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My Favorite Half-Night Stand Book Review

I waited forever to find the beautiful new cover of My Favorite Half-Night Stand before reading it, and it was well worth the wait! A friends to lovers narrative that features some very fun in-text designs and a dive into the online dating scene, Millie's and Reid's story is so fun and agonizing as they find their way to one another. 

Christina Lauren is the pen name of writing partners/best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA Today, and #1 internationally bestselling authors of twenty-eight books, including the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, The Unhoneymooners, Love and Other Words, Dating You/Hating You, In a Holidaze, and The Soulmate Equation. Find them at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com or @ChristinaLauren on Instagram and Twitter. You can find more of my reviews of their work here. 

Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she's terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single. So when a university function turns into a black-tie gala, Millie and her circle make a pact that they'll join an online dating service to find plus-ones. But there's a hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest night of their lives together, but decide they would be better off platonic. Online dating isn't for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches, Millie's first profile garners nothing but dick pics. Enter "Catherine"—Millie's fictional persona, in whose shoes she can be more vulnerable than she's ever been in person. "Catherine" and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship . . . but Millie can't resist the temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend. Perfect for fans of Roxanne and She's the Man, you'll want to swipe right on My Favorite Half-Night Stand. 

I love how Christina Lauren uses tropes to build a framework of the story, but how their characters fill in the rest of the blanks. I would describe My Favorite Half-Night Stand as friends to lovers and miscommunication. It's so easy to believe in Millie's and Reid's friendship because they're both so invested the whole way through in keeping that friendship despite all the other romantic catastrophes happening around them. CLo's other friends to lovers, Love and Other Words, just didn't hit on that as much for me since the MCs in that one hadn't been friends in a while—in this one, I really believed the friendship and believed the miscommunication happening between them. 

I appreciated how the miscommunication wasn't something that was easy to communicate but wasn't—instead, it was something Millie truly struggled with, requiring her to find alternate ways to communicate her feelings, and eventually requiring her to go to difficult lengths to figure out why it was so hard for her to communicate in the first place. If you're reading this review before reading the book, that probably doesn't make much sense, but Millie's inability to share her deepest thoughts and be vulnerable is a huge part of why Millie and Reid are struggling to be together. I really related to Millie in that way, so I felt personally invested in Millie's ability to figure it out, and to communicate with Reid. I wasn't frustrated by the miscommunication in this story as I sometimes am with this trope, because Millie's inability to communicate is tied to some of her own personality traits and deep-seated fears. That made me invested in her arc, and invested in the relationship with Reid and Millie overall. 

I loved the ensemble cast in this one! Millie's and Reid's other best friends play a big role in how these two end up together, and it was so much fun feeling part of their friend group for the duration of the novel. I definitely got some good found family vibes from their friend group. I loved how their dynamic was shown through their individual relationships with one another, and the ways they hang out in groups. The most fun way this was demonstrated was through the inclusion of their group chat in group chat form, which had awesome in-text design, with avatars and everything! I think the only thing that prohibits me from giving this book a full-five is how, when Millie and Reid are so caught up in everything going on with them, we don't get a chance to see the other friends grow. For example, I sort of thought everyone was a bad friend to Ed, because he was taking the dating app thing so seriously. He never has a chance to explain fully to either Millie or Reid how his experience is going, and how he ended up with the person he ended up with, because every time they're talking to Ed, they're talking about their own problems. The same goes for Chris and Alex. I would have loved more on-the-page development of the rest of the guys as individuals, because their full-group chemistry was so strong! Either way, I think this definitely remains a CLo fave of mine, because it's one of my few friends to lovers that I really believed in. 

Basically, I'm a Christina Lauren stan, and I will read everything they write. The True Love Experiment can't come out fast enough in paperback! I can't wait to read it. Until then, you can find them at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com or @ChristinaLauren on Instagram and Twitter. You can find more of my reviews of their work here. 

*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*

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