First Comes Like
A Novel
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4.2 • 52 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
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
And she does it again <3
I cannot get enough of Alisha Rai’s books. This one gave me all the swooney feelings, connected me to my own late-bloom love understandings, and made me feel nice and warm inside. Thankful for Alisha and her writing so much! I hope to make people feel as deeply as she made me with my own words one day. :)
Not Much Romance!
I received this book through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Jia is a social media influencer and thinks she has caught the eye of a member of a famous Bollywood family. But when she finds out he is in town she has to meet him in person. But instead he doesn’t even know who she is. Broken hearted and embarrassed she finds out that she has been catfished.
But Dev Dexit cant get her out of his mind and when he finds out what his twin did to her he wants to make amends. But starting a faux dating romance with Jia in his struggling world at the moment just seems to be difficult at best. But as these two get to know one another could there be real feelings for a HEA?
This story moves slow at times and it just seemed a little bit lacking a true love connection and the feels for me. Otherwise I would have loved it!