Thank you randomhouse publishing for this ARC in exchange for an honest review

actual rating: 4.5
grey brooks is a well adjusted child actor experiencing a lul in her career that enter into a mutually beneficial fake relationship with now-reclusive A-list actor, ethan hawkins. both characters actually grow so much, and their banter (esp early in their relationship) is very *giggles twirls hair*

I was genuinely shocked when i found out this was a debut novel, like i sobbed my eyes out actually. How to fake it in Hollywood is the perfect example of what i love about contemporary romance, when done well. it’s escapist but also not at the same time. such a well written book with realistic characters that grow so much within the span of the story, i legit feel like that’s my family.
CW for alcohol abuse, grief/death of a loved one

3.5 Stars! First off, I am obsessed with the cover. Kudos to the designer.

This was a wonderful read. From their very first meeting, Grey and Ethan's mutual attraction was evident, as was the sexual tension that quickly began to blur the lines of the contract they signed to revive their floundering acting careers.

I appreciated Wilder's effort to highlight both the luxuries and costs of being a celebrity in Hollywood. Since fame is often, I was intrigued by Grey and Ethan's shared feelings about what their careers had cost them. While navigating feelings of grief and betrayal and failure, they also had to manage a lack of privacy due to being recognizable names.

#Grethan (love that they got a ship name) had me laughing on numerous occasions AND blushing in public. #Balance. No more hashtags, I promise. But obvious chemistry and wonderful banter aside, my favorite element of their relationship (fake or not) was Grey and Ethan's ability to be vulnerable with one another.

Truthfully, the main reason my overall rating suffered was due to some pacing issues. While the book got off to a hot start, there were sections that lulled a bit, leaving the resolution and finals chapters feeling rushed.

Overall though, How to Fake It in Hollywood certainly gets my stamp of approval.

→ Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for a fair review

+ Reviews have been posted to both Instagram and Goodreads (@thebookgreenery).

Thank you for my advanced copy of this book.

This is a celebrity romance starring a C list celeb and an A list celeb. The romance part was fun and steamy. However the last part of the book got dark in a way that made the beginning seem rushed to love.

I'm sure others will love this more than I did.

To be honest, this books cover is what drew me in. I’m a sucker for a cute cartoon cover and I loved this one. But looking back, it’s the story that sticks with me now. I adore fake dating and love a hollywood romance so to see these two tropes combine was everything. I read this in one sitting and still think about the characters often!

Such a good book. I thought it would be a lighthearted romance, but while it does have moments that are fun and lighthearted, it is also a little deeper, which I appreciate. Written well and kept my attention throughout.

After reading the blurb I was hooked. Fake dating is my favorite trope, throw in a few celebrities in there and boom second favorite trope! Their romance progressed in a very realistic way however this isn't just a rom-com. This story has very developed side characters. Had very dimensional characters which is exactly what I look for in a story it had it all. I had been highly anticipating this debut novel and was really excited when I got approved for the arc! I would love to see more of Ava Wilder's new work. She wrote things beautifully and sensitively. I don't want to give too much away.

I received this arc from Random House Publishing/Net Galley in exchange for an honest review as always all thoughts are my own.

4 stars

I enjoyed this one so much , and it’s a debut so I’m looking forward to more books from this aurhor! It was super cute and it has one of the tropes I love! Fake relationship , should I say more??

The chemistry between the characters were fantastic! I loved their connection, they started first with physical attraction and then it grows to something more intense and heartwarming!

It’s not so light though because it touches some heavy topics but apart from it I loved everything! It’s a great summer read for me!

Perfect beach reading.
Many thanks to Random House Publishing and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

3.5 stars! I was expecting a lighthearted romance based on the title and cover but there was definitely more to it than that. Two Hollywood stars fake dating to boost their acting careers sounded like a fun storyline and it was. Although this book also tackles difficult topics like alcoholism, it would make for a good beach read this summer. Thanks so much to NetGalley and Random House for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

Grey is a woman in her late 20's who has been an actress since childhood. Ethan is a major star in his late 30's who has been a recluse since the passing of his best friend, Sam. Their publicist suggests they fake date to put each other in the public eye and help their careers. From the start, Ethan is captivated by Grey and initially fights his attraction to her as he sees himself as a liability. Good story - will definitely read more by this author!

How to Fake It in Hollywood is one of my favorite books this year. It's an angsty and emotional romance with a fake dating trope that touches on themes of fame, addiction, and grief. With fascinating characters, scorching hot chemistry between them, and engaging writing, How to Fake It in Hollywood satisfied all my romance cravings! I highly recommend it!

