Here for a Good Time by Pyae Moe Thet War: When Resort Rom-Com Meets Action Thriller

In Here for a Good Time by Pyae Moe Thet War, we meet Poe Myat Sabei, the breakout author who can’t write her second book. To shake the funk, she and her roommate/best friend Zwe book a two-week, all-inclusive escape to Sertulu, a tiny, sun-drenched island somewhere to the right of the Philippines. What starts as a flirtatious, White-Lotus-adjacent vacation—complete with romantic ping-ponging between resort staff Antonio and Leila—cuts sideways when armed women storm the resort and take everyone hostage. Survival, secrets, and suddenly urgent feelings force Poe and Zwe to confront everything they’ve kept from each other.

My Review

I picked this up expecting light resort drama and got an energetic mashup of rom-com beats and action-adventure. The opening’s playful, voyeuristic vibe (think sun, cocktails, petty celebrity inertia) had me smiling, and Poe’s writerly imposter syndrome made her instantly relatable. Then the story flips: hostage stakes ramp up, adrenaline replaces cocktails, and the book leans hard into escape plans and tense teamwork. That jolt kept me reading—there’s real suspense in the ways the group scrambles, and War stages some satisfying, edge-of-your-seat moments.

That said, the tone wobble is real. I loved the chemistry between Poe and Zwe early on—the small, honest scenes where friendship tilts into something more felt earned—but once bullets fly the emotional beats sometimes got crowded by action set pieces. Still, the novel won me over when Poe used the crisis to face her insecurities; watching her discover courage felt like the heart of the book. Expect a fast, bumpy ride: rom-com warmth, sudden violence, and a friends-to-lovers arc that’s messy but rooted in history. If you like your love stories with a side of danger and don’t mind tonal whiplash, this one’s a wild, fun read.

Close the book feeling breathless and oddly exhilarated—this is the kind of story that makes you laugh, clutch your chest, and then cheer when the underdogs survive.

You can get a copy of Here for a Good Time by Pyae Moe Thet War on Amazon or Bookshop.

If this has you intrigued, read an excerpt from HERE FOR A GOOD TIME below.

EXCLUSIVE Chapter 2 Excerpt

I get to the store at 10:52 a.m., and release a sigh of relief when I see the line. Ayesha says that I am now permanently part of the elite club of authors who never again have to worry about nobody showing up to their signings—but that feels presumptuous. As the queen (Beyoncé, not the dead one) instructed, I make it a point to always stay gracious. And although the fact that I accomplished all of this—an accomplishment that, at times, still feels like a delirious dream, like one day I’ll blink and my name will be nowhere to be found on all those bestseller list pages that Zwe had framed—with my debut novel means that I was fortunate enough to never have undergone that supposed rite of passage of zero-person signings, I do still remember what it was like before I got published. I remember the literal years in the agent query trenches, the high of an agent requesting a full manuscript followed by the devastating low of the email that said some variation of It’s not right for us right now.

Even after I signed with Ayesha, for years, not a single publishing house wanted the first manuscript we sent out, or the one after that. “Lucky three,” Zwe had told me the night before Ayesha was going to submit Give Me a Reason, but by that point, “pipe dream” no longer felt sufficient to describe my dream of being a published author; “a fool’s errand” or “insanity” seemed more appropriate. It was the terrible, corny, embarrassing adage: I was terrified to keep dreaming, because if you had dreams, that meant they could get crushed. I think of Give Me a Reason as my fuck it book (not that I’d ever say that in an interview; my publicist would have an aneurysm). I drafted it in a whirlwind—eight weeks, the fastest I’ve ever drafted any book—and made it exactly the book I wanted to write if it were the last one I’d ever get to write (after reading several blog posts and X threads about other authors who had had multiple books that never sold, I’d gotten it in my head that Ayesha was going to drop me if this one didn’t sell, too).

But then one editor made a preempt within twenty-four hours. When Ayesha emailed me, I thought she’d sent it to the wrong client. In fact, I literally responded, “Ha ha, I think you sent this to the wrong person.” But she hadn’t, she wrote back immediately. This editor was, in her very Ayesha-esque way with words, “shitting her pants” to get this book.

And then another editor had replied saying they wanted it.

And then Ayesha had asked how I’d feel about taking it to auction, which could be risky, especially so soon, but this was a very good sign and she wanted to capitalize on the momentum.

Sometimes it still feels like it didn’t happen. Or at least, like it didn’t happen to me. Like I didn’t start sobbing when Ayesha called and told me the amount of the winning bid. Like a few months down the line, I didn’t get flown out to the Netflix offices because they knew they weren’t the only one fighting for film rights. Like everything I had ever wanted since I was approximately nine years old didn’t all happen over the course of eighteen months. I wish I’d known back then that the only thing scarier than none of your dreams coming true is having all of them do.

A copy of my own book is waved in front of my face. I follow the hand holding it to a teenage girl, who whispers, “Oh my god, it’s actually you!” when we make eye contact.

“Hi, thanks for coming,” I say. Then, leaning over to look down the line, I say a little louder while forcing myself to make eye contact with as many more people as I can despite the bubbling anxiety in my stomach, “Thank you all for coming. I’ll see you in there! Make sure you stay hydrated in this heat!”

I push open the door to Sar Oat Sin, and although it takes a beat for the cool of the air-con to hit, once it does, a small, satisfied “Mmmm” escapes me, wisps its way out between my lips like the gorgeous lavender scent that’s always wafting from the various reeds strategically placed around the space. That, combined with that woodsy book smell, is exactly like coming home. If I could, I would live here and make this my home.

“Your Majesty, welcome,” Zwe says with a dramatic bow from the metal signing table that he’s already unfolded. He’s got the setup in its usual space: the corner beside the cash register, which Uncle Arkar is manning today.

“Please, the honor is mine,” I say, returning a small curtsy of my own.

Uncle Arkar beams, coming out from behind the desk to give me a hug. “How’s my favorite author today?”

“The usual. Anxious,” I say with a small laugh. “And I thought Toni Morrison was your favorite author.”

He winks. “She was, until you came along.”

His words help placate my anxiety. “Where’s Auntie Eindra?” I ask.

“Right here.” Auntie Eindra paces out of the stockroom in the back with a mug in hand. “And what do you have to be anxious about? We had people lining up before we even opened. But because I knew you would be—here.”

When she hands me the mug, my face instinctively scrunches up into a smile as my fingers hug the warm ceramic. “Thank you,” I say, taking a deep inhale of the peppermint scent to calm my nerves. I had kept a stash of peppermint tea at our apartment as well as the store the whole time I was working on Give Me a Reason since they were the only two places where I wrote, and it took me a while to realize that my stash here never ran out because Auntie and Uncle kept refilling it.

“Are you still okay to stay behind afterward and sign the online orders?” Uncle Arkar asks.

“Of course.” I take a careful sip of the tea, feeling myself already start to become calmer as the liquid trails down my throat. “I cleared out the whole afternoon for you. Zwe, did you get—”Zwe holds up a rattan pencil holder with several of the same pens: the quick-drying UNI Jetstream Ballpoint 0.7mm in black. My favorite signing pen. “Of course, Your Majesty,” he says with another, smaller bow.

From Here for a Good Time by Pyae Moe Thet War. Copyright © 2025 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

Ready for More?

If Poe and Zwe’s cliffside confession and the resort’s chaos sound tempting, grab your copy of Here for a Good Time and settle in for an unpredictable romp. When you’ve read it, come back and tell me in the comments: did you feel the romance earned, or was the action the part that stuck with you?

You can get a copy of Here for a Good Time by Pyae Moe Thet War on Amazon or Bookshop.