The Fiancée Farce is built on a very specific mechanism. Tansy Adams invented a girlfriend to get her stepfamily off her back and used a romance cover model’s photograph to do it. The model, Gemma van Dalen, turns out to be real, and to need a wife: her grandfather’s will says the publishing house goes to whichever heir is married. So the fake girlfriend becomes a fake fiancée, and the lie acquires a legal deadline. It has close to twenty-one thousand Goodreads ratings and a Lambda nomination.
Two findings shaped this list.
The will is the rare part, not the fake engagement. Fake dating and fake engagements are everywhere in sapphic romance. A clause in a dead relative’s instructions that legally requires a marriage is not: across every list, shelf and roundup we checked, exactly two other books do it. They are the first two entries here, and if that mechanism is what you are chasing, you can read the entire shelf in a week.
Marriage of convenience itself is a small shelf. Perhaps a dozen sapphic titles with real readerships, most from Ylva and Bold Strokes rather than the big houses. Historical romance is where marriage-of-convenience plots usually live, but the sapphic historical shelf has almost none of them — which is why this list stays contemporary except for one deliberate exception at the end.
A note on heat. Several of these are small-press books where we could not find a reliable heat rating from a source we trust. Rather than guess, the table says so. We would rather tell you we do not know than tell you something wrong about a book you are about to buy.
This post contains affiliate links to Amazon, Bookshop.org and Libro.fm. If you buy through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes which books make the list. Our full review of The Fiancée Farce is here.
All 12 Books at a Glance
| Book | The arrangement | Marriage of convenience | What forces it | The money | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Fiancée Farce (the original) | Fake engagement | Yes | A will | Publishing dynasty | Open door, high |
| The Business of Love | Hired wife | Yes | A decree | Family company | Medium |
| The Marriage Masquerade | Arranged | Yes | A will | An inherited B&B | Not verified |
| Who’d Have Thought | Paid marriage | Yes | No, her own money | No | Open door |
| Accidental Honeymoon | Fake, then real | Yes | A rewritten will | A vineyard | One scene |
| Her Royal Happiness | Fake relationship | No | No | Royalty | Not verified |
| Impossible Match | Arranged marriage | Yes | No | Two fortunes | Not verified |
| D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding | Fake engagement | On television | No, prize money | No | Open door |
| The No Kiss Contract | Fake engagement | No | No, partnership | Law-firm money | Not verified |
| Playing with Matches | Fake dating | No | No | A shop lease | Not verified |
| Written in the Stars | Fake dating | No | No | No | Open door |
| Count Your Lucky Stars | No | No | No | No | Open door |
| A Restless Truth | No | No | No | Edwardian gentry | High |
1. The Business of Love by Charley Clarke
Mackenzie Watson wants the permanent chief executive’s chair at her family’s company. Her late grandmother’s decree says the chief executive must be married. Taylor Sutton is a barista with student debt she cannot outrun. Mack offers her a year.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: This is the only book we found that hits all four of The Fiancée Farce‘s axes at once: a marriage entered into for business reasons, a clause in a dead relative’s instructions forcing it, real family money, and a rom-com register. If you want the same book again, this is as close as the shelf gets.
How it differs: The imbalance is starker — Taylor is paid, which Tansy never is — and Mack is written as autistic-coded and considerably more closed off than Gemma. The heat sits at medium rather than Bellefleur’s higher setting.
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2. The Marriage Masquerade by Toni Logan
Taylor Braxton inherits her grandfather’s bed and breakfast on Maui, then reads the rest of the will: the deed does not transfer until the day after her first wedding anniversary. She has a year to be married and no one to marry.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: The second of only two sapphic romances we could find where a will literally requires a wedding. The property is the whole plot, exactly as Van Dalen Publishing is, and the arrangement has a legally defined end date that everyone can see coming.
How it differs: A Maui bed and breakfast rather than a publishing empire, so the money is comfortable rather than dynastic. It is a small-press book with a modest readership, and there is no Libro.fm edition.
