Reviews

First Comes Like: A Novel by Alisha Rai

Only show reviews with written explanations

thisboricuareader's review against another edition

5.0

THIS BOOK WAS SO GOOD! Like at first I was confused, I was like "who catfished her????"

I liked how this played out and I thought the couple/romance aspect was great. It literally was just perfect for them. I wanted more!!!

jess_mango's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

Book 3 in the Modern Love series by Alisha Rai. Each book in this series presents a relationship between a modern BIPOC couple. Each story has its share of references to social media or online dating. Side characters from previous book take the spotlight in each new book. In this book, Jia Ahmed takes center stage. She is friends & roomies with Katrina and Rhiannon from the previous two books. Jia is a Pakistani-American who has built a career as a beauty blogger, posting makeup tutorials and more on Instagram and other platforms. She has been having online exchanges with Bollywood Soap Opera star Dev Dixit for a while and is excited when it is announced he is moving to California to act in a new American TV show. But, when she approaches him at an industry party he has no idea who she is. It turns out that she has been CATFISHED. Dev is intrigued by her and has his assistant track her down after the party and the two agree to meet. A paparazzi gets photos of them at their meeting and the media assumes they are in a hot new relationship. So.... (of course) the two decide to pretend to date to get their respective families off their backs.

So, yes, this is another book in the fake dating trope. This one has a bit of a twist in that the female lead is a modest Muslim American woman who has no intentions to get hot & steamy outside of marriage. I actually ended up liking this book more than the previous two books in the series. It was a fun, light read that was easy to get through in a day.

Thank you to the publisher for the review copy!

farhana101's review against another edition

Go to review page

3.0

The first half of the book started off great, it was really cute. But then the second half of the book felt super rushed and I dont like that certain circumstances were somewhat forcing the 2 main characters to be together- it wasn’t a natural, organic progression of feelings because everything was happening so fast. I liked the main guy a lot but felt like he could’ve been fleshed out more in the 2nd half of the book.