My Favorite Half-Night Stand

Christina Lauren

Dec 2018 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this eBook

By the New York Times bestselling author who “hilariously depicts modern dating” (Us Weekly), My Favorite Half-Night Stand is a laugh-out-loud romp through online dating and its many, many fails.

Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.

So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.

But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine”—Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship...but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend, forever.

Perfect for fans of Roxanne and She’s the Man, Christina Lauren’s latest romantic comedy is full of mistaken identities, hijinks, and a classic love story with a modern twist. Funny and fresh, you’ll want to swipe right on My Favorite Half-Night Stand.

Ratings and reviews

Millie Morris is an UC Santa Barbara professor, single and best friends with 4 other professors who all happen to be guys. They treat her like one of the guys too. When the gang realizes that they each have to have a date for a formal work event, they all decide to join a dating app. On the same night, Millie and her best friend, Reid Campbell, end up hooking up. Reid has always been drawn to Millie but she has a problem letting people in to her intimate thoughts and that really bothers Reid. After a spectacular night together, they decide to just stay friends because they don't want to lose their friendship. Millie sets up everyone's profiles on their accounts but didn't set up a real profile for herself. Millie ends up getting garbage replies back so she decides to set up a real, honest profile but with using her middle name. Imagine her surprise when she is matched up with Reid. These two set about having great conversations because Millie can hide behind her unknown account. Reid is enjoying conversing with "Cat" and another woman, Daisy, which makes Millie jealous. Even though these two agreed to keep their relationship platonic, they hook up again. As feelings deepen, Millie must decide if she can open up for real and give Reid what he really wants from her before he finds out that she really is Cat. Of course best laid plans don't always work out and it takes a huge leap of faith from both Millie and Reid before these two can get their happy ending. I just loved this story. Because of things from Millie's past she has a problem being open with people but Reid just wants to bring those walls down and love her. Millie just wants to be loved but is just afraid. This was a fun story, a little "You've Got Mail"ness to it. I loved the texts back and forth between everyone....it added a fun, quirkiness to the story. Overall, I highly recommend this story.

My Favorite Half-Night Stand is a bit Big Bang Theory-ish with its group of almost geeky friends who are more like family. Each character has his or her own issues with dating and since they all need a plus one for an event, signing up for online dating just makes sense. As if wading through the clear as mud waters of online dating isn't confusing enough, things are further complicated when Reid and Millie cross the friendship line. Given her age, Millie's actions in the book do stretch the believability scale, but she's such a hot mess emotionally that it works and of course, we get plenty of the wit and sarcasm the authors are known for. As things progress, both in the online world and for Millie and Reid, it's pretty easy to see the problems before they happen, but the journey is engaging, often laugh out loud hilarious, sexy, and loads of fun - sometimes, all at the same time. What always sets Christina Lauren's books apart for me are the characters. Even the secondary characters are interesting, love them or hate them, they add something to the story. From Reid's over-sharing mother to the ever so lovable Ed, this one has terrific characters in spades and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to spend time with all of them. All in all, another entertaining, witty romance from these authors.

Christina Lauren has been on my TBR for awhile but this book is my first. I was drawn in by blurb and the concept. Millie and Reid have been good friends for years. One half-night stand before their friend group decides to give online dating a try to find a date for a work gala definitely blurs the lines but they decide to keep their friendship and forget about the awkwardness. When Millie gets nothing but unpleasant experiences from her online matches, she decides to make a different profile that her friends don't know about. As Catherine she gets matched with Reid. As Reid and Catherine get closer, so do Millie and Reid. The lines were blurred after their first half-night stand and now they can barely see them at all. I love modern retellings of stories so I loved how this one was going to be a kind of blend of The Twelfth Night and Cyrano de Bergerac. I didn't feel like this book lived up to what I thought it was going to be. Maybe that's because I love those two stories or maybe it's because I've built up this author duo a lot but I had to force myself to finish this book. I felt like while Millie and Reid were supposed to be best friends, I couldn't really see why they were friends and it made Millie's actions that much worse. I will definitely still try another book by Christina Lauren since I think this one just wasn't for me. *This is my voluntary review of an advanced reader copy*

About the author

Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of longtime writing partners and best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA TODAY, and #1 internationally bestselling authors of the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, Autoboyography, Love and Other Words, Roomies, Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, The Unhoneymooners, The Soulmate Equation, Something Wilder, The True Love Experiment and The Paradise Problem. You can find them online at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com or @ChristinaLauren on Instagram.