My Favorite Half

Really happy to add this edition to my collection! I adore Christina Lauren's novels! I wanted to make sure that the edition that I received is the new illustrated cover... and it is! I adore it!

... I like the book. Have read it before and wanted to own it. Kinda bummed it didn't have the new, green cover but just glad it came.

Synopsis: Millie Morris, a criminology professor, is an emotional concrete block. While she tends to keep everyone at a comfortable distance from her personal life, she’s a pretty solid friend. Her best friends, Reid, Chris, Ed & Alex, who all work at the same university as Millie, are used to her emotional distance. Besides, they all share one solid trait: they’re all single af.Enter a fancy gala the university is throwing; Millie & her best guy friends can’t show up alone. So they all make a pact: sign up for the same dating app & find their potential gala date. Simple, right? Theoretically yes, but things become complicated when Millie & Reid spend an ultra steamy night together. Worse yet, after some disappointing initial matches, Millie decides to create a fictional persona - Cat- who just happens to match with Reid. Millie finds it easy to be emotionally open with Reid as Cat, but real world feelings start to complicate everything. Will Millie be able to overcome her intimacy issues before she loses her best friend?Review: I’m fully convinced Christina Lauren can do no wrong. After binging five of their books, I am beyond hooked. My Favorite Half-Night Stand alternates between Millie & Reid’s perspectives, giving the reader a deep look into how each feels as they navigate through steamy hookups & dating app experiences. Each character was developed well; their unique personalities shone off the pages.Although there were times I wanted to just reach in the book & shake some sense into Millie, I did feel for her sense of loneliness. What really stuck with me was this line from Millie: “I’m lonely because I don’t tell people what I need or what I want, and then get hurt when they don’t figure it out on their own” (pg. 236-237). Wow, I’m more like Millie than I’d like to admit.In all, the storyline was solid. You’ll either love Millie or be highly annoyed by her. My advice: give her a chance. I highly recommend this read!

I loved the dynamic of the friend group, i loved how the authors tackled the subject of loneliness and finding it hard to open up to others, even to people who care about you.The catfishing part didn't bother me too much because it was called out. I don't give it 5 stars because I could have connected to the main characters more. Sometimes they were a bit frustrating. And there were no real big surprise, it's a classic romance plot. Very enjoyable and quick read though, perfect to relax and escape for a while :)

This the story of a group of friends, four men and a woman in their late twenties/early thirties. They all work at the same university, they are all single, quirky, funny and all of them are nerds in their own kind of way.A few months later there is a big celebration at their University, and they decide that they all need a plus one for that party, so they decide to join a dating app to find their partner. Millie is the one to create everyone's dating profiles, including hers. While all the guys are receiving messages, Millie basically receives dick pics and requests for boobie pics, so she creates a second, secret profile, only known by her. But then, the dating app matches her with Reid, her best friend in the group, just a few days after they had a "half-night stand".Millie is a peculiar person, in the sense that she is smart, funny, and sarcastic, but she doesn't talk about her or her life. Whenever she feels a deep conversation is coming, she deflects and turns to jokes or changes the subject, and all the guys know it. But them, her dating alter ego, Cat, starts having conversations with Reid, the kind she's never had with him in real life, and he starts liking her (Cat).Things get more complicated when Reid is talking to two women in the dating app, Cat and Daisy while having casual sex with Millie and, when he, predictably, notices that Cat is Millie. He gives her the opportunity to confess, but she doesn't. And that's when the best part of the book starts.The first half is funny, and we get to know the five friends quite well. I love their friendship, their interactions and their jokes. And then, the drama unveils, and we see Reid trying to choose which of the three women he should choose: the beautiful one (Daisy), the smart and thoughtful one (Cat), or his best friend (Millie). We follow his thought process, and why he struggles to choose Millie, thinking she can't give him that extra depth he craves in a relationship and that he found in Cat.We get angry with him when Millie doesn't confess to Reid what has happened, and we mourn their break-up, as friends and as casual sex partners.But we also get to see Millie's grovelling, how she grows emotionally with the help of a therapist, until she's able to communicate her feelings and eventually fix the relationship with her family and her friends, including Reid. It's refreshing to find a romance when the one in the wrong is the heroine, and she's the one that has to win the guy back. The angst in the last third of the book made my angst-loving heart happy.I love how every character in this story has a role in it, and it's not just a diverse group of friends that are there because there is a quota that must be filled.