Fake Skating

Fake Skating by Lynn Painter is a standalone YA Romance published in September 2025 — a banter-filled, warmly observed Contemporary Romance set in Southview, Minnesota, where hockey is less a sport and more a religion. Dani Collins has had a rough few months. Her parents' divorce has uprooted her from Germany and deposited her on her grandfather's doorstep for her senior year, in a town she only ever visited in summer. She's dealing with disrupted plans, a Harvard application that needs shoring up, and the unsettling prospect of running into Alec Barczewski — the boy she considered her closest childhood friend before he simply stopped writing back.

Alec, meanwhile, is not the soft, slightly nerdy kid Dani remembers. He's grown into Southview's golden boy: the star of the high school hockey team, beloved by the town, with NHL scouts beginning to circle. The problem is those same scouts see a troublesome party boy, not a serious prospect. When a misunderstanding throws Dani and Alec back into each other's orbit, he proposes a deal rooted in Fake Dating — she plays his steady, sensible girlfriend to rehabilitate his image, and he uses his influence to secure her the hockey team manager role she needs for her Harvard application. Mutual benefit. Clean terms. Absolutely no feelings involved.

What makes the arrangement messier than either of them bargained for is history. Painter builds the Friends to Lovers tension carefully, layering old familiarity under the new awkwardness of pretending. There's Forced Proximity, naturally — hockey schedules don't allow for much personal space — and the Slow-burn Romance earns its payoff precisely because the emotional residue between Dani and Alec feels specific rather than generic. She knew him before the fans and the reputation. He knew her before the ambition and the armour. Getting back to that requires both of them to lower defences they've spent years constructing. Underneath the sharp banter and Witty Banter & Sharp Dialogue, there's real Emotional Vulnerability here, including a thread of Dark Secrets around the Barczewski family that reframes why the estrangement happened at all.

Painter's prose is clean and propulsive, her emotional beats landing with consistency. Dani is written with quiet self-doubt beneath her drive, and Alec is given far more emotional weight than the standard charming-athlete archetype usually gets. The Guarded Protagonists dynamic — two people circling the truth about their feelings while insisting they feel nothing — is handled with a lightness that keeps the pages turning. Generational Conflict and family loyalty add texture, and Dani's grandfather Mick gives the Southview setting an anchor that feels lived-in rather than decorative. The Coming of Age dimension is real too: both characters are genuinely reckoning with who they're becoming, not just who they used to be to each other.

Fans of Painter's earlier work will find this consistent with what she does best — sharp characters, earned emotion, Sports Romance energy that doesn't require any prior hockey knowledge, and a romance that respects its audience. A #1 New York Times bestseller, it's a confident, well-executed read for anyone who enjoys their swoony YA with a side of emotional ache.