Fake dating is when the two main characters pretend they’re dating for some odd reason. If you have fake dating in a romance book, it means that two characters decide to either fake date or even pretend to be engaged for benefits. The inevitable usually happens when they realize that maybe it’s not fake or they love each other.
20 Fake Dating Books (Fake Relationship & Marriage)
Fake dating is one of the popular tropes in the romance genre. It fits on contemporary, fiction, non-fiction, or fantasy books. Readers like it because fake dating or relationship creates suspense, mystery, and secrets that make a book hipe. In our society, fake relationship like fake marriage and dating is very common, and every day it creates many real-life stories.
So if you want to know these stories, you need to read this type of book. I will review the 20 best fake dating books on the top of my list. Let’s begin!
1. The Love Hypothesis
It’s grumpy sunshine, workplace, and fake dating. Olive is a grad student. She’s twenty-six to be a scientist, and she had an ex-boyfriend. Her best friend is interested in her ex-boyfriend. She has no hard feelings about it, but her best friend feels guilty, so she refuses to date. Olive comes up with this idea to tell her best friend that she’s dating someone so that she can date her ex-boyfriend without feeling guilty.
It’s confusing, but Olive tells her best friend that she’s on a date. Then her best friend ends up seeing that all of them are in the lab instead of on a date. So she kisses the professor to seem like they are together. It’s a professor, Adam Carlson. He is super grumpy at all. The graduate students are scared of him because he fails everyone, and he’s super strict.
So when Olive realizes it’s him, she’s guilty, but then the whole book is them deciding that they’re going to fake date. Then all this reasoning for fake dating him is because she wants her best friend to date the guy without feeling guilty. Adam’s pretending he has this girlfriend so that it seems like he has roots there and he’s not going to get up and leave. So they’re both gaining something from this relationship.
Author: Ali Hazelwood
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Romantic Comedy
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Library Binding | Kindle
2. Fix Her Up (Hot & Hammered)
If you’re hearing about it now, it’s brother’s best friend, fake dating once again. Georgette is the girl character. She’s the youngest sibling in her family. There’s a big age gap between her and her siblings, who don’t take her seriously. Georgette is a goofy, funny, carefree girl, and her whole family is super serious. They own a house flipping business, and she has no interest in being part of that. So they push her aside from her brother’s best friend, Travis.
They’ve been friends their entire lives. Georgette always had a crush on him growing up, like she knew it was never going anywhere. He becomes a professional baseball player, but he gets injured and moves home. Travis is so upset, and Georgette gets him out of his shell. She is a good, sunshine personality, but Travis immediately notices how her family treats her.
Gradually, Travis ends up caring and loving. But the fake dating comes in when Georgette realizes that no one in her town takes her seriously. They see her as a little girl. So she wants to change her reputation. She comes up with the idea to fake date someone. So she’s finally seen as wanted, and her family will start taking her seriously. But Travis is also trying to change his reputation because he is a player and a guy who gets every girl he sees. So they end up fake dating each other.
Author: Tessa Bailey
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Contemporary Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
3. The Cheat Sheet
This book is about Bree and Nathan, who have been best inseparable friends since high school. Bree is a ballerina, and Nathan is a football player. They’ve always been inseparable. They live down the street from each other, but they both date other people. It’s never been romantic, but it’s a dual point of view. You get to see that both of them have been in love with each other since they met, both of them think that they’re in the friend zone, but they’re both in love with each other.
There was an embarrassing second-hand moment where Bree got super drunk and accidentally confessed all of her feelings about Nathan to a reporter. Also, the reporter writes a whole article about it. It goes viral, then Nathan gets shocked. But Bree immediately denies it. Nathan ends up coming up with a list called the cheat sheet. He’s going to start doing to show Bree that he loves her.
Author: Sarah Adams
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Contemporary Romance & Comedy
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
4. Not Pretending Anymore
Molly is a night nurse. She works overnight, and she’s looking for a roommate to live with her to split the rent with her. So she’s doing interviews, and she’s finding no one to move in with her. Then Declan shows up for the interview, but Molly rejects him because she needs a girl roommate. But Declan convenience her somehow. He works during the day, and Molly works at night. They’ll never cross paths, so that’s their plan. They end up talking to each other a little bit, becoming friends.
