This Is How You Fall In Love by Anika Hussain

Pages: 352 

Publisher: Hot Key Books 

Released: 2nd of February 2023 

Zara and Adnan are just friends. Always have been, always will be. Even if they have to pretend to be girlfriend and boyfriend...

Zara loves love in all forms: 90s romcoms and romance novels and grand sweeping gestures. And she's desperate to have her own great love story. Crucially, a real one. So when her best friend Adnan begs her to pretend to date him to cover up his new top-secret relationship, Zara is hesitant. This isn't the kind of thing she had in mind. But there's something in it for Zara too: making her parents, who love Adnan, happy might just stop them arguing for a while. She may not be getting her own love story, but she could save theirs.

So Zara agrees and the act begins: after all, how different can pretending to be in a relationship with your best friend be to just hanging around with them like usual? Turns out, a lot. With fake dating comes fake hand-holding and fake kissing and real feelings... And when a new boy turns up in Zara's life, things get more confusing than ever.

The course of true love never did run smooth, but Zara's love story is messier than most...

What I Have to Say 

This book was a love letter to love. Romantic love, platonic love, friendship and family, it leaves no kind of love out. The ending really touched me a lot with how positive it was a about friendships and familial love. 

It amused me a lot that she met the new boy playing Pokemon Go. As a Pokemon Go player myself I really appreciated the references, but I'm not sure if it would be too technical for people who don't play. It really endeared me towards Yahya though. I really liked him a lot. 

I do feel though that it was maybe a bit predictable because of which characters were fleshed out and which weren't. Although I was fearful that she would get together with the wrong boy at the end, I kind of felt like I knew how it would end. 

I really, really enjoyed it though and I hope you do too. 

4 stars 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Hot Key Books for providing this copy for review.