Anna's Reviews > The Great Dating Fake Off

Thank you to Entangled Publishing and NetGalley for Providing me with a digital copy of “The Great Dating Fake-Off” by Livy Hart in exchange for an honest review.

Nora is managing her best friend’s bookstore one day when extraordinarily attractive Sebastian walks in to inquire about meeting space for the local youth mentoring club. They immediately hit it off but just as he’s about to ask her out, they are interrupted by aforementioned best friend Benji. Sensing the time is not right, Sebastian leaves.

Nora is disappointed but then she’s immediately drawn into the drama that has strolled in with Benji. Benji’s sister Ro is getting married and so Ro and their mother are harassing him about bringing a date to the wedding. Knowing that Benji is not interested in dating, even in the face of serious pressure from his family, Nora immediately offers herself up as his fake-girlfriend/wedding date.

Meanwhile, Sebastian’s best friend Alessia is the groom’s sister. Alessia is in a relationship with Eloise but Alessia’s not ready to come out to her very traditional, equally intrusive family. So Sebastian has agreed to be Alessia’s fake-boyfriend/wedding date.

You can see where this is going. Sebastian and Nora are shocked to find themselves constantly thrown together at the wedding. They really, really try to ignore their mutual chemistry to maintain the charade, but alas, it’s too strong.

Meanwhile, Ro and groom Enzo are living out a Romeo and Juliet scenario, complete with feuding Italian families. They secretly dated for a year before getting engaged and, now at the wedding location, their families are circling each other like the gangs in West Side Story. It only takes one incident to destroy the uneasy peace, and unfortunately, that incident is Nora and Sebastian.

What follows is the process of Nora and Sebastian trying to figure out how to manage their overwhelming attraction and patch up the implosion they unintentionally set off.

This may all seem like a lot of drama. To a certain extent, it is. But honestly, it’s the best kind of drama. The families can be toxic, hence all the fake dating, but at the center of the story is Nora and Sebastian, and their friends, who are all making honest efforts to live their lives as happily as they can. They all have blind spots and frustrations, but in the end, they all figure out how to compromise and get the happily ever after for everyone.

It’s a great book. It’s fun, funny, well-written, and manages to put a fresh spin on the fake-dating trope. Highly recommended for fans of the fake-dating trope, people who like genuine emotional growth, adult behavior from protagonists, and anybody who has naughty thoughts in photobooths.