The Fill-In Boyfriend by Kasie West

When Gia Montgomery's boyfriend, Bradley, dumps her in the parking lot of her high school prom, she has to think fast. After all, she'd been telling her friends about him for months now. This was supposed to be the night she proved he existed. So when she sees a cute guy waiting to pick up his sister, she enlists his help. The task is simple: be her fill-in boyfriend—two hours, zero commitment, a few white lies. After that, she can win back the real Bradley.

The problem is that days after prom, it's not the real Bradley she's thinking about, but the stand-in. The one whose name she doesn't even know. But tracking him down doesn't mean they're done faking a relationship. Gia owes him a favor and his sister intends to see that he collects: his ex-girlfriend's graduation party—three hours, zero commitment, a few white lies.

Just when Gia begins to wonder if she could turn her fake boyfriend into a real one, Bradley comes waltzing back into her life, exposing her lie, and threatening to destroy her friendships and her new-found relationship. 

Rating: 2/5 Stars

DNF at 57%

I’m sorry I tried but… I just couldn’t do it.

Despite presenting a pretty cute premise (I’m a sucker for fake relationships going real, sue me) The Fill in Boyfriend was not able to capture my attention or my desire to continue.

Probably my main problem was Gia, the main character who gets dumped on Prom Night and convinces a total stranger to pass off as her boyfriend to impress her friends. I could not connect with her in any way; Gia is shallow, self-centered and immature. That’s the whole array of emotions she displays on the book, I’m supposed to believe her story is sad, she got dumped, her friends are turning on her and she has an unsupportive family the problem was, none of that it’s actually true.

Sure, she got dumped but because she didn’t really care about her boyfriend. She used Bradley as a prop to show off her superiority to her friends, but wasn’t really fond of him.

“You only care about your friends seeing me.”

(…)

“That’s not all I care about…”

“It’s all you care about and you confirmed it tonight when you saw me and the first thing you said was ‘My friends are going to die.’ Really, Gia? That’s the first thing you say when you see me after two weeks?”

The who thing of Jules “infiltrating” her group was dumb and immature, the more Gia went on and on about how horrible her “enemy” was, the more convinced I was that Jules was a mirror because she was describing herself perfectly.

“There was that familiar calculating look on her face, and I wondered what was going through her mind. I was sure of one thing—it wasn’t good.”

 I didn’t feel sorry for her, especially when, again, she seemed to care little about her friends. All that mattered to Gia was not losing her social status, if she had to ditch her friends to keep it she would do it without a second thought, for her the only thing that mattered was what people could serve her for, not real friendship.

Her family was absolutely perfect, they are always there for her and give her everything Gia could possibly want. Yet our MC feels mistreated by her family because… I don’t know, actually. I’m guessing that the author wanted for us readers to feel sorry for Gia, but didn’t put much thought into it?

However, there were a few relationships and moments that were cute and it is a fairly entertaining read (if you don’t have the problems that I do) so it’s not absolutely terrible.