Monday, April 12, 2021

First Comes Like

First Comes Like by Alisha Rai, 414 pages

YouTube makeup guru Jia Ahmed has been chatting online with Bollywood star Dev Dixit for almost a year when she finally gets the chance to meet him IRL. But when she approaches him at a party, he doesn't know who she is. With both of them facing pressure from their families to settle down with a nice partner, the pair decides to pretend to date... which goes about as well as you'd think. Soon, they're head over heels in love with one another, but completely afraid to share that with each other.

The third in Rai's Modern Love series centered on couples who meet online before hooking up IRL, and while I love the way Rai has translated the meet-cute and mistaken-identity tropes of romance to a modern social media-based world, this one falls a bit flat for me. Both Jia and Dev's cultural backgrounds shine through (I particularly like how Jia marries fashion and makeup with traditional Muslim attire), but something about their relationship seems a bit lacking to me. The previous entry in this series, Girl Gone Viral, is far superior, so give that one a read instead.

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