Love the cover and love these two authors most the time. This book did not disappoint. The spice was spicy and the chemistry between Anna and West was palpable. Love a fake marriage trope. There was a lot of character development and they both grew emotionally throughout the book which was nice to see.

I loved every minute of this book (except the dad-what an ASS-which was the point but still!)! I always enjoy Christina Lauren books but this one reminds me of the ones I loved when I first discovered her(them?): My Favorite Half Night Stand, Roomies, Josh and Hazels Guide to Not Dating. Thanks to net galley for letting me read this early!

I LOVED this book. Christina Lauren never disappoints. I devoured this one in 2 sittings. Perfect beach/summer read that left me wanting more (even though it was tied up perfectly)

“I’m telling you, he was wearing that girl like a mood ring.” ☠️😵🪦😂🤣😂

“This dynamic isn’t kooky and wonderful. This family isn’t a charming group with a few warts. This family is gross.” 🙌🏻 Yup.

The biggest takeaway is INTENT MATTERS People make mistakes but it truly is the intent that matters. I always say that so I was like YES YES YES!

Unfortunately, I was all over the map with this one, sometimes I liked it and was all in, other times I had a hard time focusing on it.
It just wasn’t what I was expecting, it was a lot heavier. Liam’s family was really awful. I thought it would be more like a romcom but it was romance with a huge helping of dysfunction. The nastiness and manipulation of Liam’s family was too much. It just really bummed me out tbh.

Liam’s family sort of overshadowed the growth between Anna and Liam, because in my brain I’m like wait I can’t even focus on romance with these pretentious jerks running around. I think the only character I truly enjoyed was Anna’s dad.

CLo does give us our #hea so that helped for sure.

I can’t wait to read their next one, because if CLo writes it, I’m buying it. No hard feelings 💋.

This was the perfect summer read! I'm almost a little sad that I didn't save it for my upcoming beach trip. The characters, world building, mystery, and intrigue were absolutely on point. Even though I'm mainly a closed door girlie these days, the plot was absolutely worth the language, innuendo, and explicit scenes that I shy away from most of the time. I've only read one other Christina Lauren book (The Unhoneymooners) in the past, but this one definitely makes me want to check out more of them.

Anna...I absolutely love the description of her as a Muppet in human form! I don't typically gravitate towards artsy FMCs because I'm pretty analytical (planner, lover of numbers, etc.) myself. However, Anna is just so lovable and genuine. I adored how she was incredibly supportive of Liam and believed in his goodness even in the midst of some pretty messy stuff.

Liam...Bless. This guy is extremely well-adjusted to have grown up in the family he has. Like Anna, I want to believe that events like the ones in this story don't happen in the real world, but I'm sure they absolutely do. Liam is extremely giving and thoughtful and I respect how he chose to break away and make a life for himself as a professor totally separate from his family. I also enjoyed how he fought so hard against truly falling for Anna, but found that he just couldn't resist her (swoon ❤️).

Things I loved...Anna's pink hair, Vivi (top tier bestie), all the fabulous descriptions of the island (I seriously felt like I was there), the fancy parties (even though they were ludicrous), Anna's interactions with Liam's niece and nephews (especially Reagan), Blaire (and all of her absolute inappropriateness), Anna's dad (what a sweetheart), and the epilogue (SO good and tied everything up nicely).

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5 rounded down
🌶️🌶️🌶️

I absolutely loved this book! I loved how quirky Anna was. That was one of the first things that really hit me about this book. Usually the guy is the sort of flaky, fly by the seat of their pants type so it was refreshing that it was Anna instead.

I love the fake dating trope. And with that, people who read that trope know what will happen. They'll "accidentally" fall in love and somehow it will come out that their relationship was a farce. But how it was done in this book was so good.

This is my 4th Christina Lauren book and they've all been home runs!

With a different twist on a marriage of convenience story, The Paradise Problem was a really fun read. I enjoyed the characters, the story and the happily ever after.

Anna and Liam couldn't be much more different. He's too serious, she can be not serious enough at times. He's an accomplished professor, she's a newly fired, struggling artist after giving up going to medical school. She didn't even read the contract she signed well enough to understand all the requirements so she's quite surprised when he shows up at her door years later requiring her to step into her "wife" role. Can they convince his family they've been happily married all this time? Can they get through an extravagant destination wedding so they can get their divorce and go their separate ways?

You can problably guess that it's not all that easy. It turns out his family thinks she's been pursuing medicine all this time. He's not exactly who he's let her think. There's more to this contract than getting good student housing. And, they're starting to really fall for each other. I loved seeing Anna stepping up to defend Liam and reach her heart out to him when she realizes his family dynamic's effect on him. She's pretty great with his siblings too. Watching these two slowly fall for each other is so entertaining and touching. I loved their journey although it wasn't all sweet and fun. As a matter of fact for much of their trip the stressors are intense and painful but they bring Anna and Liam to each other. I just loved watching them together.

Christina Lauren always give us a good story and this was one the ones I enjoyed the most. I definitely recommend it.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

I just love Christina Lauren, and love them even more after meeting them/hearing them speak at my local bookstore last month! This book is exactly what I expected and wanted it to be, and couldn’t have asked for a better book to bust my slump with!

~A lovely twist on a marriage of convenience for student housing that turns into a marriage of convenience worth a massive inheritance~

Anna and Liam “West” marry only to secure affordable family housing at UCLA. Years later after graduation while pink-haired wild child artist Anna is slumming it and recently fired from her gas station attendant gig, wealthy grocery store heir Liam suddenly shows up to tell her they aren’t actually divorced and offers her an opportunity of a lifetime. If she could only pretend to be his happily wedded wife for a little while at his sister’s tropical wedding on a remote island (hence the “paradise”) where his whole dysfunctional family will be present and counting on meeting her, she will receive a decent sum of money out of his inheritance that he needs assistance to help him claim (hence the “problem”).

