The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai
Modern Love #1
Contemporary Romance
August 6, 2019 by Avon
ARC
I love Alisha Rai romances. I love the diversity of her casts. I love that her main protagonists always have supportive and loving friends and family. I love that found families are frequently a theme within her stories. Her books are sex positive and feminist and filled with characters beautifully and perfectly flawed. Also, she can write the hell out of a sex scene.
The Right Swipe had everything guaranteed to make me one-click. Two past lovers finding themselves on opposite sides of a dating app rivalry. Tech, online dating, and an athlete hero. A lot about this book worked for me, and while I did struggle with a few things, in the end I did enjoy.
There were moments in The Right Swipe that I really connected with the heroine, Rhiannon. And there were times when I didn’t. She is a badass, take no shit, successful woman who has control and commitment issues, is afraid to show vulnerability and jumped to conclusions about the hero’s intentions time and again. The main plot arc is about Rhiannon wanting to buy her competitor, Matchmaker, and fold it into her more modern company, Crush. Rhi shows up at a convention, fully committed to approaching the owner of Matchmaker, when she spies the one man she doesn’t expect to ever see again. The man who ghosted her after their one night together
Samson Lima is lonely man still dealing with the death of a close family member, his past in the NFL and the way CTE has impacted his family and close friends. He is only involved in Matchmaker to help out his aunt, which is how he runs into Rhiannon again after their one steamy night together. He immediately wants to reconnect, only to figure out pretty quickly that Rhi is very angry with him.
This couple y’all. Samson was a total cinnamon roll, beta hero and Rhi was assertive, and aggressive, and standoffish with him right from the beginning. It felt like it took forever for this couple to even have a simple talk about why he didn’t show after their night together. And while I understood the reasons behind her overall distrust of men, I kind of felt like Samson didn’t deserve the way Rhi treated him after he explained why he originally “ghosted” her. He basically had limited say so about their relationship and it was all 100% on her terms for the entirety of the book.
Despite all that I did like this couple and I rooted for them to be together. They had tremendous chemistry and I kept thinking that if they would just sit down and talk to each other they would be an amazing couple.
Once again I feel like the cutesy cartoon cover was deceptive and readers might be thinking they are getting one type of romance, only to get something completely different. This is definitely not a romantic comedy. Between Rhi’s backstory and Samson’s dealing with the his family’s history with CTE there are some deep themes.
I enjoyed The Right Swipe, but then again there isn’t an Alisha Rai book I haven’t enjoyed. I had a few issues, but all in all I would recommend. I am really looking forward to the next book in the series.
Final Grade- B-
KINDLE * BN * GOODREADS * AUTHOR’S WEBSITE
What’s on my Kindle this week:
I know that I’ve been on a soapbox about cutesy/cartoony/chick-lit/deceptive covers, but it’s so annoying to have a serious (and seriously sexy) book like this packaged with a girly bright pink illustrated cover. Remember those beautiful covers for Rai’s Forbidden Hearts series, with the multi-cultural cast of cover models? Those were gorgeous and communicated essential information about the stories inside. I hate this trend toward cartoon covers. In addition to being deceptive, I think it also trivializes women’s reading choices. Bah, humbug!
Agree 100%.
I agree DiscoDollyDeb, her previous covers were gorgeous. The cartoon covers scream Chic Lit or Women’s Fiction to me, which is fine, but if I was looking for that and instead found a steamy Romance, I might not be happy. It also makes it look like a Rom Com, which is a trend, but one maybe I am not looking for if I want to read a typical Rai book. It feels like the book has to be sold as something else in order to be successful, which perhaps is working in this case because I have seen this book mentioned everywhere, including places like Entertainment Weekly, but makes me think it is not for me, and I have enjoyed many of Rai’s previous books.
I used to think covers didn’t really play a role in my buying decisions, but the cartoon covers make me second guess if a book is something I want to read. (I kind of feel like the old person telling the kids to get off my lawn.) Sigh.
I would have rather had a cover reminiscent of Rai’s previous series. Especially since they are loosely related.(The heroine is the sister of the hero from book three in Forbidden Hearts.) I feel like with the cartoon covers you just never know what the heck you are really getting. Romantic Comedy? Women’s Fiction? Is it a steamy or sweet romance? It’s frustrating.