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3. Who’d Have Thought by G. Benson
Samantha Thomson is a neurosurgeon who needs to be married very quickly and will not explain why. She offers over two hundred thousand dollars, no questions asked. Hayden Pérez, an emergency nurse holding her family together in Miami, takes the money and then finds out who she has married.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: The best-executed marriage of convenience in sapphic romance, and a Golden Crown winner for it. The contract, the year, the cohabitation, the slow discovery that the person you married is not who you assumed — all of it is the machinery The Fiancée Farce runs on, played straighter.
How it differs: No inheritance clause and no high society: both women work for a living and the money is Sam’s own. It is also a heavier book, with Alzheimer’s, family estrangement and a secret withheld from the reader for a long time.
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4. Accidental Honeymoon by Miranda MacLeod
Monica, a wedding blogger, hires handywoman Ray to pose as her girlfriend for a visit to her dying grandmother. The performance goes so well that the grandmother rewrites her will: the vineyard goes to the two of them, if they marry.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: It runs both tropes in sequence — fake dating first, then a will that turns the lie into a legal requirement. That escalation is precisely what happens to Tansy and Gemma, and the screwball register is the same.
How it differs: A vineyard rather than a publishing house, and the heat is much lower — reviewers report one explicit scene. No Libro.fm edition, and the enemies-to-lovers opening is sharper than Bellefleur’s.
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5. Her Royal Happiness by Lola Keeley
Princess Alice is the first openly gay member of the British royal family. Sara is an education specialist, a single mother, and an anti-monarchist. They agree to appear to be together in order to shield Alice’s nephew from the press.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: If the part of The Fiancée Farce you enjoyed was the wealth — the houses, the staff, the sense that these people’s private lives are institutional property — this goes further than any other sapphic romance. The class gap between the leads is enormous and the book knows it.
How it differs: A fake relationship, not a marriage, and no inheritance clause. The politics of monarchy and Sara’s daughter give it weight and slow it down; it is warmer and less farcical than Bellefleur.
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6. Impossible Match by Rochelle Wolf
Cecilia Friedman built a tech company. Ingrid Gordon is a socialite with a following. Their families, both Toronto money, decide the two of them should marry, and neither is in a position to say no.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: An arranged marriage between two heiresses is about as high-society as sapphic romance gets, and the family-money pressure on both sides is the closest thing to Gemma’s grandfather anywhere on this list.
How it differs: It is a novella at about 130 pages, so everything moves fast. The marriage is genuinely arranged rather than a farce the leads are running together, which removes the shared-conspiracy pleasure that makes Bellefleur’s book fun.
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7. D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding by Chencia C. Higgins
Two strangers are cast on a reality show called Instant I Do. Six weeks to convince their families they are engaged, then a wedding. A hundred thousand dollars if the families believe it.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: A fake engagement with money attached and a deadline everyone can count down to. The reality-show confessionals give it the same knowing comedy as Bellefleur’s better scenes, and it is the funniest execution of the trope in the subgenre.
How it differs: Prize money rather than inheritance, and nobody here is wealthy — the stakes are aspirational rather than dynastic. The real conflict is about coming out to family, which gives it a tenderness The Fiancée Farce does not reach for.
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8. The No Kiss Contract by Nan Campbell
Davy Dugan is a corporate attorney chasing partnership. Her boss misreads a joke as an engagement announcement, and rather than correct him, Davy recruits Anna to play the fiancée — with a contract, and a rule about kissing.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: A fake engagement running on a written agreement with terms in it, which is the specific pleasure of the Tansy-and-Gemma arrangement. Law-firm money gives it some of the same glossy surface.
How it differs: A partnership track rather than an inheritance, so the stakes are career-shaped. No family fortune, and no Libro.fm edition.
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9. Playing with Matches by Georgia Beers
Cori Stratton’s candle shop is weeks from eviction. Her ex is getting married at the Brennan family’s bed and breakfast, and Cori would rather not attend alone. Liz Brennan, her landlord’s daughter, agrees to help.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: Fake dating with a landlord’s daughter and a wedding week to survive — a compact version of the same trap, with the property owner on the other side of it. Beers writes this trope more often than almost anyone and knows exactly where the beats go.