This was cute romance and a pretty quick read for me, but I didn’t get invested much with the characters or the whole rich family drama plot. Got a little bored with some of it.

Thank you so much to the authors, Gallery Books, and NetGalley for the e-galley!

Unfortunately, I think the newer Christina Lauren books have lost that spark that made me fall in love with them. They some how feel more formulaic and tamer?

I absolutely loved this book! I heard such great things about it and it did not disappoint. Now I need to read more of her books!

Thank you NetGalley! This was such a cute read! This book had an unusual storyline but I loved the chemistry between Anna and Liam. This was my favorite Christina Lauren book!

This is probably one of my top Christina Lauren books since The Unhoneymooners. While the plot is a bit contrived, I did not even care as I came to hope that Anna and West would realize that they were made for each other (all while realizing they definitely would). It's a great book for reading while in a tropical locale, or wishing you were.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for my gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the dual POVs and really enjoy dual POvs when reading romcoms, but usually I cannot deal with the male narrator’s voice. I don’t know if this is just me but sometimes they creep me out. It may be the fact that I put it at 2.0+ speed but still….lol

I really like Jon Root as the male narrator and he didn’t annoy me one bit while listening to the audiobook which I paired with the physical copy.

Fake marriage with a twist. I love a fake dating/engagement/marriage and Christina Lauren did not disappoint with this trope in The Paradise Problem.

I loved the setting and the backstory of both of the main characters. I also enjoyed the in laws and their own set of personalities. There is a large cast of characters but with their large personalities it is not hard keeping everyone straight.

I highly recommend this one to all of my romance lovers out there!

This was such a fun, cute, summer read! The chemistry was off the charts, but Liam's family. Ugh, gross. I did have a good time reading, but must admit, found it too predictable. Nevertheless, I do recommend for a quick, cute read!

4.5 glowing romantic stars!🌟🌟🌟🌟!!!! OK, so I finally got to read my first romantic comedy book by Christina Lauren and boy was I happy that I had. I enjoyed the premise for The Paradise Problem that set up the storyline for this book. I could not seem to put this book down. The characters were unique and interesting. Of course, I liked some more than others. After I learned a little about Liam “West” Weston’s predicament, I wondered to what extremes I might go to to make sure that I was able to cash in on and collect the insanely enormous family inheritance that specified several stipulations? Apparently Liam Weston was willing to do whatever it took, even if it meant participating in a “fake” marriage.

Liam’s grandfather had stipulated that each of the members in his family that were eligible to receive their share of the inheritance money he had left for them had to be happily married for five years. Almost five years ago, Liam legally married Anna Green. At first, the marriage was to allow them access to cheap housing designated for married couples while they both attended UCLA. Anna and Liam were as different as night and day. Liam was serious, goal oriented, not close with the members of his family and extremely wealthy. His family owned a very successful chain of food stores. Anna, on the other hand, was quirky, artsy, had pink hair, was very close with her father and as far from wealthy as she could be. It didn’t matter to Liam how different he and Anna were. He and Anna were merely roommates in those early years who rarely crossed paths. As soon as Liam had graduated from UCLA he moved out and presented Anna with divorce papers that would become final as soon as the five years were up. Liam thought he had thought of everything but shortly before the end of the five year period, Liam learned about his sister’s wedding. He was expected to attend and to be accompanied by his wife. It was a destination wedding on an island near Indonesia. Could Liam and Anna pull off the charade of the century? Could they convince his family that they were a happily married couple? Could they be convincing enough so that Liam could get his inheritance money?

The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren was funny, sweet, romantic, involved scheming and was messy and hurtful at times. It was fast paced and well written. Christina Lauren explored family dynamics, how toxicity could cripple and pull a family apart, long kept secrets, competition between brothers, opulent wealth and its effects on others and honesty. I really enjoyed reading The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren and hope to read more books in the future by these two talented authors. I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to Gallery Books for allowing me to read The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars = I loved it! Would re-read.

Wow! I could not put this down. I loved this take on a fake relationship story. The characters in this are fantastically written, even the ones you love to hate. Anna is an absolute delight - I loved her sass. The epilogue is supremely satisfying. This is not to be missed for fans of fake relationship stories, spicy romance, or of Christina Lauren. (Language, sex)

A perfect summer read! Five years ago, Anna marries “West” Weston to secure cheap college housing. They lived together and then went their separate ways. Three years later “West”/Liam returns and needs Anna to pretend to be his wife to secure his inheritance. Together, they fly to Indonesia for Liam’s sister’s wedding to convince his family they are a really couple. But both begin to develop feelings for each other and are unsure what to do.

Oh my goodness this book was fun. It was just so perfectly written. The humor the banter, the plot, the characters. I just LOVED everything about this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the E-ARC.

All thoughts and opinions are honest and my own.

I LOVED it! No surprise here, I am a hugggge CLo fan! I am now caught up on all their standalones and this landed easily in my top 3 of all their books!

The romance, the exclusive private island wedding setting, fake dating/marriage of convenience, the banter/tension, and this plot were all just 🤌🏻🤌🏻🤌🏻. I simply love Anna and Liam!

It was GIVING! I was swoony and giggling and truly just couldn’t get enough of it!! Literally the most perfect summer read, so add it to your TBR ASAP!

Major Unhoneymooners vibes but this one topped that one for me!