Skip to main content

This is How You Fall in Love book review

 


This is How You Fall in Love is a YA contemporary romance novel that follows Zara who has been best friends with Adnan for as long as she can remember. Zara loves romcoms and to experience her own fantastic love story one day but when Adnan asks her if she can fake date him to cover up his relationship, it isn’t what she wants but she’ll do it for Adnan. Fake dating isn’t as easy as it seems though especially when another mysterious boy comes into the picture. 

This book was close to a five star read and I had some high hopes because it features some of my favourite things in YA contemporaries but ultimately there were some things that let this book down for me. 

This book is mainly set around Zara and Adnan, but you do spend quite a bit of time around their friendship group, Cami and Yahya throughout the story too. 
I really liked Zara as a character, her feelings towards what was happening all made sense though she did make some interesting decisions over the course of the story you could see why. I also really liked her love of romance books and romcoms, and then the way she then compared them to what she was doing and what was happening to her. 
Adnan was a really nice character and I liked him but I didn’t like how he, or Cami, treated Zara. Even with that part of the story, I did still like his character. 
I did also enjoy reading about Zara and Adnan’s friend group but again there were a couple of characters who did treat other characters in ways that I wasn’t so keen on, while some characters were really lovely, some were quite mean and their reactions weren’t completely justified. I wasn’t a big fan of Cami very much at any point in the story but I quite liked Yahya and possibly would have enjoyed seeing more of him throughout the story. 

I liked a lot of this book and am glad that I read it, something I liked that I haven’t already mentioned is the representation in this book and how it was really good rep but still different enough from other similar books to keep you wanting to know more about their lives and families. What I did dislike though was how some of the characters treated each other, it wasn’t something I wanted to see or enjoyed reading about, and it’s not something I’d want to see in my day to day life either. 

There are no books that immediately spring to mind when I try to think of similar books if you enjoyed this one, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating also has some great representation and the fake dating trope executed well but that’s only one of many books out there. 

Overall I enjoyed this book and it was a well deserved four stars. I recommend it for YA contemporary fans or anyone who enjoys the fake dating trope. 

Thank you Netgalley and Bonnier Books UK for the e-arc in exchange for a fair review.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Christmas Book Club book review

  I read a Sarah Morgan Christmas book during Advent last year and as soon as I heard about this book I knew I had to read it and the timings for it worked out perfectly for me to read about 15 pages a day during December until Christmas Eve when I finished it. This isn’t a romance book as such but it still has all the feels that the Christmas romance books do. The story follows four different women and has their POVs throughout, Hattie owns the inn, and Anna, Erica and Claudia meet up every year for a book club holiday. There is such a cosy feel in this book and I just loved reading it. The friendship between Anna, Erica and Claudia is so strong and I’d love to have a friendship like that, they are there for each other no matter what and each brings something different to the table. They are all going through something during the book and need each other’s support and that support really is perfect. Also by the end of the book, they have all grown as people especially when faced w...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Off-Limits Rule book review

  I discovered Sarah Adams in early 2024 after it was recommended to me on Bookstagram and while she wasn’t originally an author I was sure about, however as I read more from her I fell in love with her books and she definitely became a favourite auto-buy author. My last traditionally published backlist series I had to read going into 2025 was It Happens in Nashville duology, the first book being The Off-Limits Rule.  The Off-Limits Rule follows Lucy who has moved her and her son back in with her brother who has made it clear that his best friend, Cooper, is off-limits to her however Lucy has gotten a different impression of Cooper to what Drew has told her about him and maybe it’s okay to break the rule sometimes, right? As soon as I started this book I was reminded of exactly why I love Sarah Adams books so much. I was invested in Lucy’s character and hooked by the story. I enjoyed all of the characters and found it to be a book that I could not put down.  The romance w...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Kind of Trouble book review

  I found myself enjoying this read however the more I think about the more that I'm sure that there were things I think could have worked better for me and I find a 3/3.5 star rating is the right place to sit with my thoughts.  I really enjoyed reading about the characters and seeing what they were going to do along with watching their romance develop as the story went on. I don't think I've really read anything like this before in a really positive way and there were so many scenes I had a great time reading but there were also parts that I wasn't so taken by and definitely wished had been done differently, and found to be sat in the middle of two different directions I would potentially have enjoyed more.  I thought the con part would be good fun but in many ways I found that it and the romance were competing for page space with neither really winning. The parts of the con that we saw definitely weren't the parts that interested me and I would have either liked a...
Post a Comment
Read more