What better romantic trope is there than fake dating, fake romance, or “fauxmance?” There are definitely more fauxmances in adult romance than in teen, but there some YA books with fake romance. If you’re looking for high school YA romance books, this is a great place to start. Check out my list of 15 YA Books With Fake Dating! Updated in 2023!
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I absolutely love a fictional fauxmance. To me, there is nothing better than a couple who has to pretend to be in love. It’s often a hate-to-love or opposites-attract couple situation too!
Here is a list of all the young adult books I can think of with fake romance, but if you have others to tell me about, do that in comments.
Updated in 2023!
15 YA Books With Fake Dating
Fake Dates and Mooncakes by Sher Lee (2023)
Dylan Tang wants to win a Mid-Autumn Festival mooncake-making competition for teen chefs—in memory of his mom, and to bring much-needed publicity to his aunt’s struggling Chinese takeout in Brooklyn.
Enter Theo Somers: charming, wealthy, with a smile that makes Dylan’s stomach do backflips. AKA a distraction. Their worlds are sun-and-moon apart, but Theo keeps showing up. He even convinces Dylan to be his fake date at a family wedding in the Hamptons.
In Theo’s glittering world of pomp, privilege, and crazy rich drama, their romance is supposed to be just pretend . . . but Dylan finds himself falling for Theo. For real. Then Theo’s relatives reveal their true colors—but with the mooncake contest looming, Dylan can’t risk being sidetracked by rich-people problems.
Can Dylan save his family’s business and follow his heart—or will he fail to do both?
The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim (2023)
Zahra Khan is basically Bangladeshi royalty, but being a princess doesn’t pay the bills in Paterson, New Jersey. While Zahra’s plans for financial security this summer involve working long hours at Chai Ho and saving up for college writing courses, Amma is convinced that all Zahra needs is a “good match,” Jane Austen style.
Enter Harun Emon, who’s wealthy, devastatingly handsome, and…aloof. As soon as Zahra meets him, she knows it’s a bad match. It’s nothing like the connection she has with Nayim Aktar, the new dishwasher at the tea shop, who just gets Zahra in a way no one has before.
So, when Zahra finds out that Harun is just as uninterested in this match as she is, they decide to slowly sabotage their parents’ plans. And for once in Zahra’s life, she can have her rossomalai and eat it “dating” Harun and keeping Amma happy while catching real feelings for Nayim.
But life—and boys—can be more complicated than Zahra realizes. With her feelings all mixed up, Zahra discovers that sometimes being a good Bengali kid can be a royal pain.
The Girl Next Door by Cecelia Vinesse (2023)
Film club nerd Cleo Ferrara’s senior year was a storyboard waiting to be filmed. She knew the scenes, the players, and the eventual happy ending. Attend film school with her boyfriend, Daniel Sheridan. Become a film-making power couple. Take Hollywood by storm.
But in a plot twist Cleo never saw coming, Daniel dumps her for Kiki Pearson, the head cheerleader. This would be the point in the movie where Sad Girl Music plays while the protagonist looks longingly out her window. When Cleo looks out hers, she sees Marianne Lacerda, her former best friend, and a new storyboard unfolds.
Marianne is also nursing a heartache. When Daniel was dumping Cleo for Kiki, Kiki was dumping Marianne for Daniel.
Instead of watching their exes parade around school, Cleo and Marianne start fake dating each other to ignite a little chaos in this bizarre love square.
But, as any movie buff knows, when you introduce fake dating, it’s going to get real. With friendship, the future, and love on the line, can Cleo script a happy ending for herself—or will she get her heart broken?
They Hate Each Other by Amanda Woody (2023)
There are plenty of words Jonah Collins could use to describe Dylan Ramírez. “Arrogant,” “spoiled,” and “golden boy” to name a few.
Likewise, Dylan thinks he has Jonah accurately labeled as an attention-seeking jerk who never shuts his filthy mouth.
