The Cheat Sheet

Sarah Adams's The Cheat Sheet centres on two people who have been best friends for years. Bree Camden is in love with Nathan Donelson and has decided that telling him would ruin the friendship, which is a complicated position to hold given that he is also an NFL quarterback and the most photographed man she knows. She believes her feelings are one-sided and is determined to say nothing about them.

After one drink too many, Bree tells a reporter how she really feels, and by the following morning the story is everywhere. Nathan's answer to the resulting attention is to suggest that the two of them pretend to be a couple, and the pretence turns out to require a great deal more management than either of them had bargained for, with the friendship and the acting both under pressure.

The Cheat Sheet was published in 2021. It is a romantic comedy built on a long friendship and on the awkwardness of life beside a professional athlete who is recognised wherever he goes: once the story is out, the press follows it, the two of them become the centre of attention, and the pretence has to be kept up in public while Bree waits to find out whether any of it is returned.