September 30, “Fake Skating” by Lynn Painter was released. It has already become immensely popular with a younger crowd, due to the success of Painter’s previous books.
This book is a breathtaking read filled with twists and turns throughout the book for all Painter’s fans, especially for a younger audience.
All of the twists and turns that this book has to offer will make the reader roll over in their bed and scream into their pillow.
“Fake Skating” has received a review of 4.31 stars on Goodreads, with a vast number of comments centered on whether it is worth reading. Some of the complaints are that Painter should have included more detail, or that it was just a bore.
“How can someone write the irresistible charm of Better Than the Movies and Nothing Like the Movies, and have every other book be so… lacklustre? I’m genuinely wondering,” Anniek wrote on Goodreads, “Truly nothing about this book really appealed to me, and what should have been cute was mostly just boring,” and gave a rating of one star.
Others simply wrote that they thought that the book was worth reading. “One of my favorite authors has done it again. This is officially the best childhood friends to lovers book I’ve read. The tension the entire time was palpable,” Ashley commented, giving the book a rating of five stars.
While there are many heavy kissing scenes, nothing gets too graphic. But beware, this book uses crude language and some of the text, particularly chapter 40, may affect sensitive readers.
This book revolves around the lives of Dani Collins and Alec Barczewski, two childhood best friends that reunited during their senior year of high school. The book focuses on Dani, who moved from Germany to her mother’s hometown in Southview, Minnesota, realizes that the boy she once knew has changed immensely.
Her friend Alec is now a Hockey star who the whole school knows and loves, and Dani has become a quiet girl who makes it a priority to keep to herself.
Both are aware of how they have grown and changed over time. Their childhood moments are now just distant memories in the back of a shed. This book is the journey Alec and Dani experience through their final months of high school and navigating their relationships and everything that comes with transitioning out of childhood.
“Fake Skating” has many different themes throughout, which Painter has done a lovely job in developing during the storyline. All of the action that happens during this book makes the reader never want to close it.
The character arcs are very well written, and there are many points in which these characters make the scenes more entertaining to read.
The narrator of the book switches every chapter between Alec and Dani. This makes the book more interesting, as readers develop an understanding of each character’s point of view. However, because of the change of perspective in every chapter, there are chapters that end in the middle of something that is going on. Readers will not return to that scene until the chapter after, resulting in a series of frustrating cliffhangers.
When the book does return to the previous point of view, it explains the event vaguely, even though it may be important to the plot of the story.
Even though there are many things that Painter did well with the book, there were many ways that Painter could have given the book a stronger plot. There are many characters who could have been added to make the communication in this book move along quicker, especially because towards the end the book started to feel long. Many of the settings also could have been used to add more depth to the book.
Despite being a new novel, “Fake Skating”, there are a lot of repeating plots and actions in this book that Lynn Painter has previously written about before. For example she has already written the plot of two characters that have fake dated to avoid a conflict whether that may be another person or a certain aspect of their lives.
There is also the fact that Painter adds yet another hockey romance to the YA world, which also shows how her books are not only similar to each other, but others as well. There have been many other authors who have written the same type of book, and unfortunately, Painter’s iteration leaves less of an impact on the audience than many of these.
Throughout “Fake Skating,” there are many instances in which characters make poor choices regarding life changing decisions, in either their lives or another character’s life.
Despite these issues, if one is looking for a novel to get into the YA romance genre, or if they have never read a Painter book, ”Fake Skating” is a great, heart-racing book to read this winter. So, curl up with this book, grab some hot chocolate and enjoy the romantic atmosphere around Dani and Alec.
For any fans looking for another Painter novel with the same feeling that you get when reading this book, grab “Better than the Movies” part of a duology.
“Fake Skating” is a great winter read.This book is already out in a lot of places and can be found in many popular stores, such as Target, Walmart and Barnes & Noble.
