First Comes Like - Review

First Comes Like (Modern Love, # 3)

By: Alisha Rai

Publication: February 16th 2021 by Avon

432 pages

Genre: Adult, Contemporary

Source: Publisher via NetGalley (Thank you!!)

( Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository )

*Note: The above links to Amazon and Book Depository are affiliate links. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.

Goodreads description--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?

I blew through First Comes Like. I really like the modern issues that couples face due to technology in this series (although I haven't read book 1). Husband and I utilized email in our early relationship so I appreciate seeing these aspects presented in a realistic way.

First Comes Like was exactly like the description states, yet still different from what I had in mind. When Jia finally meets Dev, he immediately feels an attraction to her but has no idea who she is. She's hurt and embarrassed. He attempts to investigate who could have written the messages to her in his name and is determined to make things up to her as much as possible. This causes them to interact more and eventually come up with the plan to fake date. Of course, getting to know each other sparks feelings on both sides, but neither knows where the other stands.

I devoured this book. Even though the challenges of modern technology felt realistic to me, the solutions to the problems facing this couple didn't feel the same level of realism in my opinion. Maybe this stems from my lack of cultural knowledge, but I felt some of those pieces of the puzzle were too easy. Honestly, though, I was enjoying the journey too much to care about the realism in the moment.

Often times I end up complaining about books that have forced extreme conflict just for the characters to have something to overcome. I was thankful that nothing crazy happened to force conflict between these two characters. There were little things that they had to work to overcome but nothing drastic or forced.

Overall, I enjoyed First Comes Like . It was clean for the most part. The only scenes came at a point where I couldn't morally object. Shoot these characters didn't even kiss until past a certain point (no spoilers). The technology challenges were realistic even though the solutions to some of the conflicts were not in my opinion. Ultimately, I'm happy to give First Comes Like 4 Stars. Have you read First Comes Like ? What did you think? Let me know!