Good at Being Alive

A travel agency goes to unlikely lengths to stay in business in this disappointing contemporary from O’Roark (the Favorites series). After spirited Rebecca “Bex” Daniels’s father, stepmother, and stepsister die in a freak train accident, she’s left to take over the New Jersey travel agency co-owned by her father’s young but stodgy British business partner, Theo Porter. The pair have vastly different styles, and the company is on the brink of bankruptcy. To save it, this opposites attract pair hatch an implausible scheme: they’ll get married and televise their whirlwind honeymoon as a reality show. Their on-camera banter highlights the sexual tension between them, and Theo soon realizes that Bex is playing herself down: her unintelligent party girl persona is a facade she developed to appease her jealous stepmother. As Theo and Bex jet between romantic locations, from Reykjavík to Madeira, their mutual unburdening of their past tragedies, including his brother’s suicide and her family’s deaths, leads to a love and understanding neither anticipated. The angst is heavy-handed, and the prickly characters are difficult to root for; while still in the enemies phase of their relationship, Bex makes multiple jokes about getting Theo deported, and Theo reveals that he hasn’t met his late brother’s son because it would mean interacting with his “whore of a mother.” The reality show conceit and vibrant destinations add some fun, but readers will struggle with this. (June)