I love the hot and steamy romance. I am a fan of the fake romance trope so it was just what I was expecting. However I really liked the characters more than I thought I would being the setting was Hollywood.
Can't wait to read another by this author.

Grey Brooks wants to stay relevant in Hollywood after her sitcom was canceled. Ethan Atkins is an A-level celebrity who needs to rehab his image. So when their publicist suggests they start fake dating, the duo decides it might be just the ticket.

But we all know the fake-dating trope is gonna lead to real dating and then a break-up and make-up. BUT IT WAS SO CUTE! Predictable but adorable.

If you’re looking for a sweet romcom - keep looking!

This is a gritty, angsty, messy story of love in the public eye. This story deals with grief, recovery, and trauma healing. Don’t get me wrong - I enjoyed this book- but the animated cover is a bit misleading.

Grey is one of the best FMCs I’ve read lately. She’s tough and a real fighter.

I love that this in author debut - I can’t wait for Ava’s next book.

Recommended if you like:
-fake dating
-celeb romance
-age gap
-dual POV
-the idea of dating your childhood celebrity crush


TW: addiction, grief, car accident, relapse, child abuse, drug use

Thank you to PRH-Ballantine and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was a lot deeper than I thought it was going to be, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. The story was unique and interesting and sometimes I really felt like I was having a "celebrities-they're-just-like-us" moment.

I know this was a debut so I'll be interested to read more from this author as I enjoyed the dual POV and the characters' arcs. I was glad to have a bit of a delayed HEA so that the characters could grow a little.

This was a cute and fun story. Behind the scenes Hollywood romance, sign me up! I was drawn to the main characters immediately and found the entertainment aspect a fascinating component of the often used fake dating troupe. Grey was likeable and Ethan, while aggravating at times, was someone you wanted to root for. Their joint dynamic and relationship, while sexy, was not over the top in the romance department. This was one of my favorite modern romances that I read thus far in 2022. I hope to read more by Ms. Wilder in the future. 4 star ⭐️ rating for this one. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for access for review.

Maybe I've just read tons of fake dating books...I adore Josh and Hazel and The Love Hypothesis. This one didn't hit for me. I didn't find it that intriguing despite the deep issues it touched on. I enjoyed the storyline in this book; the premise—fake celebrity courting in Hollywood as a publicity stunt—seemed incredibly intriguing. There were so many adorable passages in the first half of the book, such as when she twisted her ankle and he had to carry her back to the house or when he tried to prepare her breakfast. I truly like that portion of the book. The finale dragged a little bit for me because of the miscommunication, or rather the fact that they weren't really communicating and it kept going back and forth. However, I really like the criticism on how the press and paparazzi invade people's private lives.

Thank you so much to @Netgalley for this advanced reader's copy for an honest review.

It started off promising, but just kind of dragged on. It was hard to root for the main characters as they kept repeating the same mistakes over and over.

Catching up on reviews from a very busy summer!

⭐⭐⭐
How to Fake it in Hollywood, Ava Wilder
June 14, 2022, Dell

Thank you @Netgalley and @Dellbooks for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

How to Fake it in Hollywood was the perfect summer read. Light and predictable, but with substance. Grey and Ethan are both struggling in hollywood, her trying to build a career after being a child star and him rebounding from a series of scandals, heartbreaks and missteps. Their agents and publicists stage a fake relationship to get them both into the p ress in a postive light. It works for awhile, until things become all too real. Great book to read by the pool or at the beach.

#bookstagram #bookstragrammer #avawilder #netgalley #summerreads #chicklit #romancenovel

I really, very much enjoyed this book! I found my self giddy for the characters through out the enitre thing - rooting for them every step of the way! Of course i'm a sucker for a cute romance, but even more I love a slow burn, enemy to lovers, forced proximity situation and this book hit all the feels for me. Obviously, by the title we know this is a fake dating story line, but it's not quite as simple as that. We meet two characters who have complex emotions and traumas and we see a lot of character growth in both. We LOVE to see it. This was such a fun summer, light read! Highly recommend!

I was SO impressed with the writing and storytelling in this heartbreaking but swoony Hollywood romance. I can't wait to read more from Wilder.

I liked the idea of How To Fake It In Hollywood, and enjoyed the first part of the book more than the last. The second half had more drama and wasn't quite what I was expecting. I appreciated the characters growth by the end of the book, but there were times that their relationship seemed a bit toxic to me. I'm honestly not sure if I was even rooting for Grey and Ethan as a couple by the end. Overall, there were things I liked about the book, but it just wasn't the one for me.

