Thank you to NetGalley and Montlake for this ARC.

Lucky, 24, works on a superyacht in the Mediterranean as chief stew. She wants to open her own bakery as a tribute to her Italian nonna, and life on board is well-paid. Hunter, 25, is a deckhand, but also secretly the son of the yacht owner. They both fall in insta-lust but a new rule forbids fraternisation between crew members so they have to throw longing looks a lot, talk in innuendos and sneak around. It's made worse by the forced proximity trope - of course the only bed left available for Hunter is the bunk bed in Lucky's cabin. 

I thought the ship setting would provide interesting and funny stories but it's all about annoying guests, annoying colleagues like lazy Emilie, and pages and pages of dialogue about their attraction, without much going on. There was just too much innuendo. 

Also, Lucky has only got her two sisters left but they both just use her as a cash cow, which is giving Cinderella vibes. I found that very frustrating, because if you can deal with life at sea and sexist men why can't you tell your adult sisters to stop exploiting you?

There is so much repressed lust, I thought someone might burst a blood vessel or have a heart attack. At one point Hunter says: "It was like locking a kid in a candy store and telling him he couldn’t have any of it." You don't talk about a woman like that! I didn't like Hunter very much - he acted very jealous from the outset and was a bit of a Neanderthal. A rich one who was sent onboard as a test for his parents to see whether he could last six months in a proper job. He didn't feel like a serious person, with the constant flirting, shirt off and nautical puns.

The story is told in dual POV - I would have preferred just Lucky's POV. Sariah Wilson is a very popular American author, but this didn't grab me. It just felt shallow and predictable and without relatable characters. And yes, there were problems like Lucky's anxiety and her childhood referenced, but it seems all the rage these days to give the MCs some sort of childhood trauma to make the story deeper. In reality, this added nothing. Read it if you like "banter".