Title: The Shippers
Author: Katherine Center
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Rom-Com
Format: eARC
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4★)
Synopsis
JoJo Burton heads onto a cruise ship for her sister’s destination wedding determined to finally fix her love life once and for all. Convinced she’s emotionally stuck on her first crush, she decides this is the perfect opportunity to pursue some long-overdue closure.
The only problem? Her childhood best friend Cooper unexpectedly shows up too, despite disappearing from her life years ago and breaking her heart in the process.
As fake flirting, forced proximity, old feelings, and cruise ship chaos start piling up, JoJo begins realizing she may not fully understand her own heart after all.
My Thoughts
At this point, Katherine Center is basically an auto-read author for me, so I went into this book with pretty high expectations.
Friends-to-lovers, forced proximity, cruise ship setting… honestly, it sounded like the perfect combination.
And overall, I really enjoyed it, even if I still think I preferred some of her previous books slightly more.
The dynamic between JoJo and Cooper worked really well for me. Their banter felt natural, their shared history gave the relationship more emotional depth, and honestly, it became increasingly funny watching literally everyone around them realize where things were heading while they remained completely clueless ...
And Cooper? Full golden retriever energy. Absolutely.
I really liked him as a character.
JoJo was a bit more complicated for me. I liked how intelligent she was and appreciated her very analytical “math brain” way of thinking, but some of her decisions, especially at the beginning and during parts of the cruise, definitely made me want to shake her a little.
One aspect I actually found really interesting was the imprinting/intimacy issue angle. It’s not something I usually see explored in contemporary romance, it almost felt more like a romantasy concept brought into a real-world setting, which made it stand out more.
That said… the miscommunication between these two drove me slightly insane at times. There were so many moments where I just wanted them to sit down and actually SAY what they felt already.
The pacing was a little uneven in places, but overall the book remained very bingeable and genuinely fun to read. There were a lot of entertaining moments throughout, and the “faint & roll” scene near the beginning genuinely made me laugh.
I’m still not entirely sure how I felt about the lighthouse situation though. That part felt a little random to me and probably could have been left out without changing much overall.
Final Thoughts
Overall, despite a few frustrations here and there, this was still a very enjoyable romance with fun banter, lovable characters, and plenty of swoony moments.
If you enjoy childhood-friends-to-lovers romances with cruise ship chaos, forced proximity, and golden retriever love interests, this one will probably work really well for you.
ARC Disclaimer
Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
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