How it differs: Small-town rather than high society, and the money at stake is a shop lease. No inheritance clause, no marriage, and no Libro.fm edition.
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10. Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur
Darcy Lowell is an actuary who does not believe in feelings. Elle Jones writes horoscopes and believes in most things. After a disastrous blind date arranged by Darcy’s brother, Darcy claims it went well and then needs a girlfriend for the holidays.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: Same author, same city, same banter, and the trope one rung down: fake dating rather than fake engagement. It won the Lambda Literary Award and it is where the voice you enjoyed was developed.
How it differs: No marriage, no will, no money. The family pressure here is affectionate rather than dynastic, and the opposites-attract wiring does more work than the class gap.
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11. Count Your Lucky Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur
Margot Cooper plans weddings for a living and avoids commitment in her own life. Olivia Grant, her best friend until one night in college ended that, comes back to Seattle with a failed marriage behind her and needs somewhere to stay.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: Bellefleur’s other sapphic couple, and the one that spends the most time inside the wedding industry — the venues, the budgets, the performance of a perfect day. If the wedding machinery was part of the pleasure, this is where more of it is.
How it differs: Roommates and second chances rather than any kind of arrangement. No money, no clause, no farce — this is the quietest and most interior of Bellefleur’s three.
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12. A Restless Truth by Freya Marske
Maud Blyth, sister of an English baronet, escorts an elderly magician across the Atlantic in 1909. The magician is murdered on the first night. Violet Debenham — actress, magician, and the disgrace of a very wealthy family — helps her find out who did it.
Why a The Fiancée Farce reader wants it: For the high-society half of what you liked. Inherited money, family reputation as a weapon, and a great deal of arch dialogue in very good rooms. It is also genuinely funny, which most books in period dress are not.
How it differs: There is no marriage of convenience and no inheritance clause driving the romance — the plot is a murder. It is Edwardian fantasy, it is book two of a trilogy, and it ends happy-for-now rather than closed.
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If You Only Read One
For the same book again: The Business of Love. A clause requiring a marriage, a family company, a hired wife, and a rom-com tone. Nothing else gets all four.
For the best-written marriage of convenience: Who’d Have Thought. No will, but the arrangement is handled better than anywhere else in the genre.
For the money: Her Royal Happiness, if you want the wealth turned all the way up and do not mind losing the marriage plot.
For more Bellefleur: Written in the Stars. Same city, same voice, one rung down the escalation ladder.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are there other sapphic romances where a will forces a marriage?
Two that we could verify: The Business of Love by Charley Clarke, where a grandmother’s decree requires the chief executive to be married, and The Marriage Masquerade by Toni Logan, where a deed does not transfer until a first wedding anniversary. Accidental Honeymoon gets there by a slightly different route — the will is rewritten mid-book in response to the lie.
Is sapphic marriage of convenience a big trope?
No. Fake dating is enormous; actual marriage of convenience tops out at roughly a dozen titles with meaningful readerships, mostly from Ylva Publishing and Bold Strokes Books. If you work through this list you will have covered most of it.
What about sapphic historical marriage of convenience?
It barely exists. The historical marriage-of-convenience shelf is overwhelmingly male-female. The closest we can offer is A Restless Truth, which is Edwardian and full of family money but has a murder plot rather than a marriage plot.
Which of these has the most heat?
A Restless Truth and Who’d Have Thought are the most explicit of the ones we could verify. Accidental Honeymoon has essentially one scene. For several of the small-press titles we could not find a heat rating we trust, and the table says so rather than guessing.
What if none of these is quite right?
Tell us the book, not the trope. Our Books Like directory takes a title and routes you to the closest read-alike list we have — and if we have not written that one yet, it points you at the trope pages that get nearest and records what you searched for, so it gets built next.
Looking for read-alikes for a different book? Browse the full Books Like directory — search any sapphic title and we will point you at the closest match we have.