Better Than the Movies

Same author, same sharp wit — Painter swaps small-town senior year for a fake-dating sports romance with equally electric banter and slow-burn tension.

If you loved the enemies-to-lovers energy and rapid-fire dialogue in Better Than the Movies, Lynn Painter's Fake Skating is the obvious next read. It trades Liz and Wes's romcom scheming for a fake-relationship setup on the ice, but the DNA is identical: two leads who bicker like they've known each other too long, a plot that keeps finding reasons to throw them together, and a romance that earns its payoff. Painter's voice — warm, funny, a little chaotic — is just as sharp here. Readers who finished Better Than the Movies in a single sitting and immediately asked "what to read after Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter" will feel right at home from the first chapter.

A summer romcom with real grief underneath — same emotional balance of swoony fun and loss that makes Better Than the Movies hit harder than expected.

Readers who were surprised by how much the parental-loss subplot in Better Than the Movies moved them will find a kindred book in K. L. Walther's The Summer of Broken Rules. The setup is different — a Martha's Vineyard family reunion, an elaborate game of assassin, a slow-burn romance — but the tonal recipe is nearly identical: high-energy, banter-forward fun layered over genuine grief that the protagonist is still quietly carrying. Like Liz Buxbaum, the heroine here uses the momentum of a summer crush to process something heavier. It's one of the best books like Better Than the Movies for readers who want their YA romance to actually mean something, and it's a strong pick for anyone who found the movie-blueprint framing of Painter's novel unexpectedly affecting.

A frenemy-to-something-more story built around grief and what we miss when we follow the wrong blueprint — eerily close emotional territory to Painter's novel.

If He Had Been with Me by Laura Nowlin is one of those books that sneaks up on you the same way Better Than the Movies does. On the surface it looks like a standard high-school romance — two childhood best friends who drifted, a long-term boyfriend, a senior year full of parties and plans. But underneath there's a structural ache, a sense that the protagonist has been following a script that doesn't quite fit her. The frenemy dynamic, the question of whether the person you've always dismissed is actually the person you need, and the emotional gut-punch in the final act all map closely onto what Lynn Painter does. If you're searching for books like Better Than the Movies that carry real emotional weight alongside the romance, this is the one to reach for next.

Sharp-tongued teen romance where grief is structural, not decorative — for readers who responded most to the emotional depth beneath Painter's romcom surface.

Better Than the Movies works partly because Liz's grief over her mother isn't a side note — it shapes how she sees love, movies, and what a happy ending is supposed to look like. John Green's The Fault in Our Stars operates on the same principle: the romance between Hazel and Augustus is bracingly funny and fast-talking, but mortality sits at the center of every scene. Both books use humor as a pressure valve for sadness, and both ask whether the stories we tell ourselves about love are helpful or harmful. Green's novel is more explicitly about illness and has a harder emotional landing, so it's the stronger recommendation for older teens (16+) in the YA 12–18 range who want what to read after Better Than the Movies but are ready for something heavier.