by Lucina Luo
As a child, Cassiel Lim named himself after the angel of temperance and time. Now he repairs watches, and his life runs like clockwork. He's autistic, keeps his world quiet and manageable, and his mother is afraid he'll die alone. When a family dinner for a major Korean holiday looms, he books a date through an app.
May Huang is a dishwasher in Chinatown, managing a brain injury and ADHD with color-coded notebooks and phone alarms. He's chatty, good with parents, and needs the money, so he takes the gig. They meet on a Thursday to build their cover story, then again the next Thursday.
It was meant to end after one dinner. Instead the days stretch into Christmas, then into a new year. The fake life is starting to look real, built on money neither mentions and a story that was never true. Neither of them is ready for what happens when the arrangement stops being one.
Genres: Queer/LGBTQ+, LGBTQIA+ Romance, Gay Romance, Contemporary Romance, MM Romance, Queer, LGBTQ+, Fake Dating, Asian
Tropes: Rom-com vibes, Slice of Life, Slow Burn Romance, Opposites Attract, Strangers to Lovers, Slow Burn, Fake Dating, Neurodivergent, dual POV, No Third Act Breakup
ISBN: 9781067278700
328 pages
Published: 2026-09-24
Publisher: Self-Published/Indie