books that I can envision them on a scale, with Mistakes Were Made and Something to Talk About on the low end (as a matter of personal preference—I don't like romance with large age gaps) and 2023's Cleat Cute on the high end. This book, for me, falls squarely in the middle. I liked the friendship between our two main characters, and the way it naturally made me buy into the romantic aspect that developed: the connection here feels more than just "omg this person is hot" because they've been best friends their whole lives, and are each other's most important person. I liked that, despite this friendship-turned-more being an incredibly close and long one, Wilsner pays homage to the importance of discovering ourselves as people outside of our relationships—romantic or otherwise. The Caribbean setting of the honeymoon was fun (I actually read this book while on my own dreamy Caribbean vacation in Jamaica!), if occasionally tossed on the back burner to make way for long scenes of straight smut. And I would be remiss to not mention that this is Wilsner's first book to feature a nonbinary main character—a character whose fat, gender nonconforming body is described as extremely desirable by their romantic opposite. I'll be the first to admit I'm not very widely read when it comes to romance novels, but reading that felt kind of revolutionary, and I have a feeling is going to be really important to people who claim those identities as well.

I really don't have a ton of quibbles about this book except that the falling action felt LOOOONG (there's still like a third of the book to go following the mandatory third act conflict, and while there was some good character development there, the pace felt draggy) and the smut absolutely did not do it for me. Some slightly cringey verbiage, some details that just really weren't my cup of tea—I'm not squeamish about smut, so this is definitely a your-milage-may-vary type of situation, but it was a large, relatively negative takeaway I got from the book, so I figured I'd mention it.

This review is unlikely to make me any friends in the sapphic fiction community but I only write honest reviews and this one won't be an exception.

Meryl Wilsner is one of the best loved authors in sapphic fiction and their books are incredibly popular. When I picked up Cleat Cute last year, I wanted to love it but it missed the mark for me. The same thing for Mistakes Were Made and Something To Talk About. After reading My Best Friend's Honeymoon, I might just have to admit that Wilsner's writing just isn't my cup of tea.

I nearly DNF'd this book barely a quarter of the way in. I stuck with it because I really wanted to find something I liked in it. And I did, but not enough for me to five-star the book.

Elsie was entirely unlikable. I found her backstory to fall short for my ability to empathize with her choices. The further I read, the more frustrated I became with her. I saw a lot of myself in Ginny and it wasn't all good. I was left feeling like their character was almost an afterthought & can't help feeling like they deserve so much better.

And yeah, it's shitty to plan a surprise wedding but it sounded like Derrick (the jilted fiance from the beginning of the book) was just a dopey golden retriever type. Not malicious. We end up with a premise that feels hollow and unbelievable. I get that it's fiction, but the realm of plausibility has to still be there, right?

When I decided to go ahead and keep reading, I decided to suspend my disbelief as it were and let the story carry me along. Once I did that, it was an (almost) enjoyable slow burn friends to lovers. The tropical vacation setting was the sort of fantasy escapism I was hoping for as an Alaskan in the doldrums of winter. And the spice is... Absolutely hot. Only praise there.

Wilsner is a good writer who wove together a fun beach read that is right up the alley for other readers who enjoyed their previous titles. It's just not my jam. And that's ok.

My Best Friend's Honeymoon is released April 29th.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

Thanks to Netgalley & St. Martin's Press for the
E-ARC! So cute! Fun characters & loved the setting. The romance was so cute too. Will definitely read more from this author.

#MyBestFriendsWedding follows Elsie (she/her) on the cusp of her wedding day - to a man she realizes she doesn’t want to marry. Because the honeymoon is nonrefundable, the would-be groom encourages Elsie to go to the Caribbean anyway, and to bring her long-time best friend Ginny (they/she). Recognizing that Elsie is in her feels, Ginny makes a deal with Elsie to give her whatever she wants; Ginny just never expected Elsie’s desires to be them!

This is the second book by @merylwilsner that I’ve read, and I enjoyed it just as much as the first! It was a fast-paced read, and spins a new take on the classic #FriendsToLovers trope with a non-binary love interest. There were some fun references to queer culture that felt authentic and only added to the chemistry between Elsie and Ginny. I also fully applaud the author for incorporating both they and she pronouns for Ginny, and proving just how easy it is to read/understand/use non-binary pronouns in novels. Fans of queer romance will enjoy their endearing love story.

Spice warning: moderate

Reviewed as part of #ARC from #NetGalley. Many thanks to St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read and review.


(Posted to Goodreads 3/1/25. Plan to post to Instagram on or around 3/28/25.)

I really enjoyed the premise of this book - two best friends going on a honeymoon because the wedding does not happen but the honeymoon is non-refundable. They realize that they actually have feelings for each other, and they fall in love. It was definitely entertaining, and I enjoy sex scenes, but this one had WAY too many of them for my taste. The sex just kept coming and coming and coming (pun intended). It really took away from the book a lot, in my opinion. If there had been half as many sex scenes, I would have rated this much higher. Overall it was a mostly enjoyable read, but there is a LOT of sex.

Ginny and Elsie, two best friends, go on a honeymoon together after Elsie calls off her engagement. On the trip Ginny encourages Elsie to speak up for what she wants. When over the course of the vacation that turns to the two of them hooking up… will there be a way to turn that into a real relationship once they’re back home? And is it worth risking their years of friendship?

In addition to the romance, both Ginny and Elsie had interesting personal journeys that they went on. I particularly enjoyed seeing Ginny work to realize what they wanted for their life in terms of a job and how Elsie could fit into that. I also liked seeing Elsie learning to stick up for herself more within her family. There were also some great flashbacks to earlier times in Ginny and Elsie’s friendship that helped to flesh out their backgrounds and friendship.

However, the book didn’t totally work for me. While I did think that Ginny and Elsie had great chemistry, I felt like the structure of how the romance developed made the book feel a little lopsided. I love a good steamy scene, but once the characters started sleeping together it was just back to back to back scenes that it started to feel a little repetitive. Then the conflict felt so out of the blue and completely blown out of proportion. Part of that is called out within the story, but it still didn’t make for the most satisfying reading experience.

This was a quick, steamy, queer read with plenty of aspects that I enjoyed, even if it didn’t become a new favorite.

Great vacation and summer reading! Spicy, sweet, with memorable and well crafted characters. I think this will be such a lovely addition to our colorful and carefully curated romance section! Can’t wait to hand sell.

As a fan of some of Wilsner's previous books I was so excited for this new queer friends-to-lovers release! I've enjoyed all their previous light-hearted sapphic romances and couldn't wait to get into the next one.

The tension was executed well, life-long BFFs Elsie and Ginny finally admitting their feelings and pursuing a romantic relationship, but was let down by the lack of character development and communication, particularly on Elsie's side, leaving the romance and conclusions less than satisfying.

This may be a hit for those who prefer spice over substance, but as a greedy romance reader who needs both, unfortunately it fell a little short of expectations for me!

Cheers to Netgalley for the ARC digital copy!