Partners in Crime by Alisha Rai
Contemporary Romance
Published October 18, 2022 by Avon

Review by Angela

Alisha Rai is one of my go-to authors when I want an emotional, sexy contemporary romance. So when this book came up for review I snapped it up. The blurb sounded fun and I was all in for an adventure romance.

Blurb:

Indian Matchmaking meets Date Night in this fun, romantic adventure in which a match-made couple about to be engaged gets caught up in a caper that puts their future—and lives—in danger.

At thirty-five, with a stable job as an accountant, Mira Chaudhary wants nothing more than to find a boring man to spend the rest of her life with. Having had enough excitement in her younger days and desperately trying to escape her dysfunctional past, she turns to a matching app specializing in Indian American singles to help her find someone to settle down with.

Enter Naveen Desai. An English professor with an uneventful, normal, and—dare she say it, boring—life, Naveen is perfect.

But just when things are going well, Mira receives news that her aunt has died. Suddenly a trip to Las Vegas to settle her aunt’s affairs turns into a mad dash to escape kidnappers, evade art thieves, and consorting with hackers who can decipher just what it was Mira’s aunt was involved with. Mira just hopes that Naveen isn’t chased away by the very same life of “excitement” that she’s been trying to get away from. But maybe, over the course of one wild night, Mira and Naveen will find the love connection that neither expected.

It must be said that this blurb doesn’t accurately reflect this book. I don’t know if the storyline changed in edits and the blurb was never updated, or… I don’t even know. But this is definitely a second-chance romance. Despite the blurb giving the impression that Mira meets Naveen through a matchmaker and all of a sudden they get caught up in a caper, the truth is they had been matched years prior and are reacquainted when she is called into finalizing her aunt’s will. That’s another thing, the blurb states that Naveen is an English professor, which he isn’t, he is her aunt’s lawyer.

The rest of the blurb is pretty spot on, they get caught up in a mess that her father created and spend the majority of the story running around Las Vegas trying to figure out why they were kidnapped, what Mira’s father stole, who is after them, and how to get out alive and with none of their family harmed. They encounter jewel and art thieves, spend some time in a strip club, and work with a hacker friend of Mira’s to uncover clues. This really is an adventure romance/romantic suspense, so much so that I kind of felt like the romance itself was left on the back burner.

There is also a whole lot of angst and drama in these characters’ backstories, which makes their relationship messy. They do start to trust each other again over the course of the book and act as a team, which leads to something more (and a signature Alisha Rai super hot love scene). The HEA is well done, and I get the impression that maybe Mira’s sister might get her own story, which would make me happy.

All in all, I did have fun reading, but I spent some time confused at the beginning.

Final grade- C+

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