Marriage & Make-Believe in “The Paradise Problem”

Christina Lauren’s tropical marriage-of-convenience romance is exactly the kind of charming summer escape it promises to be

Christina Lauren has delivered a delightful summer read with The Paradise Problem. The cover screams sunshine and tropical escape—though I personally hate it—but let’s focus on what’s inside.

Anna and Liam married in college for the deeply unromantic purpose of qualifying for family housing. They shared a lease, learned almost nothing about each other, and went their separate ways after graduation. Years later, Liam reappears with a problem: he never told his wealthy family they had split up. Now a family event requires the presence of the wife everyone believes he still has, and Anna agrees to join him on an island and keep up the act.

The setup is familiar—marriage of convenience, fake relationship, opposites attract—but the chemistry between Anna and Liam keeps it from feeling mechanical. Christina Lauren gives the couple enough warmth, friction, and genuine curiosity about each other to make the inevitable shift from pretending to falling in love satisfying. Their relationship develops against a backdrop of family tension, money, and an island so beautiful the whole book feels made to be read outdoors.

The plot echoes Pretty Woman: a woman enters an extremely wealthy world through an arrangement, then upends it by refusing to become what it expects. Anna is much of the book’s charm—funny, unconventional, and refreshingly unimpressed by the performance of wealth surrounding Liam’s family.

The Paradise Problem is not my favorite Christina Lauren novel, but I could not put it down. It is romantic, funny, and easy to sink into—the perfect book for a lazy afternoon in the park, preferably with snacks and absolutely no obligations.