I know exactly how it’s going to end. I know from page one. I know from the back cover summary. I know from the second one of them says “what if we just pretended to be together” and the other one pauses a beat too long before saying “yeah sure, no big deal.” I know that they are going to fall in love. I know there will be a moment where one of them realizes it’s not fake anymore and panics. I know there will be a misunderstanding. I know they will figure it out.
I do not care. I will read it every single time.
The fauxmance is my favorite romance trope and it has been since I picked up In Development by Rachel Spangler, which was one of the first romance novels I ever read. Two people in the entertainment industry who need to fake a relationship for professional reasons and then — shocker — develop real feelings. It absolutely wrecked me. Not because I didn’t see it coming but because watching two people slowly realize that the thing they agreed was fake is the most real thing in their lives is just… it’s a perfect engine for a story. Every time.
That book opened a door and I walked through it and never came back.
The fauxmance is really just the modern version of the marriage of convenience, which has been a thing in romance for centuries. The setup is simple: two people agree to pretend to be in a relationship because they’re both getting something out of it. Maybe it’s career stuff, maybe it’s family pressure, maybe it’s political. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that both of them are very clear that this is a transaction. A business arrangement. Totally fake. Not real at all. No feelings here.
And then feelings show up anyway, because of course they do, and usually one person figures it out before the other one does, and they have to sit there pretending to pretend while actually dying inside. There’s always a misunderstanding — someone sees something or hears something out of context and assumes the worst — and then the other person realizes they feel the same way and they stop pretending entirely.
If you see a fauxmance on the description of a book it goes to the top of my to-be-read list immediately. It doesn’t matter what else is on there. It cuts the line.
Here are some that have absolutely delivered:
Mutual Benefits by HP Munro — exactly what it says on the tin. Both parties benefit, both parties catch feelings, everybody wins (eventually).
Who’d Have Thought by G. Benson — the title alone tells you everything about the energy of this one. Nobody thought. And yet.
Just for Show by Jae — another clean execution of the trope. Fake it till you make it, except the “it” turns out to be love.
The Bigger Picture by Violet Morely — okay this one is a twist. Two queer people fake a straight relationship for political reasons, which is already a fantastic inversion, and then one of them falls in love with the other’s sister. It is a whole thing and I am here for every messy second of it.
The thing I love about this trope is that the tension isn’t about whether they’ll get together. That’s guaranteed. The tension is about the moment. The exact point where one of them looks at the other and thinks “oh no.” You’re reading along and you can feel it building and you know it’s coming and when it lands it still hits. Every time. A hundred books in and it still works.
Some people want to be surprised by their romance novels. I want to see two people who made a very practical agreement slowly and completely lose their minds about each other. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Give me the fake dating. Give me the “this means nothing” that means everything. I’ll be over here reading the same story for the rest of my life and loving every page.