If you’ve been following along, you already know that keeping up with reviews has been a bit of a challenge lately. Life has a way of filling up every available corner, and writing about books has kept falling to the bottom of the list. But I’m trying—and here we are.

I’ll say this: I’m really glad we went on a cruise back in January, because it ended up being the perfect accidental research trip for this book. The Shippers is set almost entirely aboard a cruise ship, and having that experience fresh in my memory—the narrow hallways, the cabin layouts, the way the whole floating world hums along around you—meant I could picture everything so clearly. It added a layer to the reading experience I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

By now, Katherine Center is a well-established auto-read for me. I’ve worked my way through most of her catalogue—How to Walk Away, Things You Save in a Fire, The Bodyguard, Hello Stranger, The Rom-Commers, and most recently The Love Haters—and I’ve loved most of them. She has a genuine gift for wit and banter, and one of my favourite things about her books is how she tends to build the story around a profession you wouldn’t normally know much about—Coast Guard rescue divers, screenwriters, firefighters. It makes each book feel like its own little world. The Shippers is a bit of a departure from that formula, and I think the book misses it.

After a whole lifetime of being bad at love, JoJo Burton decides 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 neighbourhood 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.

What I liked

The premise: This is where The Shippers really distinguishes itself. A wedding cruise, a matchmaking scheme with more layers than you initially expect, a boring childhood crush—it’s a quirkier, more inventive setup than you might anticipate, and I appreciated that Katherine Center was swinging for something a little different here. When the full picture of what’s actually been going on behind the scenes comes together, it’s genuinely fun.

The setting: Cruise ships make for a surprisingly effective backdrop for romance. Forced proximity has nowhere to hide when you’re all trapped together on the water, and Center uses that to its advantage. Having been on a cruise recently, I found myself nodding along at the details in a way that made the whole thing feel vivid and real—something I might not have been able to fully appreciate otherwise.

Center’s voice: Even when this isn’t her strongest work, her wit and lightness are still present. She has a gift for keeping things moving with humour and warmth, and that carries you through even when other elements aren’t quite landing. Nobody writes banter quite like she does, and there are moments here where that shine comes through.

Cooper (the MMC): Of all the characters in this book, he felt the most like a real, fully formed person. His patience, his quiet investment in the woman he loves, his generally grounded presence against a cast of more chaotic personalities—he was the emotional anchor of the story, and he worked.

What didn’t work for me

JoJo (the FMC): This was my biggest struggle, and if my Katherine Center track record tells me anything, it’s that when the female lead doesn’t land for me—see: Hello Stranger—the whole book suffers for it. For a woman who was almost married, her approach to love and relationships felt genuinely baffling—almost childlike in a way that was hard to reconcile with her age. She was on the verge of marrying someone not because she was in love, but because it was fine and she didn’t want to have to start over. Which, okay, I can understand that kind of inertia—but paired with the way she chased after her childhood crush without being able to read a single signal around her, and some choices along the way that felt more like a teenager than a grown woman (there’s a hickey plotline that made me cringe a little, if I’m honest), it painted a picture of someone who didn’t seem to have a very realistic grip on how adult relationships work.

The family dynamics: JoJo’s closeness with her sister made the distance with her parents (well, mostly her father) feel all the more jarring. Her father’s emotional unavailability and his subplot about trying to win her mother back were an interesting idea in theory, but they, too, felt like they existed slightly outside the realm of how real people behave. And the sister marrying JoJo’s ex-boyfriend—who apparently still carries some weird grudge about them breaking up in high school—felt like one complication too many that didn’t add enough to justify being there.

The exaggerated characters: Katherine Center’s characters are usually one of her greatest strengths—sharp, funny, recognizably human. Here, too many of them tipped over into caricature. Aside from Cooper, the cast felt like heightened versions of people rather than actual ones, which made it hard to fully invest in their stories. It’s a strange thing to say about an author whose character work I normally admire so much, but something felt off here.

The familiar setup: Beneath the quirky cruise-ship premise, the bones of this story will feel familiar if you’ve read much in the genre lately—childhood best friends, one pining for years, the other oblivious and about to marry the wrong person, forced proximity, eventual realization. The setting adds freshness, but the underlying story didn’t feel like new territory. If you read my recent review of Our Perfect Storm, you’ll know what I mean.

The missing “Center specialty”: Part of what I love about Katherine Center’s books is how she drops you into a world you don’t know—Coast Guard rescue diving, Hollywood screenwriting, professional firefighting. The Shippers doesn’t quite have that equivalent, and I felt its absence more than I expected. A cruise ship is a fun setting, but it’s not quite the same as really learning something new alongside the characters.

Final thoughts

The Shippers is a perfectly enjoyable read that just doesn’t quite hit the mark of what Katherine Center is capable of. The premise is inventive, the MMC is (almost) swoony, and the cruise ship setting is an inspired choice—but too many of the characters needed to feel more grounded for the emotional payoff to fully land. Center is still one of my auto-reads, and I don’t think this one will change that. But if you’re new to her, start with The Love Haters, The Rom-Commers, or Things You Save in a Fire first and work your way here.

3.5 STARS

“And I’d learned a lesson from my dad a long time ago: You can’t force people to care about you. If you didn’t matter to someone, you didn’t matter. ”—Katherine Center, The Shippers

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for the advanced copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.