Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar

Everyone likes Humaira "Hani" Khan—she’s easy going and one of the most popular girls at school. But when she comes out to her friends as bisexual, they invalidate her identity, saying she can’t be bi if she’s only dated guys. Panicked, Hani blurts out that she’s in a relationship…with a girl her friends absolutely hate—Ishita "Ishu" Dey. Ishu is the complete opposite of Hani. She’s an academic overachiever who hopes that becoming head girl will set her on the right track for college. But Ishita agrees to help Hani, if Hani will help her become more popular so that she stands a chance of being elected head girl.

Despite their mutually beneficial pact, they start developing real feelings for each other. But relationships are complicated, and some people will do anything to stop two Bengali girls from achieving happily ever after.

This was a pretty cute story about two girls who decide to fake-date so that one of them can get her friends to recognise her bisexuality and so that the other can be voted head girl at school. 

When I started reading this book I was hoping for a light, fluffy f-f fauxmance, and in some respects that's what I got. There’s an unbelievably tenuous fauxmance pact (seriously, is this something that gets taught in Author School??), some Mean Girl friends, MCs that hate each other to start with before developing the feels ... 

The story goes deeper than just a fluffy fauxmance, though. There are family dynamics, expectations, sibling rivalry. The two MCs are queer, so they’re both trying to work out what queer means for them against the backdrop of their Bengali community in Ireland and the book did a really good job of highlighting how all experiences are different. 

I did like Hani and Ishu, but I didn’t love them. Hani needed to woman up to her rubbish friends - I didn’t care that they’d been friends since primary school, they were toxic. Ishu was ok I guess, but really prickly and I wasn’t convinced by her desperation to be head girl. 

All in all though this was a sweet book and better than your run of the mill queer fauxmance. 

Thank you to Hodder and NetGalley for a review copy of this book. 
4 stars