The Fill-In Boyfriend by Kasie West

The Fill-In Boyfriend by Kasie West

Gia gets dumped on prom night right before she’s about to introduce her friends to her college-age boyfriend for the first time. Her friends have never really believed the boyfriend is real, and now she’s worried her friends will have proof she was lying about her very real boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Rather than let them think she’s a liar, Gia finds a random cute-ish boy sitting in a parked car and selects him as her fill-in boyfriend for prom. Hayden agrees to fill in for Bradley, and Gia and her 'boyfriend' somehow manage to pull off the deception among Gia’s friends. Even Jules, the new girl who is always ready to expose Gia, falls for the story.

But then Hayden has a return favor: he wants Gia to fill in for him in order to make his ex-girlfriend jealous. You can most likely guess where this is going: very slowly, Gia and Hayden become close, and they start considering their ex-partners less and less and their fill-in replacements more and more. The story is a likeable teen romance that follows a somewhat predictable formula of “girl without depth breaks away from the mean girls and finds her own moral compass.” But despite flaws the novel is an enjoyable read I’d recommend to fans of romantic reads in middle and high school.