Molly confesses that she’s also crushing on this guy from her work. So they’re both pining after other people. They talk about their feelings all the time because they’re close friends and live with each other now. As they both are aware that the other person is in love with someone else, they decide to come up with this idea to fake date each other to make their love interest jealous.
Then they start fake dating, go to bars together, and go to dinners in front of their crush. They both get into these other relationships when it works, and the other is super jealous. So you get to see both sides of the jealousy.
Author: Penelope Ward
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Mental Health, New Adult Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
5. The Kiss Quotient
Stella Lane has autism. She’s always been uncomfortable with physical intimacy and relationships. Her family puts a lot of pressure on her to settle down, get married, have kids, and she doesn’t feel ready for a relationship. Then Michael Phan at work comments on how he’d be into her. What motivates her to start experimenting and getting comfortable with her sexuality.
So she decides to hire a male escort to teach her how to be in a relationship and be intimate with someone. She hires Michael. Michael is very comfortable with intimacy. It’s his job, but you find out why that’s his job and his whole backstory as you watch him and Stella have this fake relationship. Their fake relationship extends past physical stuff like they start getting confused. There’s jealousy in this book. You get a lot of backstory on both the characters.
Author: Helen Hoang
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Multicultural Romances, Comedic Dramas & Plays
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback
6. The Spanish Love Deception
This is workplace rivals, fake dating like they (Aaron and Catalina) hate each other, but they also don’t. Aaron over here is Catalina talking about how she needs to go to this wedding and how she needs to bring a date. But she has no one to go with her, and he offers right away to go with her. That’s not something an enemy would do.
Aaron tells Catalina that he needs her to go on fake dates because of an upcoming event. He doesn’t have one for that, so they could have this relationship where Catalina comes with him as his date. Then he’ll go with her as her date. That’s why he offered. So they both get something from it, and they have to go on these fake dates with each other and act like they don’t like each other.
It’s a slow burn all the way leading up until they go to Spain for this wedding together. Moreover, they’re fake dating at this wedding. So he meets her family, and he does such cute stuff. Aaron is perfect in how their fake relationship goes and how he shows how he cares about her. His love language is physical touch, and it gives me butterflies the whole time I read it.
Author: Elena Armas
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Multicultural Romances
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
7. The Wall of Winnipeg and Me
Vanessa is the assistant to this NFL player named Aidan. He completely disregards her, treats her badly, and she does so much work for him that he doesn’t appreciate it. So she ends up quitting a little while. Vanessa has to marry Aidan because he’s not a USA citizen, and he’s to stay so he can play football. He offers to pay her, and she needs money.
So she ends up moving in with him and in her room. It’s a marriage convenience from their forced proximity. They have to act like they’re together in front of many people. There’s also a slow burn, and it’s painful, but in the best way. Aiden goes from being such a hard time with no emotions to such a simp for her.
Author: Mariana Zapata
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Sports Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
8. Marriage for One
Another Marriage of Convenience book is Marriage for One. This book is grumpy sunshine, and it gives me butterflies thinking about it. Someone in Rose’s family passes away, and she inherits a building through the will, but the only way she gets that building is if she’s married. Jack is a lawyer, so he sits down with her. He said that you need to be married to inherit this building.
Also, Jack proposed that she marry him to get the building. Rose eventually agrees because she wants to start a coffee shop. It’s been her dream to own a little coffee shop. They get this building, but they have to be married to the Will validation. So they go to all these events together, they do all this stuff. But there’s a plot twist, which leads to a bunch of drama. His character development is great.
Author: Ella Maise
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Billionaire Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
9. To Love Jason Thorn (Love & Hate)
This one is also a marriage of convenience, but they’re (Jason and Olive) childhood friends, brother’s best friends. Olive is always in love with him, but they haven’t seen each other in 10 years. Olive became a writer, and she wrote a romance novel. The main character is inspired by Jason and her childhood crush on him. It ends up getting developed into a movie, and guess who gets cast as the main character yet, Jason?
He’s an actor now and famous. So, he’s playing the role that he inspires. But Jason almost ends up losing this role because he has a super bad reputation in Hollywood for sleeping around and being a player, not taking his job seriously.