TW: alcohol abuse, death of a loved one.

This book is a love letter to every mid to late-20s girl who rewatch shows movies like One Tree Hill and The Parent Trap at least once a year.
This book does a great job at tackling a range of issues like alcoholism, grief, and toxic relationships as they would be in life. The issues are believably mixed in with the happiness of falling in love. This book does a great job at showing that while love doesn’t fix a person, it does improve everyone it impacts.
Also, fake dating is my favorite trope, so how could I not love this book!

“Five days, four nights. One bed.” Perfect recipe for a romcom book!
This book is basically an ode to the crazy-obsessed fans of 2000s teen dramas like me! I loved the idea of a love story told from the perspective of the actresses I grew up idolizing. Grey was the perfect heroine for this story, famous and successful, but also felt so real. A lot of books don’t have truly believable dialogue. I never thought that for this book, especially with Grey.
In short, this book was really well written.
I also thought that Ethan was a great complex character. I’ve never see a perspective like his in a book before, which definitely humanized him and the story at large.
Grey and Ethan had great chemistry that didn’t downplay their issues, especially his. The book does a great job at showing how problematic relationships can become if problems are ignored.

I absolutely adored this rom-com novel! Grey Brooks is a TV actress trying to break into the movie scene and Ethan Atkins is a mega movie star that's been laying low since he got divorced and the death of his best friend. They are brought together by their publicist for a fake dating scheme, but as it turns out, when they let down their guards to get to know each other, they have a lot in common and start to fall for one another. I really liked all the layers to this story, especially dealing with grief and different life stages.

Going into this book, I thought this was a rom-com, however, it was more of a contemporary romance. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was invested in the characters from the very beginning. I loved seeing them grow and develop both as a couple and individually and devoured their story. It was well-written and engaging. I gave this book 3.75-4 stars and would highly recommend it.

A Hollywood starlet and reclusive A-lister enter into a fake relationship, but realize their feelings may be more than a PR stunt.

If anyone can pull off the fake dating trope, it's a celebrity romance story. And don't let the cute cover fool you because this one comes with some depth as our leads struggle with addiction, grief, mental health, and privacy violations.

I loved the dual POV as we get to see both Grey and Ethan's perception of the relationship and the attraction and emotions they're experiencing. We get a range of banter and flirtation as well as angst as they try to determine what is real and what is for show.

It's a great story with a lot of heart as we see our characters grow together — I highly recommend picking up for a beach read this summer.

I chose this book because I love the fake dating trope. I was expecting a light-hearted read and got so much more out of the book. Grey and Ethan both go through struggles throughout the book and that really took the book to the next level. Grey is an actor who has finished a television series and is trying to find her next big break. Ethan is a well known actor who is trying to clean up his image after he went down a rabbit hole of drugs and alcohol after his best friend died, which lead to a mess divorce and custody battle. Through a "mutual friend" they contractually agree to date each other in the hopes that it solves both of their problems. While there is instant chemistry, they both try to keep each other at arms length to avoid the emotions and trust that comes with a relationship. How To Fake it in Hollywood has the classic romantic getaway and big gestures you would expect out of a romance book alongside scandals, mental health and addiction issues. Through the messy and complicated relationship, the author reminds us that sometimes love isn't enough.

Thank you to Ava Wilder, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, and NetGalley for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A Hollywood starlet and reclusive A-lister enter into a fake relationship, but realize their feelings may be more than a PR stunt.

If anyone can pull off the fake dating trope, it's a celebrity romance story. And don't let the cute cover fool you because this one comes with some depth as our leads struggle with addiction, grief, mental health, and privacy violations.

I loved the dual POV as we get to see both Grey and Ethan's perception of the relationship and the attraction and emotions they're experiencing. We get a range of banter and flirtation as well as angst as they try to determine what is real and what is for show.

It's a great story with a lot of heart as we see our characters grow together — I highly recommend picking up for a beach read this summer.

I snagged this ARC after hearing that How to Fake it in Hollywood was an emotional, somewhat-heavier take on celebrity fake dating romance, and on that count it did not disappoint. I've seen this called "angsty" and that's not the word I'd use myself - I never hit that point of desperately pining for the characters to be together - but this is an absorbingly-written and fresh take on a well-trodden subgenre, with an extraordinary amount of polish and assuredness for a debut.

