Author: Zac Hammett
Publisher: Zando/Slowburn
Pub Date: August 4, 2026
Quick Take
International Relations trades Zac Hammett’s previous playing field for a diplomatic ballroom, and the swap works beautifully. See You at the Finish Line paired two rival Cambridge rowers. This one drops a career-obsessed diplomat and the actor he hires to play his boyfriend into the fake dating to fake marriage pipeline. The premise leans on familiar tropes, but the dual POV structure does real work here. You get to sit inside both Max and Hunter’s heads. What you find there is two people who each want more than they’re letting the other one see.
About Zac Hammett
Zac Hammett made his debut with See You at the Finish Line, a rowing-set enemies-to-lovers romance. It became one of the best queer romances published that year and is now headed for a TV adaptation. Hammett writes with real ease inside sports-world settings, so a move away from athletics for his sophomore novel was a real gamble. It pays off. International Relations proves Hammett’s voice doesn’t need a stadium or a boat race to work. Diplomatic circuits, embassy politics, and visa paperwork turn out to be just as fertile ground for banter and tension as a rowing shell. If anything, the new setting gives him more room to build out a wider, funnier world.
What Is International Relations About?
Max has never had time for relationships. His career in international diplomacy eats every hour he has. A high-profile ambassadorial post opens up in Athens, and he’s quietly told that his single status isn’t helping his odds. His rival Quentin has an edge, thanks to a picture-perfect girlfriend who helps the optics. So Max hires Hunter, a charismatic actor, to play the perfect boyfriend. Hunter dazzles on the diplomatic circuit. Then visa complications force the fake relationship into an actual marriage of convenience.
It’s a premise built almost entirely out of familiar parts: fake dating, forced proximity, opposites attract, grumpy-sunshine. None of that is a knock. These tropes exist because they work, and Hammett assembles them with real craft rather than just checking boxes.
What the Dual POV Actually Reveals
The chapters alternate between Max and Hunter. That structure does more here than just split the narration evenly. Each of them is performing a version of themselves for the other. Max plays the controlled professional who doesn’t need anyone. Hunter plays the easygoing charmer who takes nothing too seriously. The dual POV lets you watch both performances crack in real time. You see Max’s anxiety about the job bleed into a genuine fear of being truly known, something his own narration keeps trying to talk itself out of. You see Hunter’s easy confidence sit right next to a much rawer need for stability, one he never quite says out loud, even to himself.
That’s the real engine of the book, and it’s more interesting than the plot mechanics around it. Each of them wants more from the other than their actions let on. The switching perspective is what lets you catch the gap between what they’re doing and what they actually want. A quiet moment reads as casual from Max’s side. Inside Hunter’s head a chapter later, that same moment lands completely differently. It’s a genuinely well-built structure, not just a device for delivering information the plot needs. The tension between them isn’t manufactured through miscommunication either, a trap a lot of dual POV romances fall into. It comes from two people who understand each other more than they’re willing to admit. That’s a much harder thing to write well, and a much more satisfying thing to read.
A Fresh Setting, With One Pace Wrinkle
What sets International Relations apart from Hammett’s debut isn’t just the plot mechanics. It’s the world he builds around them. Swapping a sports backdrop for the diplomatic circuit gives the book a different texture entirely. Embassy events replace boat races. Visa complications replace exam pressure. Image management replaces team politics. Hammett’s rowing romance leaned hard into a specific athletic subculture, and watching him build out an entirely different world this well is its own kind of pleasure.
The one place the book asks something of the reader is in how quickly the fake dating tips into an actual marriage. The visa pressure and career stakes both make sense as motivation. The emotional groundwork Hammett lays through the dual POV goes a long way toward making it land. Even so, the pivot from staged relationship to legal marriage happens fast. It’s the kind of plot turn you either accept as part of the genre’s internal logic, or you find yourself resisting it. I chose to go with it. The character work had already earned my trust by that point, so it never broke the read for me. But it’s worth naming as the one seam in an otherwise tightly built book. It’s the main thing keeping this from a full five stars.
Is International Relations Worth Reading?
Yes, easily. This book is for readers who want a rom-com with real chemistry underneath the trope-heavy setup. It’s for anyone who liked See You at the Finish Line and wants to see Hammett stretch into new territory. It’s also for fans of The Proposal or Heated Rivalry who want the same fake-relationship-turns-real engine, handled with genuine emotional intelligence.
Final Verdict
International Relations is Zac Hammett proving he’s more than a one-setting writer. The dual POV structure here does real, deliberate work rather than just alternating for variety’s sake. It plays some familiar romance notes, and the leap from fake dating to marriage asks you to meet it partway. But the chemistry and the emotional precision underneath more than earn it. A wonderful read, four and a half stars for a book that understands exactly what its two leads are hiding from each other, and from themselves.
This review draws on an advance reader copy provided by Zando. International Relations publishes August 4, 2026.
