Secret Nights and Northern Lights is Megan Oliver’s début novel – a mix of Icelandic travelogue, and second chance romance.

Mona Miller has been working at Around the Globe for years. She’s keen to travel overseas but until now she’s been reporting on small-town festivals and local places and missing out on the international gigs.

But then, Mona gets ambushed by her boss into going on a trip to Iceland after another journalist pulls out – the implication being that if she does a good job she’ll be promoted to do more international assignments, and he also wants her to recruit the trip photographer into a permanent job with the magazine.

Mona and Benjamin Carter were friends all through their childhoods and eventually became romantically involved. But when they were seventeen, Ben walked away from Mona and she’s never really gotten over it. As she gets the offer to go to Iceland – an offer she really doesn’t want to refuse – in walks Ben, whom she hasn’t seen in fourteen years. He’s her accompanying photographer.

They soon head off to Iceland. The book includes a copy of their itinerary, and the places they visit are both spectacular and romantic. The author vividly describes the wilderness landscape, the waterfalls and the Northern Lights. As Ben and Mona travel around and experience the sights, their chemistry reignites and there are plenty of tender moments and cautious conversations. I would have loved more detail about the culture, not just the geography. Instead of Icelandic food, they eat a lot of pizza!

Ben is a classic golden retriever. He’s competent and successful in his profession; he has his reasons for behaving as he did fourteen years ago, and for reappearing in Mona’s life now.

Mona is a hot mess. She’s got heaps to process about her own and Ben’s past as well as about her place in her family. She doesn’t consider other people’s perspectives or situations, as all her thoughts come through the lens of her own needs. She doesn’t want to listen to Ben’s version of what happened fourteen years ago – even though she keeps bringing it up. I could feel the connection between them when they were teens, but in the present, the way she judges him, leaps to conclusions, and hides her real self makes it hard to see her appeal. At times I kept reading just to see if Mona would give Ben an opportunity to explain himself.

If you’re looking for a travel-centred romance and are interested in Iceland, Secret Nights and Northern Lights might work better for you than it did for me. Ultimately, it has nothing new to offer; Mona is self-absorbed and while Ben is more interesting I just wasn’t invested in their happily ever after. Megan Oliver has potential and I look forward to seeing her develop as an author.