Katherine Center has cleverly titled her newest rom-com, “The Shippers.” The setting is a cruise ship, so in that sense the title is logical. But I learned a new term: “ship” is slang for relationship. To be specific, the verb means wishing for two people to be together; the noun is the actual romantic pairing. In this novel, the romantic couple that is being “shipped” appears to be clear from the start, but as we know, things in fiction (and real life) are not always what they appear to be.

Jojo Burton, our protagonist, is walking up the aisle on the first page. She’s getting married to the man she’s been engaged to for four long years, and the first hint that all is not well is the very first sentence when we are made aware that the wedding gown is horribly itchy. And that Jojo’s gown belongs to her future mother-in-law who didn’t even allow her to alter the gown, just adjust it with safety pins.

As Jojo is ready to proceed with the processional, a figure from her past appears. Cooper, her childhood best friend, who disappeared four years ago (coincidentally right when she became engaged to Pearce), flies in from London. He looks burly. and hairy, with long wild locks and a shaggy beard. His muscular, manly body does not look like the boy she remembered from childhood and their teen years. He tells her that she can get out of this (the wedding). Stop, drop, and roll. After a brief conversation, Jojo meets her fiancé at the altar, fakes a faint, and calls off the wedding.

Now Jojo is convinced that her love life is jinxed. She is destined to dump every man who falls in love with her. She only falls in love with those who don’t return her feelings. Her older sister, Ashley, is getting married on a cruise ship, and Ashley comes up with a plan to cure Jojo of her cursed love life.

Ashley convinces Jojo regarding research she had read which stated that people become imprinted on the person they share their first kiss with, so if Jojo can recreate that first kiss with Finn, the guy who kissed her when he was thirteen and she was ten, as a dare, she will either fall in love with him or the curse will be broken. Finn will be one of many neighborhood friends attending the wedding cruise. So Ashley and Jojo create a whole plan for the cruise in order to bring Finn and Jojo together so that they can fall madly in love, or at least recreate the kiss.

But Cooper shows up on the loading dock, handsome and confident, drawing everyone’s eye because he looks like a movie star. Cooper has cut and styled his hair, he’s dressed to the nines, wearing sunglasses. That’s when we know that it is not Jojo’s destiny to end up with Finn. But Jojo doesn’t know that yet, and the fun is watching Jojo convince herself that Finn is the person for her, watching Jojo try to help her father fix his relationship with her mother (who has asked for a divorce), and watching Jojo try to become a different person to entice Finn into falling for her.

There’s humor aplenty; it’s a rom-com, for heaven’s sake. And no one writes rom-coms like Katherine Center. She is the goddess of love stories; she’s also the goddess of finding lots of humor in relationships and our inner workings. Center really gets people, their idiosyncrasies, their insecurities, and their soft, gooey centers. Because in our hearts (our soft centers), most of us want the same things: to feel protected, to feel loved, to make strong connections with others, and to feel understood.

When we find someone who can provide those three things, we’ve found our “ship.” Don’t expect suspense. We know from the beginning that Jojo and Cooper will be the HEA of the story, and that on the (cruise) ship they will find their ship. The whole novel is even more clever than the very clever title. It’s charming. You’ll smile throughout the cruise, and you’ll smile even more at the very satisfying, very unsurprising, very romantic and perfect ending.

Check out her last two romances: “The Love Haters” and “The Rom-Commers.” I loved them both.

This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.