Sometimes, I stumble into some pretty cool things. At YALLFest 2025, I wandered off from my squad to say hi to an author friend of mine. She was a plus one this time instead of a guest, and that guest was Jennifer Iacopelli. She was busy filming content (with who I now know is the actress in the Netflix adaptation), but her publicist handed me a book and I accepted, like anyone would in said situation. Later, when I learned about the adaptation, I pulled that book out, as one does.
The book is Finding Her Edge [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM], which is about a teenage ice dancer from a family of Olympic ice skaters. Her parents were medalists, and now her older sister is heading to compete on skating’s biggest stage, but since her mom passed away, the family finances haven’t been properly looked after. Adriana knows things are in bad shape and wants to keep her family’s iconic training facility running, so when the opportunity to fake date her ice dance partner for the sake of making more money on sponsorships arises, she jumps in.
Ahh, but there’s still another twist! Her former partner is now returning to train at the facility. Adriana hasn’t seen him since she dumped him as a partner for being too small, but now he’s grown and is even hotter than she remembers. Now, it’s a battle of fake dating and her old flame.
Overall, this is a cute YA romance. At first, I was kinda thrown off by how this flips the fake dating trope, since it doesn’t follow the normal pattern. While talking to Jennifer, she pointed out that it’s two tropes battling it out, not necessarily a trope flip, and I can see that, but it still feels to me like screwing with the system. I wanted more Brayden to at least make it feel more competitive and not like the fake dating was on the backburner, but alas, it’s not my book to write.
I am interested to see how this adaptation plays out. It’s a TV show, so there’s a possibility of continuing on into a second season, and I want to see what would happen if it did.
Literary Hypewoman 
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