The basic outline of the story is that Grey is an actress whose tenure on a CW-style TV drama series has just ended, and she's looking for her next big break. Ethan is a much more established, much higher-octane star who receded from the public eye after the death of his best friend Sam in a car accident, and his own subsequent public struggles with alcoholism and addiction. Both Grey and Ethan's publicists see the benefits of a publicity-grabbing relationship, and with the help of a bevy of lawyers and agents, set up a formal six-month agreement of pre-negotiated red carpet appearances, trips to coffee shops, hikes, and pictures of late-night visits to each others homes. Inevitably, of course, this develops into Something More, and Grey and Ethan have to negotiate what a real relationship would look like.

Given the plethora of "celebrity fake dating" romances out there, I think the most useful place to start is by talking about what makes How to Fake it in Hollywood stand out. The very best part, to me, is the amount of specificity and texture that Ava Wilder gives to the experience of celebrity. Grey, in particular, has had such a recognizable type of medium-famous-person trajectory: from the body double for a set of twins as a child actress, to the runner-up for the starring role in a Hannah Montana type tween show, to part of an ensemble cast in a generic CW drama full of extremely attractive people that garners her a small coterie of super-devoted fans, and a lot of blank looks or vaguely-embarrassed admissions of familiarity from the general public. Watching this hyper-specific type of semi-celebrity get pulled into the orbit of Ethan's much more traditionally-famous persona was really fascinating, and Wilder didn't shy away from how scary and privacy-invading that could be. Obviously I have nothing to say about whether this was a realistic portrait of being a celebrity. But as a consumer of celebrity content I one thousand percent knew exactly where and how Grey and Ethan fit into the modern media landscape, and that was really fun to read.

Grey was, just generally, a great character. I loved being in her head from the very first chapter. I have the brain of a slice of Swiss cheese at the moment, and increasingly find myself abandoning books on page 2 in a pile of "What? Who are you? Where are we? What's going on and am I really supposed to remember all of these names?" This experience could not have been more opposite. I was IN IT from word one, with Grey's POV expertly guiding me from scene to scene, subtly layering in backstory and stakes and contemporary world-building and secondary characters (though I felt many of them were ultimately underdevelopped). "Assured" is the word I keep coming back to for this book: I felt like I was in good hands; I was happy to be in any hands at all.

Ethan, on the other hand, I had a hard time getting a handle on. I can see how he'd be a difficult type of character to write: he's in denial over the pain of his friend's death, and numbing himself through substance abuse, and denial/numbness is probably hard to imbue with personality on the page. But - and let's file this under "things you can say about a fictional character and not a real person" - it was hard to understand how his grief was supposed to shape my understanding of him as a person. Because we never really got many specifics about the nature of his relationship to Sam. Or his divorce. Or his two daughters. Or his fears for the future. Or his feelings about his own substance abuse. Each one of those things felt like it was handed to the reader with a generic "you know this is sad, I don't have to tell you how it is."

That said, this book is very tightly plotted, and it never felt boring, despite my feeling that the chemistry was a bit subdued. There were a series of small conflicts along the way, none of which felt contrived, and the bigger drawn-out conflict of Ethan's substance abuse was handled sensitively, and clearly had stakes for both characters: for Ethan, whether he'd reach a place where he could seek out help, and for Grey, whether she could bring herself to confront the signs of how bad things had gotten.

The thing I loved the most, though? For anyone who has ever side-eyed a hero doing a grand gesture and thought "um, sir, this is kind of all about you," this book has the GREATEST subtle takedown of that. I won't discuss it here because it's very spoilery, but it's a great understanding of actual romance, and it's also so clever about the genre and its obsession with grand gestures. *chefs kiss*

Ultimately, I think whether a fictional couple's chemistry lands for a reader can be incredibly subjective, and this may have been a case of "it's not the book, it's me." If I'd been feeling Grey and Ethan's chemistry just a bit more, this would have been a five-star read: it's got heart, and heft, and depth to it. As it is, I'm still glad I picked it up, and would absolutely try more from the author.

Thank you Penguin Random House International for my e-ARC in exchange for the honest review.

Grey was keeping her career afloat now that the end of her long running teen soap has her unsuccessfully pounding the pavement again. She was desperate to agree with her publicist for the fake love affair with Ethan.

Ethan needs to clean up his reputation and step back into the spotlight again and it needed to be Grey who he need to fake date on tv. His been in a miserable life but he is fighting now.

I really want to like this book. My favorite trope is in this book but I got more bored.