Fake Dating Books

Published Tuesday, February 10, 2026

Tropes are narrative patterns that authors use as tools to tell a specific type of story. All genres have their tropes, but the romance genre may be the most well-known for using them. Some popular romance tropes you've probably heard of before are: enemies-to-lovers, forced proximity, and grumpy/sunshine.

One of my favorite romance tropes is fake dating. I think it gives the characters lots of time together to get to know one another and allows for excellent banter. I think it's always fun to read about characters pretending to be in a relationship while both of them keep their real feelings secret. This also allows for lots of funny moments that are perfect for romantic comedies.

Whether you're new to the romance genre or you know all the tropes, these fake dating book recommendations will have you swooning. The perfect reads to pick up for Valentine's Day!

Take a Hint, Dani Brown

Talia Hibbert

Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain at worst.

When brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral. Now half the internet is shipping #DrRugbae—and Zaf is begging Dani to play along. Turns out, his sports charity for kids could really use the publicity. Lying to help children? Who on earth would refuse?

Dani’s plan is simple: fake a relationship in public, seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy Zaf’s secretly a hopeless romantic—and he’s determined to corrupt Dani’s stone-cold realism. Before long, he’s tackling her fears into the dirt. But the former sports star has issues of his own. Suddenly, the friends-with-benefits relationship Dani was looking for is feeling a lot more complicated.

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Written in the Stars

Alexandria Bellefleur

After a disastrous blind date, Darcy Lowell is desperate to stop her well-meaning brother from playing matchmaker ever again. Love—and the inevitable heartbreak—is the last thing she wants. So she fibs and says her latest setup was a success. Darcy doesn’t expect her lie to bite her in the ass.

Elle Jones, one of the astrologers behind the popular Twitter account, Oh My Stars, dreams of finding her soul mate. But she knows it is most assuredly not Darcy... a no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud, who is way too analytical, punctual, and skeptical for someone as free-spirited as Elle. When Darcy’s brother—and Elle's new business partner—expresses how happy he is that they hit it off, Elle is baffled. Was Darcy on the same date?

When Darcy begs Elle to play along, she agrees to pretend they’re dating to save face. But with a few conditions: Darcy must help Elle navigate her own overbearing family over the holidays and their arrangement expires on New Year’s Eve. The last thing they expect is to develop real feelings during a fake relationship.

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The Love Hypothesis

Ali Hazelwood

As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships—but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.

That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor—and well-known grump. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. And when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support. Suddenly, their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.

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Funny Story

Emily Henry

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian, and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heartbreak love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

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Boyfriend Material

Alexis Hall

When tangentially ― and reluctantly ― famous Luc O'Donnell is forced back into the spotlight in the worst possible way, he has to think fast if he wants to save his floundering reputation. Enter Oliver Blackwood. Stunningly handsome and effortlessly put together, Oliver is successful, an ethical vegetarian, and has never appeared in a scandal mag even once. In other words, he's perfect boyfriend material and exactly what Luc needs to appear respectable again. But when their fake relationship starts to feel like real romance, Luc and Oliver might have to consider whether they're willing to fight for the truth of their new relationship…scandal, and consequences, be damned.

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The Unhoneymooners

Christina Lauren

Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister, Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. She's managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests. And now she's forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who happens to be the best man.

Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.

Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk of becoming a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of... lucky.

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About the Author

Jacqueline is a Circulation Clerk in the Adult Library who started in 2024. She enjoys reading epic fantasy books and cozy rom-coms; and believes the best way to read is with the physical book and the audiobook together. When she’s not reading she also loves going to the movies.