First published 2023
Tansy Adams runs her late father's bookshop and keeps her romantic life private by inventing a girlfriend named Gemma, modeled on a cover model from a bestselling romance novel. It seems harmless enough. Then the real Gemma van Dalen walks through the door, and Tansy's small fiction threatens to collapse everything around her. Gemma is the family rebel, newly named heir to Van Dalen Publishing, but her grandfather's will requires her to be married before she can inherit. When Gemma learns a stranger has been passing her off as a girlfriend for months, she does not get angry. She gets strategic. She announces their engagement. Now Tansy needs money to keep the bookstore solvent, and Gemma needs a wife on paper. The arrangement makes sense. What does not make sense is how quickly the performance starts to feel genuine. Tansy and Gemma practice being a couple, and something real begins to grow between them. But the Van Dalen family wants control of the publishing house and will work to undermine the marriage at every turn. Tansy and Gemma have to decide whether what they have built together is worth protecting.
Genres: fiction, romance, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, contemporary-romance
Vibes: charming, emotional, heartwarming, intimate, witty
Tropes: fake-dating, forced-proximity, found-family, friends-to-lovers
Setting: bookshop
384 pages · Paperback · Avon