Their friends are convinced Jonah’s and Dylan’s disdain for one another is just thinly veiled lust—a rumor that surges like wildfire when the two wake up in one bed after homecoming.
Mutually horrified, Dylan and Jonah agree to use the faux pas to their advantage by fake dating. If they can stay convincing long enough to end their “relationship” in a massive staged fight, they can prove their incompatibility to their friends once and for all.
But the more time they spend together, the more their plan begins to fall apart—and the closer they come to seeing each other clearly for the first time.
Seven Percent of Ro Deveraux by Ellen O’Clover (2023)
Ro Devereux can predict your future. Or, at least, the app she built for her senior project can.
Working a retired behavioral scientist, Ro created an app called MASH, designed around the classic game Mansion Apartment Shack House, that can predict a person’s future with 93% accuracy.
The app will even match users with their soulmates. Though it was only supposed to be a class project, MASH quickly takes off and gains the attention of tech investors.
Ro’s dream is to work in Silicon Valley, and she’ll do anything to prove to her new backing company—and the world—that the app works. So it’s a huge shock when the app says her soulmate is Miller, her childhood best friend with whom she had a friendship-destroying fight three years ago.
Now thrust into a fake dating scenario, Ro and Miller must address the years of pain between them if either of them will have any chance of achieving their dreams. And as the app takes on a life of its own, Ro sees that it’s affecting people in ways she never expected—and if she can’t regain control, it might take her and everything she believes in down with it.
Forward March by Skye Quinlan (2022)
Harper “Band Geek” McKinley just wants to make it through her senior year of marching band―and her Republican father’s presidential campaign. That was a tall order to start, but everything was going well enough until someone made a fake gay dating profile posing as Harper. The real Harper can’t afford for anyone to find out about the Tinder profile for three very important reasons:
1. Her mom is the school dean and dating profiles for students are strictly forbidden.
2. Harper doesn’t even know if she likes anyone like that―let alone if she likes other girls.
3. If this secret gets out, her father could lose the election, one she’s not sure she even wants him to win.
But upon meeting Margot Blanchard, the drumline leader who swiped right, Harper thinks it might be worth the trouble to let Margot get to know the real her.
With her dad’s campaign on the line, Harper’s relationship with her family at stake, and no idea who made that fake dating profile, Harper has to decide what’s more important to her: living her truth or becoming the First Daughter of America.
Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee (2022)
Noah Ramirez thinks he’s an expert on romance. He has to be for his popular blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a collection of trans happily ever afters. There’s just one problem—all the stories are fake. What started as the fantasies of a trans boy afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe.
When a troll exposes the blog as fiction, Noah’s world unravels. The only way to save the Diary is to convince everyone that the stories are true, but he doesn’t have any proof. Then Drew walks into Noah’s life, and the pieces fall into place: Drew is willing to fake-date Noah to save the Diary. But when Noah’s feelings grow beyond their staged romance, he realizes that dating in real life isn’t quite the same as finding love on the page.
10 Things I Hate About Pinky (Dimple and Rishi #3) by Sandhya Menon (2020)
Pinky is sick of her parents’ nagging, so she asks her frenemy Samir to pose as her boyfriend for the summer.
Pinky Kumar wears the social justice warrior badge with pride. From raccoon hospitals to persecuted rock stars, no cause is too esoteric for her to champion. But a teeny tiny part of her also really enjoys making her conservative, buttoned-up corporate lawyer parents cringe.
Samir Jha might have a few…quirks remaining from the time he had to take care of his sick mother, like the endless lists he makes in his planner and the way he schedules every minute of every day, but those are good things. They make life predictable and steady.
Pinky loves lazy summers at her parents’ Cape Cod lake house, but after listening to them harangue her about the poor decisions she’s made (a.k.a. boyfriends she’s had), she hatches a plan. Get her sorta-friend-sorta-enemy—who is a total Harvard-bound Mama’s boy—to pose as her perfect boyfriend for the summer.
