Quick Synopsis

She wants him to help her woo someone else.
Genius. Foolproof. Can’t go wrong.

Publisher’s Synopsis

After a lifetime of being bad at love, JoJo Burton vows to solve her intimacy issues once and for all at her sister’s destination wedding on a cruise ship. Armed with pop psychology, she diagnoses herself with a fixation on the neighborhood guy who was her first crush and first kiss (and who just happens to be a newly-divorced wedding guest). Determined to woo him for closure, she ropes in her childhood bestie, Cooper Watts, as her wingman. Cooper: who RSVPed no, but showed up anyway. Cooper: who moved to London without a word four years ago. Cooper: who broke her heart.

Shipboard antics abound in this witty, heart-tugging, childhood-friends-to-lovers romance, as JoJo and Cooper team up, fake flirt, slow dance, share a cabin, sing duets, get jealous, answer long-held questions, and finally, at last, discover truths about each other that will change everything.

Book Review

Katherine Center wrote some of the very first romance novels I ever picked up. She was as my introduction to the genre, and I loved that her protagonists were strong women with lives outside the romance plot line. However, her last few books have not hit in the same way for me. I hoped that The Shippers would be a return to her former writing, particularly after very quickly DNFing her previous release The Love Haters.

From the start, The Shippers fails at feeling like an adult romance or rom-com novel, in large part due to the female protagonist. Despite how she is described, Jojo is immature and solely focused on one person (other than herself) to the detriment of those around her. For goodness sake, her venue for finding love is her own sister’s wedding. Jojo’s tactics for gaining her crush’s attention include displaying a hickey, flirting in front of him, and other attempts that have not seemed like good ideas since middle school. When conflict arises, her first instinct is to run away and make the worst choice possible. I personally grow incredibly frustrated by adult characters making poor decision after poor decision. Since I am unable to ring their necks, I just want to throw the book across the room and never pick it up again. With Jojo, I very quickly reached this point.

Meanwhile, the most redeeming part of The Shippers is Cooper, Jojo’s best friend. Cooper is sweet, helpful, mature, and patient. He is a great male protagonist who deserves much better than Jojo. It is hard to root for them to come together when Jojo continually uses Cooper and treats him like trash. She fails to acknowledge the sacrifices he makes to assist her in her asinine mission, despite the fact she will not even hear him out when he has something important to say. I solely finished this novel because of Cooper and months after reading it still want justice for Cooper.  

Additionally, the novel did not deliver the well-developed, complex characters undertaking a growth journey that I expect from a Katherine Center romance. As I have mentioned, Jojo had few, if any, redeeming qualities and I cannot even recall what her occupation was. Outside of being a sister and part of the neighborhood kids, her personality was solely being a messy, immature person obsessed with romance. I personally fail to find desperation endearing. And I could not muster up a single warm fuzzy when all I wanted to do is throw Jojo off the boat. The book’s singular focus on the romance left little else to drive me through its pages.

Overall, The Shippers is not a horrible novel, but if you prefer an adult romance or one where people show some growth, it will miss the mark. For me, The Shippers officially marks the end of Katherine Center being an auto-buy author for me. When she returns to writing mature, intelligent, and strong women, rather than the surface-level romance that BookTok fawns over, I will pick up a book of hers again.