PNW Book Blogger

Portia Macintosh

ARC Read

Book Review

This was a 5 star read for me!

July 26, 2025 by Boldwood Books

I knew this book was going to be good based on the cover and the tropes listed because these are some of my favorite tropes:

and I really enjoy books with a ship or a cruise ship setting because I have a weird special interest in the Titanic. Don’t judge me. This book already gets points for mentioning the Titanic in a silly way in the beginning, but also just like doing it. Well I cannot tell you how many times I laughed in this book. It was so good.

The book starts out with the main character, chilling out on the seaside and trying to relax while she is bombarded with party goers are enjoying the beach and she very much wants to be left alone with her piña colada; a weird party goer ends up trying to get her phone number and hit on her and she becomes very uncomfortable.

This is when Brody our savior comes in as our fake boyfriend and tells this partygoer to go away the humor really kicks in here because we see that bro code is above a woman saying no thank you in fact this party goer calls Brody, a legend, so I’ll leave it at that.

Her actual boyfriend ends up coming back his name is Todd, and he is very occupied with his own activities and kind of just seems disinterested and not like a great partner initially and then we are hit with some conflict.

This main setting is the cruise ship and it’s also the friends wedding

So we have a friendship dynamic where the characters actually come off the page and are hilarious are frustrating. They’re good and bad very clearly labeled characters. If that makes sense there’s no like morally gray characters my opinion in this book it was all just it was exactly what I wanted and needed as a romcom, and I feel like this is really hard to find like these tropes are my favorite tropes and this book was inhaled, and I loved every minute of it.

The covers also adorable I really like the bright colors the writing style I really enjoyed. It’s first person POV and the character does make fun of herself, but it’s not in too much of a self defecating way.

She is making fun of herself in self deprecating ways, but it is in a very relatable manner versus Being borderline to self abuse which I tend to see in a lot of of books, which is why I end up DN effing so many romance books.

This one was fresh clever really funny made me giggle and I literally stayed up until 3 AM reading it because I could not put it down so if you need a good romcom, please get this and thank me later, you’re welcome.

Thank you so much for this treat!

I loved this eARC I was approved for from Boldwood books and and leaving this honest feedback voluntarily.