Thank you to Random House for the NetGalley ARC!

Prior to reading this, I had never read a book by Ava Wilder, so I really didn't know what to expect from this story. The elements of everything I love in a romance were there: fake-dating, a Los Angeles setting. and why not throw in celebrity/PR shenanigans while we're at it? How to Fake it in Hollywood was turning out to be the perfect romance for my summer.

However, despite my general enjoyment of this romance, I did have some issues connecting with the story. This is a classic case of "it's not you, it's me" but I found myself not clicking with our protagonists. Obviously, we live completely different lives, as I am not a Hollywood starlet coming off of a hit teen-soap, but while I was reading, I couldn't help but feel like there was a wall between me and Grey and Ethan that made me feel disconnected from the story. I also had an issue with the addressing of Ethan's addiction, and how it felt a little too normalized in the book. Addiction is no stranger to Hollywood, but the way it was written into this book felt like the author was driving the point home a little too far, especially in regards to the protagonists' lack of conversation around it.

Despite my critiques, How to Fake it in Hollywood was a delightfully steamy romance for my late summer nights (full of reading, of course). I can definitely see myself reading more by Ava Wilder in the future because this was a solid contemporary romance.

Rating: 3.5 stars
Thank you to the publishers for the ARC! In no way did this affect my rating.

How to Fake it in Hollywood is a fake dating romance that follows the POV of Gray and Ethan. Gray was a child star who's current acting career as an adult is failing. So when she is offered the chance to save her career through a fake relationship with a very famous actor, she reluctantly takes it. Ethan, who once had a very successful acting career, is now living a reclusive life where he drinks away the pain of his best friend's death and his very profiled divorce. But in order to finally complete the project that he and his best friend had started, Ethan needs to fix up his ruined reputation. As a result, Gray and Ethan begin their fake relationship as a publicity stunt to boost and fix up their careers. But it slowly turns into something more than a publicity stunt.

I absolutely loved Hollywood setting and the insight into the lives of actors. It was so fun and was one of my favorite aspects of this book. I did find the characters to be very frustrating at some points in the story. In some cases in made sense, especially since Ethan was struggling with grief and his coping method was alcohol. Watching his journey was both heartbreaking and frustrating at the same. One thing that knocked down my rating from a 4 star to a 3.5 was the miscommunication trope. It was vey present in Gray and Ethan's relationship and so many things could have been solved if they would have communicated like the adults they are.

Overall, if you love the Hollywood setting and want a cute romance with some deeper topics, I would recommend picking this one up!

Fake relationships in Hollywood are a staple of celebrity and romance novels, so I confess to coming into this one with low expectations for such an old cliche. But major props to Wilder for crafting a story full of characters that feel like real people and emotions that hit true while avoiding all the pitfalls of a cliched story.
Grey is a great character because she's in the industry but not enough to be disassociated with how 'normal' people react to celebrities and the awful ways that their privacy is invaded. She's an extremely likable character that you can't help but root for as she works hard to get what she wants. Ethan is the epitome of the damaged hero in need of someone to love him. He has some very serious issues that I'm happy to say don't get magically fixed by him falling in love with Grey, which is one of my biggest pet peeves with damaged heroes. Seeing him slowly realize that the path he's on is a bad one and actually working to fix it by himself is a high point in the book.
Overall, it's a very solid romance with high levels of drama and tension that work to make the inevitable and eventual HEA all the sweeter.

Very happy thanks to NetGalley and Dell for the emotional read!

I absolutely LOVED this debut from Wilder! This book uses a fake dating trope, but the characters are so well-developed and deep. The typical Hollywood cliches don't apply because Wilder did such a great job making this relationship feel so real and well-thought out. I've been recommending this book to everyone this summer and can't wait to see what Wilder writes next! This book has so much heart and you couldn't help but root for these characters!

I loved this book. I’m glad I had heard enough about it to know that it deals with heavy topics and the tone is heavier than what the illustrated cover seems to suggest, so I went in with the right expectations. I think the author did a great job of exploring Hollywood, fame, addiction, and grief. I’m also really happy about how the 3rd act break up was handled. It was a big gamble for the author, but I think it was the right choice for the characters and the situation.

I started the ebook version since I had an ARC of it, but ended up listening to the audiobook and I think the narrators did an amazing job with the narration.