So his management ends with the idea that if he gets married, the media will leave him alone, and people will take him seriously. His management is showing him all these other actresses that he can marry. After reuniting with Olive, he’s starting to develop feelings for her, and it’s role reversal like she used to be obsessed with him.
Author: Ella Maise
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: College Romance & Comedy
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
10. The Unhoneymooners
This is one of the first rom-com books I fell in love with. Pick this one up if you haven’t read it already. The main girl in this book is also named Olive. Olive is getting married, and she is the maid of honor at the wedding. Then the groom’s brother is the best man. Olive hates him as she has never gotten along with Ethan during her sister’s entire relationship.
So they avoided each other, and they’re the maid of honor and the best man at this wedding. They both have given speeches, and they see each other. Everyone at this wedding ends up getting food poisoning, except for Olive and Ethan because they didn’t eat out of the buffet. Their siblings had a pre-paid honeymoon. They need to take their honeymoon because everyone else is sick.
So all of an Ethan go on this honeymoon planning to avoid each other and have their separate vacations. But they realize it’s a couples resort. All these couples’ activities that they have to do together are forced to be close and act like they’re together. Then Olive sees someone at this resort that she knows. Ethan’s ex-girlfriend shows up, and they’re using Olive to make her jealous. But then they start genuinely falling for each other.
Author: Christina Lauren
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Humorous American Literature
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
11. The Soulmate Equation
I love all of Christina Lauren’s books, which speaking of Christina Lauren, another fake dating book they have is the Soulmate Equation. This one is about Jessica and River. Jessica works at a coffee shop every day, sitting at a table on her computer, and she sees the same man (River) every day who never says thank you.
One day River in the coffee shop is creating a dating app that pairs with an actual soulmate based on DNA. Jessica ends up doing this test. A few days later, Jessica gets her results back, and it says that she has a perfect match. Someone in their system is her perfect DNA soulmate. So they call her into the office, and it is the guy (River) from the coffee shop, the creator of the app. They get matched, and they’ve had a few interactions back and forth.
They realize they don’t like each other. River believes that this software is hundred percent accurate. For the proof, they need to fake the date. Jessica is a single mom, and she does it for the money. So she ends up fake dating River for the cameras and advertisement. When they start falling for each other and lines start blurring, and it’s so cute, he develops a relationship with her daughter.
Author: Christina Lauren
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: General Humorous Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
12. Fake Out (Fake Boyfriend)
This book follows a guy (Maddox) who had a girlfriend, and he didn’t know how to break up with her without hurting her feelings. So he told her that he was gay. So she ends up telling everybody in his hometown. Everybody thinks he’s gay, even though he is allegedly straight. When Maddox runs into her five years later, and she’s getting married, she invites him to her wedding.
So he gets one of his best friends, who has a gay brother, to come with him to the wedding and act like they are together. The story goes from there of them having this fake date at a wedding. I highly recommend this one, especially if you’re looking for an LGBT track.
Author: Eden Finley
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: LGBTQ+ Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
13. Talon (Ashes & Embers)
This is part of a series, but you can read this book alone. It’s about the two people (Talon and Asia) who sign up for a program where you answer a bunch of questions about yourself and get matched with somebody who’s going to be a perfect match potentially. Also, you have to marry them blindly, not even seeing them once stay married for six months. Then the end is supposed to see the psychology behind the questions, whether it was their perfect match, and how the marriage went.
So Talon and Asia end up signing up for it and getting paired together. They are opposites, and they could not be less alike. The story progresses from there, from them having this fake marriage. It’s usually two people having to pretend that they’re together to hide from some other secret. Also, It’s an unexpected romance that blossoms between these two characters.
Author: Carian Cole
Average Customer Review: (4.7 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: New Adult & College Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
14. Play (Stage Dive)
This is the second book in the Stage Dive series, companion novels. The book series follows a band in which every band member has their book. So this follows the drummer (Mal Ericson), and he’s had a bad reputation. He’s been doing many crazy things, and his bandmates say, you need to do something respectable.