When Samir’s internship falls through, leaving him with an unplanned summer, he gets a text from Pinky asking if he’ll be her fake boyfriend in exchange for a new internship. He jumps at the opportunity; Pinky’s a weirdo, but he can survive a summer with her if there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
As they bicker their way through lighthouses and butterfly habitats, sparks fly, and they both realize this will be a summer they’ll never forget.
Check out my full review here!
The Upside of Falling by Alex Light (2021)-
Becca gets stuck after pretending she has a boyfriend and is shocked when Brett offers to step in and play the part.
It’s been years since seventeen-year-old Becca Hart believed in true love. But when her former best friend teases her for not having had a boyfriend, Becca impulsively pretends she’s been secretly seeing someone.
Brett Wells has it all. As captain of the football team and one of the most popular guys in his school, he should have no problem finding someone to date, but he’s always been more focused on his future than who to bring to prom.
When he overhears Becca’s lie, Brett decides to step in and be the mystery guy. It’s the perfect solution: he gets people off his back for not having a meaningful relationship and she can keep up the ruse that she’s got a boyfriend.
Acting like the perfect couple isn’t easy, though, especially when you barely know the other person. But with Becca still picking up the pieces from when her world was blown apart years ago and Brett just barely holding his together now, they begin to realize they have more in common than they ever could have imagined.
When the line between what is pretend and what is real begins to blur, they’re forced to answer the question: Is this fake romance the realest thing in either of their lives?
Rent a Boyfriend by Gloria Chao (2021)
Chloe can’t stand the guy her Taiwanese-American parents are pushing on her, so she hires a fake boyfriend from an agency to get them off her case. Of course, Drew is adorably irresistible.
Chloe Wang is nervous to introduce her parents to her boyfriend, because the truth is, she hasn’t met him yet either. She hired him from Rent for Your ‘Rents, a company specializing in providing fake boyfriends trained to impress even the most traditional Asian parents.
Drew Chan’s passion is art, but after his parents cut him off for dropping out of college to pursue his dreams, he became a Rent for Your ‘Rents employee to keep a roof over his head. Luckily, learning protocols like “Type C parents prefer quiet, kind, zero-PDA gestures” comes naturally to him.
When Chloe rents Drew, the mission is simple: convince her parents fake Drew is worthy of their approval so they’ll stop pressuring her to accept a proposal from Hongbo, the wealthiest (and slimiest) young bachelor in their tight-knit Asian American community.
But when Chloe starts to fall for the real Drew—who, unlike his fake persona, is definitely not ‘rent-worthy—her carefully curated life begins to unravel. Can she figure out what she wants before she loses everything?
Dating Makes Perfect by Pintip Dunn (2020)
Overprotective parents insist that their daughter practice fake dating in high school … with her sworn enemy.
The Tech sisters don’t date in high school. Not because they’re not asked. Not because they’re not interested. Not even because no one can pronounce their long, Thai last name―hence the shortened, awkward moniker. But simply because they’re not allowed.
Until now.
In a move that other Asian American girls know all too well, six months after the older Tech twins got to college, their parents asked, “Why aren’t you engaged yet?” The sisters retaliated by vowing that they won’t marry for ten (maybe even twenty!) years, not until they’ve had lots of the dating practice that they didn’t get in high school.
In a shocking war on the status quo, her parents now insist that their youngest daughter, Orrawin (aka “Winnie”), must practice fake dating in high school. Under their watchful eyes, of course―and organized based on their favorite rom-coms. ’Cause that won’t end in disaster.
The first candidate? The son of their longtime friends, Mat Songsomboon―arrogant, infuriating, and way too good-looking. Winnie’s known him since they were toddlers throwing sticky rice balls at each other. And her parents love him.
If only he weren’t her sworn enemy.
The Fill In Boyfriend by Kasie West (2015)
When Gia’s boyfriend dumps her right before prom, she asks the next guy she sees if he’ll fill in for the night. Then she can’t stop thinking about him…
When Gia Montgomery’s boyfriend, Bradley, dumps her in the parking lot of her high school prom, she decides to do the unthinkable…convince the cute guy waiting to pick up his sister to pretend to be her boyfriend for the night. The task is simple: two hours, zero commitment, a few white lies.
