Books Like The Love Hypothesis: Fake Dating and Real Feelings

Lucy and Joshua are executive assistants who share an office, a desk, and what they'd both swear is pure hatred, until the loathing curdles into something neither can name. Sally Thorne built the enemies-to-lovers office romance the genre still measures itself against: vicious banter, and a guarded coldness in Joshua that cracks into the kind of watchful devotion that made Adam Carlsen impossible to resist. It's forced proximity escalating until the tension detonates. If what hooked you in The Love Hypothesis was a prickly exterior losing a fight it never wanted to win, Lucy and Joshua deliver that same payoff.

Kindle$11⁹⁹ Paperback$9⁴⁵$18.99−50%

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On the shelf

Pick 02

Mile High

by Liz Tomforde

4.3 - Excellent

Fiction Romance Contemporary

A flight attendant keeps getting hit on by the arrogant hockey star she's stuck serving at thirty thousand feet, and naturally that's exactly where the walls come down. Reformed-playboy heat and found-family warmth, with the same soft-center-under-swagger reveal that made Adam Carlsen worth falling for.

Kindle$5⁹⁹ Paperback$14⁵⁵$19.99−27%

Prices may vary.

Pick 03

People We Meet on Vacation

by Emily Henry

4.1 - Excellent

Two best friends, one week of vacation together every year, and a decade of both pretending that's all it is. Emily Henry stretches the slow burn out further than most, rewarding readers who can see what the narrator won't admit. Same ache under the banter.

Pick 04

The Rosie Project

by Graeme Simsion

4.3 - Excellent

Don Tillman is a genetics professor so literal-minded he builds a sixteen-page questionnaire to find a wife, then meets the entirely unsuitable Rosie and watches his system collapse. His deadpan, oblivious voice has the same charm as a certain prickly professor.

Kindle$9⁹⁹$18.99−47%Paperback$9⁰⁹$10.52−14%Hardcover$18⁷⁹$18.99−1%

Prices may vary.

Pick 05

Beach Read

by Emily Henry

4.3 - Excellent

A burned-out literary novelist and a sunny romance writer land in neighboring beach houses and dare each other to swap genres. The banter is sharp and evenly matched, but there's real grief under the jokes, the same grounded feeling that kept The Love Hypothesis from being just fluff.

Kindle$8⁹⁹$16.00−44%Paperback$8³⁷$16.00−48%Hardcover$13⁷³$35.00−61%

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Fiction Romance Contemporary

Pick 06

Dolly All the Time

by Annabel Monaghan

4.5 - Outstanding

A single mom who's spent her life being the responsible one gets pulled into fake dating an awkward, wealthy scion who finally makes her want to lean on someone. Monaghan builds attraction in small gestures, the same patience that made a fake relationship feel real in The Love Hypothesis.

Kindle$12⁹⁹$20.00−35%Paperback$14⁹⁸$20.00−25%Hardcover$23⁰⁹$29.00−20%

Prices may vary.

Pick 07

Red, White & Royal Blue

by Casey McQuiston

4.5 - Outstanding

The president's son and a British prince start out as tabloid enemies forced to fake a truce for the cameras, then fall for real in secret. Same trope backbone as The Love Hypothesis, a fabricated relationship that stops being fake, dressed up in political fairy tale.

Kindle$9⁹⁹ Paperback$9⁰⁰$16.99−47%Hardcover$16³⁹$29.99−45%

Prices may vary.

Pick 08

The Unhoneymooners

by Christina Lauren

4.3 - Excellent

Food poisoning wipes out an entire wedding party, leaving the bride's unlucky sister and the groom's insufferable best man to steal the honeymoon and pose as newlyweds. Fake dating pushed to its funniest extreme, with the same enemies-turned-something-else spark that powers Olive and Adam.

Kindle$10⁹⁹$16.99−35%Paperback$9⁰⁰$16.99−47%Hardcover$29⁹⁵$41.95−29%

Prices may vary.

Fiction Women's Fiction Contemporary

Pick 09

It Ends with Us: A Novel

by Colleen Hoover

4.7 - Outstanding

Lily Bloom falls hard for a brilliant, volatile neurosurgeon just as the first boy who ever loved her right comes back into view. It swaps banter for raw stakes, but the pull between the relationship you want and the one that's good for you feels just as real.

Pick 10

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

4.0 - Excellent

Fiction Magical Realism Contemporary

A Tokyo café where you can revisit the past, but only until your coffee goes cold, becomes the setting for four quiet stories of love spoken too late. It trades banter for tenderness, but that same want for one more chance to say the real thing runs underneath it.

Kindle$13⁹⁹ Paperback$25⁹⁹$32.00−19%Hardcover$10¹¹$19.99−49%

Prices may vary.