So Mal ends up striking a deal with a girl who’s a big fan of the band. But she’s very reserved and shy and desperately needs money. They have a fake relationship with the public, and the story goes from there. I like this one because it incorporates the celebrity aspect of fake dating. There are so many times where we’re speculating which celebrities are fake dating in the real world. So to see it play out in a romance book was fun.
Author: Kylie Scott
Average Customer Review: (4.7 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Coming of Age Fiction, Erotic Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
15. Take a Hint, Dani Brown
This book was named Dani, who is a professor at the school. There’s a fire drill, and she doesn’t know about it. She gets stuck in the elevator, and her friend (Zafir), a security guard in the same building, saves her and carries her out like a firefighter. People take a video of it, and it becomes viral. They decide to capture that 15 minutes of fame and fake date to help Zafir. After all, he helps run a non-profit for a kid’s sports camp.
They’re friends, which could be a friend to lovers and fake dating ones. The more they fake dates, the more they realize they have feelings for each other. Both the characters are amazing. Dani is very bold and energetic. She knows what she wants, and she’s confident. Zafir is the human definition of a cinnamon roll. So this is a perfect fake dating book, in my opinion.
Author: Talia Hibbert
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Multicultural Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
16. The Ex Talk
Shay and Dominic work at NPR in Seattle in this book, and their station isn’t doing the best. So they need some new podcasts. Shay came up with the idea for the Ex Talk, where the couple that was together talked about their relationship and how they could be friends. At first, Shay and Dominic have to pretend that they have been in a relationship.
So it’s not necessarily fake dating and the fact that they’re faking that they are dating. But they’re faking this relationship in some way or another. The more they do this radio show podcast and talk about their ex-relationship, the more they realize they like each other and want to become real.
Author: Rachel Lynn Solomon
Average Customer Review: (4.2 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Romantic Comedy, Women’s Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
17. The Dating Plan (Marriage Game)
This book follows a character named Daisy, the software engineer. She has no interest in love. Then who enters her life again is Liam. He is her older brother’s best friend that she’s always had a crush on. He was supposed to take her to prom so many years ago. But he abandoned it, never talked to her for a year.
Through a course of events, Liam needs a fake fiance. It’ll help Daisy too, because of her business. She can use his company to help with their company. So they pretend that they’re engaged, and feelings go on from there. This is also another book that has multiple tropes in it as well. It’s got the fake dating, but I would also consider this a second chance romance because they have feelings for each other in the past, and they’re revisiting those.
Author: Sara Desai
Average Customer Review: (4.1 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Family Life Fiction, Romantic Comedy
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
18. Accidentally Engaged
The main character of this book is Reena. She has a family that’s always wanting her to marry a Muslim guy, but she doesn’t want to marry anybody. Her new neighbor across the hall, Nadim, is her father’s pick for marriage. They make a friendship. Then this baking competition happens because Reena is also a baker, and she loves baking only catches.
This baking competition is only for married or engaged couples. So they pretend to be engaged to go on this baking competition. Reena proposed to Nadim for this fake engagement. Gradually, their fake romance turns into a real one.
Author: Farah Heron
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Marriage & Divorce Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
19. First Comes Like (Modern Love)
This book follows a character named Jia, a beauty influencer, and she’s always got her eyes on the prize. She doesn’t have time for love, but a certain Bollywood star happens to be in her DMs. So they start talking, and she has feelings for him. Then when she meets him in real life, it turns out that that wasn’t him talking to her at all. It was some random person catfishing her.
So when Dev (Bollywood star) meets Jia, he immediately likes her, and he still can’t get her out of his head. The paparazzi catch them together, and it goes on a whirlwind from there. So his family is bombarding her, and she’s getting tired of it. She has to fake date to help her family a little bit. So they decide to do fake date for a while.
Author: Alisha Rai
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Asian American Literature & Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
20. While We Were Dating (The Wedding Date)
The story follows Ben and Anna. Ben works for a marketing company. He meets Anna, who is a famous movie actress. Anna asked him to fake a date because it could help her public image a lot, and she has a big premiere coming up. So they decide to fake date. If you want a quick summer, read that also has to do with fake dating, It’s a good one to read.
Author: Jasmine Guillory
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Multicultural Contemporary Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
Read More Similar Books: 20 Friends To Lovers Books
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