First Comes Like
A Novel
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher 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?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rai (Girl Gone Viral) lovingly dives into modern Desi family dynamics in this playful, good-natured story of growing into love. Beauty influencer Jia Ahmed takes the bold step of crashing an L.A. party to meet the man who has been wooing her via Instagram messages, Bollywood actor–turned–soap opera star Dev Dixit—only to discover that he doesn't know who she is. Jia is humiliated, and to make matters worse, her family insists on traveling to California to meet her new beau after the paparazzi publish a picture of her and Dev from their one conversation at the party. Jia asks Dev to pretend to date her during the visit so that she doesn't have to tell her family she was catfished. But in the process of learning enough about each other to be convincing as a couple, they develop a true fondness for each other. Rai offers a refreshingly balanced depiction of minor celebrity; her protagonists clearly have money and fans, but in the end, they're still people. The personalities of the couple's families are distinctive, but never so over the top that the novel falls into farce, and the story lands as upbeat, witty, and sincere. Readers are sure to be satisfied.
Customer Reviews
Loved It!
I received an ARC of this book to read from Edelweiss+. All opinions are my own. First Comes Like by Alisha Rai is the third book in her Modern Love series and I’m delighted that I finally get to read Jia’s story as she was one of my favourite characters in the first two books. It could be read as a stand-alone but I adored the other books in the series so I highly recommend reading them too. This book has a lot of my favourite things going on, only one bed, fake relationship, must marry soon to collect inheritance, family members whom you love but who also drive you crazy and rebuilding your life when what you had isn’t what you need any more. Instagram Influencer Jia Ahmed was at a low point in her life when Bollywood Star Dev Dixit slid into her instagram dm’s and over the course of a few months she felt that they had become good friends and she can’t understand why now that they are in the same city he doesn’t want to meet in person. She arranges an invite a party for his new television show and discovers that she’s been catfished. Dev’s not quite sure why the beautiful woman he just met is so angry at him, but he’s going to find out why and do what ever he can to make it right and when the the dm’s were sent to Jia get published a fake relationship may be what’s needed to save her career and his. I loved this book so much that when I finished I read it again because I wasn’t ready for it to end. Steam Level: Light. Publishing Date February 16, 2021. #FirstComesLike #AlishaRai #AvonRomance #HarperCollinsCanada #HCC #ContemporaryRomance #OnlyOneBed #FakeRelationship #bookstagram #bookstagrammer