“Fake Skating” is written by Lynn Painter and is a young adult novel about childhood friends who are fake dating. It is a sports rom-com and is set in Minnesota specifically the town of Southview. It was easy to feel a connection to the book because it mentions lots of recognizable places around Minnesota such as it mentions they compete against Smiley and other towns you’ve probably heard of as well as they take a trip to the Rainforest Cafe at the Mall of America.
This dual point-of-view story follows the characters of Alec Barczewski and Dani Collins. They were childhood best friends and would hang out 24/7 during the month Dani came to visit her grandparents in the summer. They would do things like ride bikes, go fishing, walk around while talking about nothing and everything, go to the pool or the bakery.
Then tragedy strikes and Dani’s grandmother dies. At the funeral, her dad and grandpa get into a fight. Her grandpa is angry that his daughter, Dani’s mother, is separated from him. He blames his son-in-law who is enlisted in the military for the distance. Dani and her parents are constantly moving from military base to military base. After the argument, Dani’s parents don’t return to Minnesota to visit and Dani is separated from Alec.
Now five years later, Dani’s parents are recently divorced. She and her mom are moving in with her grandpa to live in Minnesota during the winter of her senior year of high school. The divorce and the new school have been hard. Dani is shy and keeps to herself. She is weary of her new classmates and struggles fitting in at her new school. She doesn’t expect to find a new friend group midway into her senior year so she just focuses on her future goals to get into college at Harvard. When she was younger and lived near the college her mom took her to the campus to walk around and eat lunch. Ever since falling in love with Harvard, it has been her goal to get in but she’s been deferred.
The one shining light in Dani’s darkness is the possibility of seeing Alex again after so long. She’s excited but also nervous to see her former best friend. Thinking about Alec is comforting. Now she just has to figure out why he hasn’t answered her postcards all these years.
Alec, however, has changed from the funny, sweet, nerdy boy that Dani knew in her youth. Her best friend went from a boy who wasn’t interested in sports to Zeus, the popular hockey player at school. In Southview, their hometown, and in their high school, hockey is the talk of the town. The rink is the kingdom and Alec is the king. He is surrounded by people in school and it seems like everyone loves her. His friends think she’s cute. His parents are best friends with Dani’s mom. Her grandpa is practically famous in Southview because of hockey career. Dani seems perfect but Alec wants nothing to do with his ex-friend he used to have a crush on.
Their relationship is much different than before. Now they hate each other. Their childhood promise to stay in touch didn’t happen and how these ex-friends find themselves needing one another’s help. On the first day of school Dani was meeting with her counselor during the pepfest. Alec and the other hockey team boys were there as they all left. He knocks her down and she tells him to watch where he’s going before realizing that it is Alec. her first time learning who he is and he is not happy to see her.
As they try to reconnect, they end up making a deal. Dani needs help getting Harvard to notice her and could use the boost in popularity and help to get a spot on the managing team for hockey which she can get from Alec telling the coaches because they listen to him. Meanwhile, Alec’s track record isn’t good and he could benefit from associating with the smart, good girl. This leads to them becoming a fake couple.
Although, as they begin to hang out and learn more about each other now they also begin to realize their true feelings towards each other blurring the lines between what is fake and what feelings are real in their relationship without knowing if the other feels the same.
The book was released in September of 2025 and has just recently been announced that it will become a movie. Lynn Painter likes to make connections between her books and characters. In “Fake Skating”, Alec mentions his cousin who is the main character in her first New York Times best-selling book “Better Than the Movies”. A lot of her books have become New York Times best sellers. “Fake Skating” also won a Goodreads Choice award.
She also writes short stories for the holidays based on some of her previous books. These normally consist of a few chapters. Sometimes Painter will write alternate or deleted scenes to see what could have happened. These are often fun treats for her readers.
Her other NYT best selling young adult books are “Better Than the Movies”, “Betting On You”, “The Do Over” and “Nothing Like the Movies”. The media center has some of these books you can check out until May 15.