Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date is the funniest book in the Bright Falls trilogy and the one that takes the most risks. Iris writes romance novels and does not believe in them. After a spectacularly bad one-night stand with Stevie Scott — an actress whose anxiety is written from the inside rather than described from outside — the two of them fake-date so Stevie can prove something to her theatre company and Iris can research a book she cannot start.
Three findings before the list.
Fake dating is the healthiest shelf in sapphic romance. You will not run out. Six of the twelve below use it, in every register from a written contract to a reality-television format, and the table says which.
The working novelist is much rarer. Books about women who write books, where the writing is a real job with deadlines and a public identity attached, come down to about three: Iris Kelly, Read Between the Lines and Not in the Plan. Two of those three are on this list and neither has anything like Blake’s heat, which is the trade you are making.
And the hardest thing to find is anxiety plus sex positivity in the same book. There is a lot of sapphic romance with good mental-health representation. Most of it is young adult and closed door. An adult, explicit romance where a lead’s anxiety is neither cured by love nor treated as a reason to fade to black is genuinely uncommon — Fly with Me, Late Bloomer and Cleat Cute are the three that manage it, and they are numbers nine, ten and eleven.
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 Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date is here.
All 12 Books at a Glance
| Book | Fake dating | Author heroine | Anxiety or ND | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date (the original) | Yes | A romance novelist | Stevie’s anxiety | Open door |
| Delilah Green Doesn’t Care | No | No | No | Open door |
| Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail | No, enemies at work | No | Grief | Open door |
| Read Between the Lines | No | Yes, under a pen name | No | Open door, perfunctory |
| Not in the Plan | No | Yes, blocked | No | 2/5 |
| The Fiancée Farce | Fake engagement | No, a bookseller | No | Open door, high |
| Written in the Stars | Yes | No | No | Open door |
| D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding | Fake engagement | No | No | Open door |
| Just for Show | Yes, contracted | Non-fiction | No | Moderate |
| Fly with Me | Yes, for a promotion | No | Panic attacks | Open door |
| Late Bloomer | No | No | ND and chronic illness | Open door |
| Cleat Cute | No | No | ADHD, late diagnosis | 4/5 explicit |
| Casting Lacey | Yes, contracted | No | No | 3/5 |
1. Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake
Delilah Green, a broke photographer, returns to Bright Falls to shoot her estranged stepsister’s wedding and falls for Claire Sutherland, a bookshop owner raising an eight-year-old.
Why a Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: Book one of the trilogy, the highest-rated of the three, and where the friend group you have just spent a book with was assembled. Same sex-positivity, same refusal to make its women likeable on demand.
How it differs: No fake dating, no author, and no anxiety thread. The obstacle is family estrangement rather than a character’s own nervous system.
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2. Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail by Ashley Herring Blake
Astrid, the most controlled woman in Bright Falls, lands the renovation that is supposed to prove she is fine after her wedding collapsed. Jordan Everwood, the inn’s carpenter, thinks her design is vandalism and starts sabotaging it.
Why a Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: Book two, and the one with the best mother-daughter reckoning in the trilogy. If you are reading out of order, this is the piece you are missing.
How it differs: Enemies at work rather than a fake relationship, and grief does the work anxiety does in Iris Kelly — Jordan is a widow. No author character.
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3. Read Between the Lines by Rachel Lacey
Rosie Taft runs her late mother’s Manhattan bookshop. Jane Breslin works for her family’s property company by day and writes lesbian romance as “Brie” by night. They have been flirting online for two years without knowing who the other is — and then Jane’s family terminates Rosie’s lease.
Why a Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: The other working romance novelist. Jane writes the books Rosie reads, and the novel takes the writing life seriously: the pen name, the double life, the gap between what you publish and what you will admit to. That is Iris’s problem with the sign flipped.
How it differs: No fake dating and no anxiety thread. The heat is open door but reviewers describe the scenes as perfunctory, which is not a complaint anyone makes about Blake.
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4. Not in the Plan by Dana Hawkins
Mack is a New York writer with a stalled book who relocates to Seattle and starts working every day in Charlie’s coffee shop. Then she begins putting Charlie’s life into the manuscript without asking.
Why a Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: Writer’s block treated as an actual plot rather than a character note — the panic, the deadline, the willingness to use anything within reach as material. Iris cannot start her book; Mack cannot stop taking from someone else’s life to finish hers.
How it differs: Low heat at two out of five, which is a long way below Iris Kelly. No fake dating, and a lot of readers never quite believed the central relationship.
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5. The Fiancée Farce by Alexandria Bellefleur
Tansy Adams invented a girlfriend using a romance cover model’s photograph. The model, Gemma van Dalen, is a publishing heiress who needs a wife to satisfy her grandfather’s will, and proposes on the spot.
Why a Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: Fake dating escalated to a fake engagement, in the publishing world, with the highest heat of any book here. If it was the combination of farce and genuinely explicit sex that worked for you, this is the closest match.
How it differs: No anxiety representation and no author heroine — Tansy sells books rather than writing them. Seattle, and the family being deceived is a stepfamily.
