Role Play

A struggling indie romance author sets out to hire a marketing guru and ends up, after one frantic search for "book boyfriend material" and a chance bar encounter, accidentally spending her entire budget on an escort named Forrest. Rather than cutting her losses, she keeps him on as her muse, spending three months having him act out brooding billionaires, masked strangers, small-town cowboys, and every green-flag trope she needs for her next bestseller. As the line between research and real feelings blurs, she has to figure out whether Forrest's affection is genuine or just part of the job — and whether she's writing a love story or living one.

Kay Cove opens the Off the Books series with a meta romance about an author testing tropes on the person she's falling for.