Celebrity romances aren't usually my jam, but I LOVED this book! Everything about it worked so well for me. However, if you are looking for something super light and fluffy, I'd pass on this one as it deals heavily with grief and addiction. If readers know that going in, and are ok with that subject matter, then I highly recommend this emotion filled, age gap, fake dating romance! How To Fake It In Hollywood is an amazing debut and I cannot wait to see what Ava Wilder writes next!

I'm going to need to think for awhile about how to rate this because I'm trying to separate how triggering the end of this book was for me with how I actually felt about it.

The bottom line, though, is that I think there's a critical problem to this book: it focused far too much on the progression of their relationship while Ethan was an alcoholic, rather than them working through it after he began to receive treatment (which I'm not providing a spoiler warning for because I think we should all hope that a romance novel wouldn't romanticize alcoholism).

This book would have worked better if it had dual timelines, one half of the story being them falling for each other, the fake dating, whatever, and then the other half taking place after rehab. That was far too big of a third act conflict for the last 30-40 pages or so to make up for it.

Despite these problems, I did care about the characters and the story. I think that's part of why I'm so torn up about it. I wanted more for Grey than this. And I wanted Ethan to take accountability for himself before the book was turning to a close. It felt a little bit like watching a train leave the station knowing it was going to wreck in an hour. I wanted so desperately to stop it before it got there.

Maybe that's a testament to the way she got these characters into my heart, or maybe it's a testament to my own mental health issues: that I saw myself in Grey and wanted to tell her to not make the mistakes I am so afraid of making myself. I know the book never tried to romanticize Grey's inclination to "fix" Ethan, but I feel it never fully succeeded. She welcomed him back too easily. I don't know. I just wanted to see the work he did to become better, rather than hear him promise things I am hesitant to believe (though, I know of course, that Ava Wilder wants us to believe them). They're just not...believable, I guess.

I don't know. I think this book could work for a lot of people, but I am not one of them. This book hit too close to home for me to love it. There's some books that hit too close in a good way, in a way that makes you love it more (see: Radio Silence, Imagine Us Happy), but some books that hit too close to home in the way that makes you squint your eyes, like "are they really doing that? am I really about to watch a train wreck happen when I know how easily it can be prevented?"

I think, also, one of the things that bothered me throughout was how Grey never brought up his clear alcoholism until it was too late. She wasn't worried about it until he had disappeared to a bar and came back on alcohol and drugs. (Again, I'm not putting a spoiler warning because these are things people who could be triggered by these topics should know.) She should have been worried before, and I think, honestly, any person would be, so I don't love the authorial decision to make her so naive or, I suppose, willfully ignorant.

Anyway, this review has gone on long enough, but what I'm hoping has come across is that I don't think this is a bad book. It's just a bad book for me. I think some readers might be able to read this easily while others might have a hard time.

TW: alcoholism (graphic), drug addiction (mild and implied), drug use (mild), discussions of physical abuse, leaked nudes (not sure what the word for this is...), poor parent/child relationships, death of a loved one, grief

Always a fan of the fake dating trope, I knew I would love How to Fake it in Hollywood by Ava Wilder. Plus I mean look at this cover, it is so cute. But I underestimated how much, because I loved this book.

Grey Brooks was a child actor, a main character on a TV drama and now is trying to figure out what to do next. Enter her Publicist with a crazy idea, fake date one of her other clients. But her other client is none other than Ethan Atkins, major movie actor, who has done nothing the last five years since the loss of his best friend. Intrigued by the idea and meeting Ethan, Grey decides to take the meeting, and then sign the contact. Now she just has to make it through six months.

But be warned, this was not just a fun, lighthearted romcom. There was moments of that but Wilder tackled some tough subjects through Gray and Ethan. Including dealing with grief and loss of a friend, alcoholism, and being in the public eye along with social media. Their relationship, although starting as fake, was put through the ringer. I appreciated the push/pull and give/take that was written about because it doesn’t always come easy, and doesn’t happen has fast as what you would want.

How to Fake It in Hollywood is Ava’s debut novel and I cannot wait to see what she writes next.

How to Fake It in Hollywood is the kind of romcom that's fun, but it also has a serious side. I'm a fan of the fake dating trope, so I really enjoyed this one between Grey and Ethan. Their banter was so fun, and I found them both very multi-faceted! It does deal with some heavier topics so it's definitely not a light, fluffy read, but if you like character growth in your plots, this is a great one!