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The job of a high-profile assistant is never done. It’s a thankless, 24/7 kind of job. But in The Honey-Don’t List by Christina Lauren, two assistants start their own love story while trying to get their bosses’ relationship from imploding in public.
The story gets caught up in the media frenzy surrounding a famous home remodeling team. Melissa and Rusty Tripp started out with just a small store in Wyoming, and they’ve built it into an empire. With one TV show ending, a book on marriage hitting shelves, and a new Netflix series about to be announced, they’re hitting the road to promote their brand. But when Rusty makes a sloppy mistake and Melly loses her cool, their assistants, long-time employee Carey Douglas and MIT-graduate and engineer James McCann, are forced to cancel their plans and work closely together to babysit their bosses.
Of course, this wouldn’t be a Christina Lauren book if there weren’t at least a little bit of romance in the midst of the chaos and home improvement TV drama. So while one relationship falls apart in a very obvious, very public way (on a book tour to promote the couple’s book no marriage, no less), the couple’s assistants quietly find their way together.
The Honey-Don’t List is a little bit romance, a little bit gossip, following the lives of these two dedicated but overworked assistants and their two bickering bosses, who are hiding a whole lot of secrets behind their PR-perfect appearances. Rusty and Melly definitely make an entertaining pair. You’ll recognize some of your favorite TV designers in them, and they might give you a new perspective on those famous TV couples. In fact, their part of the story is so dramatic and over-the-top that they take a lot of the attention away from the budding romance between their assistants. Carey and James are both likeable characters, but their stories and their personalities simply pale in comparison to their famous bosses and their antics. That’s not to say that this isn’t an entertaining read, but it doesn’t have the same electricity as some of the writing duo’s other novels.
If you’re a sucker for HGTV design shows, you’ll enjoy the design drama of The Honey-Don’t List. It’s definitely a playfully dishy read. But if you’re expecting another sparkling romance, you might feel a little let down in the end.
Listen to the review on Shelf Discovery:
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