Somewhere past Brainerd, with the snow thickening and the drive home already three hours long, two college freshmen stop at a roadside diner. The menu is sticky, the ketchup is almost empty, Avery orders pancakes and Theo a cheeseburger. He admits his ex is thinking of transferring back to Minnesota to win him over, and he does not want her to. Avery, a woman who has built her whole personality around hating lies, is nudging spilled salt into a line on the Formica when the idea arrives: he should tell everyone he has a new girlfriend. Her. Just for the long weekend, and only until they are back on campus. The Friendsgiving Pact by Elizabeth Davis is the story of that bargain, and it takes its two leads less than a page to start breaking the rules they set for it.
The Friendsgiving Pact and the Best Friend Who Never Says It
The romance is told in alternating close third person, and the smartest choice Davis makes is to let the reader know very early what Avery does not. Theo has been in love with her for more than a year. He told Tommy, their group’s resident gossip, during a drunken night over the summer, and much of the comedy in the first half comes from Tommy nearly blurting it out and Theo steering every conversation away just in time.
That gives the fake-dating setup a sting most versions of the trope lack. Every kiss Avery treats as rehearsal is, for him, the real thing performed in public. Two flashback chapters return to the homecoming dance the previous autumn, when he stepped in after her boyfriend bailed on the morning of the dance and the two of them nearly kissed in the school gym. Those chapters are the most tender writing in The Friendsgiving Pact by Elizabeth Davis, and they make the slow realisation on her side believable rather than sudden. Davis also gets the texture of a first trip home right: the friends who suddenly seem dearer after ten weeks apart, the little brother who has grown, the parents who ask the same three questions about classes, roommates and majors.
The secondary cast is lively. Theo’s step-grandmother Evelyn, who insists on her wedding china and keeps proposing new nicknames for herself, is a delight. Avery’s Aunt Jenn and her wife Faith, up from Chicago and quietly offering wine to a niece who needs it, are the only adults in her family who seem to like her for herself. Back at college, Theo’s nocturnal roommate Sawyer steals every scene he is given.
The Honesty Rule and the Liar Who Wrote It
The second thread is Avery’s own, and it is where The Friendsgiving Pact by Elizabeth Davis is at its most interesting. Her horror of being lied to is a running joke for most of the book, until the reason behind it lands. The irony is not lost on her friends: the girl who cannot forgive a lie has just staged the biggest one their town has seen all year. Her parents, both doctors and the town’s golden couple, are holding a marriage together for appearances, and she has known for a long time why her father is never where he says he is.
On Thanksgiving Day itself, Davis splits the holiday across two dinners, which is a nice structural idea. Theo sits through a small, kind, excruciating meal with his stepfather’s mother asking when he plans to settle down. Avery survives a catered dinner for more than thirty guests, half of them hospital colleagues, nearly all of them asking about her ex. When Theo arrives for dessert, the pie he praises turns out to be store-bought. It is the best extended sequence in The Friendsgiving Pact by Elizabeth Davis, and the tension he notices between her parents across that table pays off much later.
The trouble is that once Avery’s past is explained, the book leans on it to excuse a third-act reaction that some readers will find out of proportion to Theo’s secret.
Where It Gives Ground
- The holiday is over by the midpoint. For a book sold as a Thanksgiving romance, the turkey is gone very early. The second half moves through a country-club Christmas party, December finals and Christmas Day, and reads more like a Christmas novel. Readers drawn by the title’s promise of a Friendsgiving should know there is no such dinner in it.
- The same fight, several times. Avery and Theo argue over honesty more than once, covering the same points each time. Interior tics recur too: lip-chewing, crossed arms, hearts stopping or lurching.
- The father’s affairs arrive late. The cheating that explains Avery is only spelled out after the breakup, and its resolution happens off the page.
- Cameron is one note. The rich ex is handsome, drunk and petulant in every scene until a tidy epilogue redeems him.
Read These Next
If The Friendsgiving Pact by Elizabeth Davis left you wanting more fake relationships and holiday longing, try these.
- Better than the Movies by Lynn Painter, a younger, sweeter friends-to-lovers story built on a scheme that backfires.
- The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, the fake-dating romance that made the trope a bestseller again, with a similar open-door heat level.
- A Married Little Christmas by Abby Jimenez, more Minnesota winter and a pretend relationship at the holidays.
- Christmas Staycation by Meghan Quinn, for a seasonal romcom that leans harder into the comedy.
- An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott, if you want a book that actually stays at the Thanksgiving table.
About Elizabeth Davis
Elizabeth Davis was born and raised in suburban Milwaukee and now lives in Minneapolis with her husband and their two children, which explains why the northern Minnesota winter in The Friendsgiving Pact by Elizabeth Davis feels lived in rather than researched. She writes contemporary romcoms with a weakness for pretend relationships.
- Her debut, I Love You, I Hate You, an enemies-to-lovers story about two rival lawyers, came out from Headline Eternal in 2021.
- The Player Next Door (2022) and Never Fake Date Your Roommate (2025) followed, both fake-dating stories.
- This is her fourth novel and her first with Avon, the HarperCollins romance imprint, published on 20 October 2026.
- The author note printed in the book still says she has published two novels; publisher listings show three before this one.
What Stays With You
The lingering image is not a kiss but a gym on homecoming night, a boy in a borrowed suit, and a dance that almost changed everything a year too early. The Friendsgiving Pact by Elizabeth Davis is uneven, a little repetitive and only briefly about Thanksgiving, but its best scenes understand how long a person can carry a feeling without saying it out loud.
Pack it for the drive home. Just do not expect the leftovers to last the whole way.
