Breakaway Books

Authored by Lynn Painter; Published September 2025; Romance

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️

When I read a teen-oriented romance, my expectations are moderate at best. Fake Skating managed to meet those tempered expectations, with some cute moments and surprisingly serious topics that teens may actually have to deal with.

In Fake Skating, Dani is forced to move to Minnesota for her senior year of high school when her mom separates from her military officer father. As she settles into her mom’s hometown and her grandfather’s house, Dani has only one objective: get into Harvard. But, in order to do that, she needs to add an extracurricular to her resume, and the only one available is to manage the school’s hockey team. There’s just one problem—her childhood best friend Alec, who had previously cut off contact with her, is the team’s star player. Getting through her senior year is going to be harder than Dani thought.

For the most part, this novel moves along quite predictably. The fake dating elements of the plot could practically write themselves; Dani and Alec are on the outs because of the ever-present miscommunication issues that plague all romances, but for slightly contrived reasons, they must fake engaging in a romantic relationship. The storyline has a strong high school flavor, with concerns about cliques, fitting in, and college admission. What I appreciated was the more serious topics that come up: Dani having to deal with a manipulative father trying to get her to choose between him and her mother; the pressure that Alec has to endure to become a professional hockey player and relieve his family’s debts; even Dani’s jealousy of kids that get to grow up in one place in contrast to her peripatetic military lifestyle. One of the key messages that all of these storylines convey is the importance of honesty and transparency—and I can appreciate a novel that impresses that upon teens.

What brought me joy in this novel is Dani’s grandfather, a retired legendary NHL player who is something of a grumpy recluse in his old age. The men in the town worship him, but Dani couldn’t care less about his reputation—the contrast adds some much needed humor. Even more than that, the most touching moments of the whole novel are his attempts to reconnect with Dani and her slow journey toward understanding and forgiving him for his recent absence in her life. I appreciated that the author doesn’t depict the adults as faultless, but instead as fallible human beings who sometimes have to apologize to their offspring and who can be forgiven rather than summarily cut off.

Fake Skating may possess some of the typical features of the teen romance genre, but it goes deeper. It’s a good one for the thoughtful adolescents in your life.