The Honeymoon – Rona Halsall

‘I’m your husband, Chloe. We’re a partnership now and we do what’s best for us as a couple. Staying here is going to be the best option.’ He picked up his drink and took a sip. ‘It’s not open for discussion. We’re not going home.’

Chloe had the dream wedding. Dan is her perfect man. They haven’t known each other for long, but as she walked down the aisle and saw him standing by the altar, tears glistening in his eyes, she knew this was forever.

Later, as they relax on a beautiful island, settling in to their new married life together, they congratulate themselves on their lovely wedding day, and Dan jokes that he’d like them to stay there forever.

But as the honeymoon goes on, he becomes increasingly adamant. They shouldn’t leave. In fact, he won’t let her…

Review

UK Kindle Unlimited reads? = Comfort reads (UK KU if you will).

Fast-paced and leaving no room for boredom, The Honeymoon paints us a protagonist who is desperate to belong somewhere and be loved, making her vulnerable to ill-intentioned people to take advantage of in any way, like her Dan, her new partner, perhaps?

After a life full of disappointments and feeling unvalued, Chloe can’t believe it when she finds love at first sight in Dan, the charming, most handsome son of one of her new patients in the physical rehab clinic she works at. Chloe has been dwelling with a secret since she was a teenager, something that makes her family be horrible to her, so when Dan proposes a life of love and a chance for a future family, she immediately accepts his marriage proposal, never mind that they barely know each other.

I wanted to shake Chloe SO badly, but I am also grateful that Halsall didn’t overdo her naivety/vulnerability to controlling people too much, since that would have made for a worse reading experience, to be honest. I would have been annoyed the full book with her; like so many books before this, the plot would have relied solely on the MC’s dumbness. Very happy that this wasn’t exactly the case here.

I’m going to be honest, I didn’t really like the plot twist here, but I also didn’t hate it; it was more of a “uhhh ok? moving on, I guess…” moment. I felt like there were situations and characters that were just thrown in for the sake of red herrings, but they didn’t really connect to the story at all, or they were just randomly there. Maybe some people don’t mind it when tiny loose ends aren’t resolved, but it kind of downgrades the rating of a book for me. Nothing crazily bad, though! I still liked Rona Halsall’s writing enough to check out more comfy KU reads.