Review: First Comes Like

Synopsis:

The author of The Right Swipe and Girl Gone Viral returns with a story about finding love in all the wrong inboxes…

Beauty expert and influencer Jia Ahmed has her eye on the prize: conquering the internet today, the entire makeup industry tomorrow, and finally, finally proving herself to her big opinionated family. She has little time for love, and even less time for the men in her private messages—until the day a certain international superstar slides into her DMs, and she falls hard and fast.

There’s just one wrinkle: he has no idea who she is.

The son of a powerful Bollywood family, soap opera star Dev Dixit is used to drama, but a strange woman who accuses him of wooing her online, well, that’s a new one. As much as he’d like to focus on his Hollywood fresh start, he can’t get Jia out of his head. Especially once he starts to suspect who might have used his famous name to catfish her…

When paparazzi blast their private business into the public eye, Dev is happy to engage in some friendly fake dating to calm the gossips and to dazzle her family. But as the whole world swoons over their relationship, Jia can’t help but wonder: Can an online romance-turned-offline-fauxmance ever become love in real life?  

Rating: 5-stars

Review:

First Comes Like by Alisha Rai is a fascinating romantic comedy. It features two India families that come together in an interesting way. I love the cultures that were presented in this read. The characters were from another country yet some of them made a home in the United States. I loved following on how they handled their culture identity and mashed it with the new culture of the United States. But most of all, I loved them being they way they are and retaining their original culture beliefs and etc. The heroine was super easy to relate with being as she is outgoing in her videos and shy in person. I am similar to that. I was able to relate to her struggles despite her being completely fictional.

These characters felt like real people. This writer was completely new to me. So, this is the first of her novels that I am reading. According to the web, this is the third book in her modern love series. I can verify that having not read the previous and reading only this one, readers won’t have an issue of following along. Fun, vibrant, and hilarious. Their situation aka white lie went from little to huge quickly. The best thing was that this novel did not drag at all. There was plenty of action and dialogue to keep my full attention.

The blossoming romance was sweet. It can also be claimed as a clean read, since the sex scenes were not like most rom-coms. I found that more appealing. Because their attraction was hinged on their friendship, personalities, and likeness in family topics. They were able to connect and understand each other’s family issues. Their families made this story more complex and hilarious. My favorite character was Dev’s grandmother. Because in the beginning she was not a likable character but then at the ending she became the most likable.

Jia and Dev were cool. I did enjoy them just as much. Jia gets attached to Dev online. Thinking this whole time she was talking to him. Then she got mad at him. Dev was puzzled by the whole situation and took it better than I expected. He soon investigates and finds Jia was right and that he liked her more knowing that she wasn’t a crazy fan hitting on him. Due to their families they end up becoming fake engaged and from there all hell broke loose. This is a friend-to-lover theme. Overall, I was impressed with Alisha Rai’s writing. I cannot wait to see what she will create next.