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A review by readingwithhippos
Island Affair by Priscilla Oliveras
3.0
The best thing about Island Affair is it feels like a vacation. Canceling our 10th anniversary trip to Hawaii due to the evil virus has me pretty bummed (first world problems, I know, but it still stings). At this point I’ll take a tropical escape any way I can get it, and Priscilla Oliveras is very, very good at making you feel like you’re in Key West. Like, maybe in another life she was a set designer or something. Reading about the sun, sand, and ocean breeze made me yearn for flip flops, a flirty skirt, and a frozen beverage (preferably with rum in it).
Sara is a social media influencer, one of those millennials who’s found a way to make a living by being her own brand. Her parents and siblings are all doctors and don’t really understand her version of success. She’s nervous to spend a week with the whole family in Key West, but she’s going because the trip is a celebration of her mother being cancer-free. When her boyfriend flakes on her at the airport, she runs into hunky firefighter Luis, who she immediately recruits to pretend to be her boyfriend for the week so she can save face. Luis has just been put on mandatory leave at work, so he jumps at the chance to distract himself with a pretty girl for a week.
Luis is a great hero—he’s a genuinely decent guy (my favorite!). I liked that his kindness is portrayed realistically—he’s learned that sometimes good people get taken advantage of by people who are less good, and he’s still processing a major betrayal from years ago. The fact that he continues to be a kind, helpful, generous person despite how it has blown up in his face in the past really impressed me. I also liked that the book is as much about Sara and Luis’s budding relationship as it is about Sara mending fences with her family. She has a lot of baggage with them, particularly her mother and sister, and it’s satisfying to see some of those issues get ironed out.
I will say that I wasn’t 100% comfortable with the depiction of Sara’s eating disorder—she’s in recovery and appears to be doing well, but the narration glorifies thin bodies as the ideal, describing her tiny waist, slender hips, and toned legs, and I just didn’t know what to do with that. I wish the focus had been on her body being attractive because of her confidence and how she carried herself, rather than because it fit what society considers the correct proportions.
Sara is a social media influencer, one of those millennials who’s found a way to make a living by being her own brand. Her parents and siblings are all doctors and don’t really understand her version of success. She’s nervous to spend a week with the whole family in Key West, but she’s going because the trip is a celebration of her mother being cancer-free. When her boyfriend flakes on her at the airport, she runs into hunky firefighter Luis, who she immediately recruits to pretend to be her boyfriend for the week so she can save face. Luis has just been put on mandatory leave at work, so he jumps at the chance to distract himself with a pretty girl for a week.
Luis is a great hero—he’s a genuinely decent guy (my favorite!). I liked that his kindness is portrayed realistically—he’s learned that sometimes good people get taken advantage of by people who are less good, and he’s still processing a major betrayal from years ago. The fact that he continues to be a kind, helpful, generous person despite how it has blown up in his face in the past really impressed me. I also liked that the book is as much about Sara and Luis’s budding relationship as it is about Sara mending fences with her family. She has a lot of baggage with them, particularly her mother and sister, and it’s satisfying to see some of those issues get ironed out.
I will say that I wasn’t 100% comfortable with the depiction of Sara’s eating disorder—she’s in recovery and appears to be doing well, but the narration glorifies thin bodies as the ideal, describing her tiny waist, slender hips, and toned legs, and I just didn’t know what to do with that. I wish the focus had been on her body being attractive because of her confidence and how she carried herself, rather than because it fit what society considers the correct proportions.