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6. Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur
Darcy Lowell is an actuary who does not do feelings. Elle Jones writes horoscopes. 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 Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: The Lambda-winning fake-dating rom-com, and the one whose comic rhythm is closest to Blake’s. Both books run on a woman who has decided not to want anything being systematically dismantled.
How it differs: No author character and no anxiety thread. The stakes are family embarrassment rather than a career and a nervous system.
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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, then a hundred thousand dollars if the families believed it.
Why a Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: The funniest execution of the trope in the subgenre, with reality-show confessionals doing the same job as Iris’s authorial self-awareness — a running commentary from someone who knows exactly how this looks.
How it differs: No writer, no anxiety, no Bright Falls. The real emotional weight is about coming out to family rather than about a character’s own head.
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8. Just for Show by Jae
Dr Claire Renshaw is a couples therapist whose self-help book deal is collapsing after she was publicly dumped at her own engagement party. She hires Lana Henderson, a struggling actress, to play her new fiancée.
Why a Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: A writer with a book to deliver and a fake relationship contracted to save it — the professional and the romantic deceptions are the same deception, which is the structural joke Iris Kelly is also telling.
How it differs: Non-fiction rather than romance novels, no anxiety representation, and the heat is moderate rather than the running thread Blake gives you.
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9. Fly with Me by Andie Burke
Olive Murphy is an emergency nurse terrified of flying, on a plane to run a marathon for her comatose brother. She saves a passenger mid-flight and goes viral. Stella Soriano, the pilot, proposes they fake a relationship — the publicity would push her overdue captaincy through.
Why a Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: The best anxiety representation on this list. Panic attacks written from inside, in an explicit adult romance rather than a closed-door young-adult one — which is the specific combination Iris Kelly readers usually cannot find. The fake dating is career-motivated, like Stevie’s.
How it differs: No author character, and the emotional content is much heavier: the brother dies on the page, and there is medical trauma and an abusive ex alongside the romance.
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10. Late Bloomer by Mazey Eddings
Opal Devlin wins the lottery and buys a flower farm she has never seen. She arrives to find Pepper Boden already living there, furious, and legally entitled to be.
Why a Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: Neurodivergence and chronic illness handled with the same matter-of-factness Blake gives Stevie’s anxiety, inside an open-door romance that does not treat the sex as a reward for getting better. Opal’s chaotic warmth is very close to Iris’s.
How it differs: No fake dating and no writer. It is also a sadder book than Iris Kelly — the grief is load-bearing rather than a texture.
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11. Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner
Grace Henderson is a decade into the US women’s national team. Phoebe Matthews is the rookie called up to fill the roster spot Grace’s injury opened. They are teammates, rivals, and sleeping together in secret. Mid-book, Grace works out she has ADHD.
Why a Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: The best match on sex positivity. Explicit, frequent, consent-forward sex alongside a late-diagnosis neurodivergence arc — the two things Iris Kelly readers most often say they want more of, in one book.
How it differs: No fake dating, no writer, and no Bright Falls. ADHD rather than anxiety, and one reviewer flags a subplot where one lead amateur-diagnoses the other as uncomfortable.
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12. Casting Lacey by Elle Spencer
Quinn Kincaid stars in a network legal drama and is not out. Her publicist proposes a staged relationship with soap actress Lacey Matthews, run on a schedule with a contract and an end date.
Why a Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date reader wants it: A fake relationship between two actresses, negotiated in writing, with a performance to sustain in public — which is Stevie’s exact problem. The banter is the sharpest in Spencer’s catalogue.
How it differs: No writer and no anxiety thread. Three out of five on heat, and the coming-out stakes give it a seriousness Iris Kelly does not reach for.
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If You Only Read One
For the anxiety: Fly with Me. Panic attacks written from inside, in an adult open-door romance rather than a closed-door young-adult one.
For the author: Read Between the Lines. A working romance novelist with a pen name, a double life, and a reader who does not know who she is.
For the heat: Cleat Cute or The Fiancée Farce. Both go further than Blake does, and neither apologises.
For more fake dating: Written in the Stars, then D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding for the laugh.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are there other sapphic romances with a romance novelist as the lead?
Three that we would vouch for: Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date itself, Read Between the Lines by Rachel Lacey, where the lead publishes as “Brie”, and Not in the Plan by Dana Hawkins, where the lead is blocked and starts mining a real person’s life for material. It is a much smaller shelf than the number of bookshop-owner heroines would lead you to expect.
Which of these handles anxiety best?
Fly with Me, which writes panic attacks from the inside without curing them by the last chapter. Late Bloomer and Cleat Cute do the same for neurodivergence and chronic illness. All three are adult and open door, which is the combination that is hard to find.
Do I need to read the Bright Falls books in order?
Not strictly — each romance resolves on its own — but Iris Kelly leans on three books of running jokes and a friend group you will only half recognise if you start here. If you enjoyed it cold, the other two will be better, not worse.
Which of these is the closest on heat?
The Fiancée Farce and Cleat Cute both go further than Iris Kelly. Fly with Me, Late Bloomer and the other Bright Falls books sit at about the same level. Not in the Plan is the outlier at two out of five, so go in expecting a much quieter book.
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.