The problem is that days after prom, she can’t stop thinking about her fill-in boyfriend. But can Gia turn her fake boyfriend into a real one without exposing her lie and possibly destroying her friendships and her newfound relationship?
Jenna and Jonah’s Fauxmance by Emily Franklin and Brendan Halpin (2011)
two co-stars pretending to be a couple for publicity, get exposed , have to hide out from the media, and realize that maybe they do like each other.
Fans of romance don’t need to look any further than the fauxmance brewing between teen idols Charlie Tracker and Fielding Withers-known on their hit TV show as Jenna and Jonah, next-door neighbors flush with the excitement of first love.
But it’s their off-screen relationship that has helped cement their fame, as passionate fans follow their every PDA. They grace the covers of magazines week after week. Their fan club has chapters all over the country.
The only problem is their off-screen romance is one big publicity stunt, and Charlie and Fielding can’t stand to be in the same room. Still, it’s a great gig, so even when the cameras stop rolling, the show must go on.
Until the pesky paparazzi blow their cover, and Charlie and Fielding must disappear to weather the media storm. It’s not until they’re far off the grid of the Hollywood circuit that they realize that there’s more to each of them than shiny hair and a winning smile.
Way to Game the Walk of Shame by Jenn Nguyen (2016)
After Taylor gets photographed passed out after a party with a guy, she convinces him to pretend to be a couple.
Taylor Simmons is screwed. Things were hard enough when her dedication to her studies earned her the title of Ice Queen, but after she got drunk at a party and woke up next to bad boy surfer Evan McKinley, the entire school seems intent on tearing Taylor down with mockery and gossip.
Desperate to salvage her reputation, Taylor persuades Evan to pretend they’re in a serious romantic relationship. After all, it’s better to be the girl who tames the wild surfer than just another notch on his surfboard.
Fine Art of Pretending by Rachel Harris (2014)
Aly asks her friend to pretend to date her to get the attention of the guy she thinks she likes.
According to the guys at Fairfield Academy, there are two types of girls: the kind you hook up with, and the kind you’re friends with. Seventeen-year-old Alyssa Reed is the second type. And she hates it. With just one year left to change her rank, she devises a plan to become the first type by homecoming, and she sets her sights on the perfect date-Justin Carter, Fairfield Academy’s biggest hottie and most notorious player.
With 57 days until the dance, Aly launches Operation Sex Appeal and sheds her tomboy image. The only thing left is for Justin actually to notice her. Enter best friend Brandon Taylor, the school’s second biggest hottie, and now Aly’s pretend boyfriend. With his help, elevating from funny friend to tempting vixen is only a matter of time.
But when everything goes according to plan, the inevitable break up leaves their friendship in shambles, and Aly and Brandon with feelings they can’t explain. And the fake couple discovers pretending can sometimes cost you the one thing you never expected to want.
Have you read any of these? Have any other fave fauxmance tiles to recommend? Tell me about your favorite YA Books With Fake Romance in comments!
Love this list? Check out my 10 Favorite YA Rom Coms!
You’re like in my sweet spot right now. I am waiting for my library to get the new Chao book. I love her books! I read 6 of the books on your list. I know there are tons of fauxmances I have read, but I cannot think of them right now. Hmmm, both of David Yoons books are fauxmance romances.
I love her books and I think you will enjoy this one!
I haven’t read David Yoon’s book, but it sounded like he was faking his identity? I guess that’s a fauxmance. I need to investigate further…
Fake relationships are my ultimate trope. Cannot get enough of them so you know I’m going to be checking out those books I’ve not read already. I really enjoyed The Fill In Boyfriend and Fine Art of Pretending but there are a couple here I’ve not read yet.
Yay – we agree. Along with hate to love, this is one of my fave tropes!