First Comes Like
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Saira Ayers
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Neil Shah
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By:
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Alisha Rai
About this listen
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?
©2021 Alisha Rai (P)2021 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Liza B.—the only DJ who gives a jam—wants to take her neighborhood back from the soulless property developer dropping unaffordable condos on every street corner in DC. But her planned protest at a corporate event takes a turn after she mistakes the smoldering-hot CEO for the waitstaff. When they go toe-to-toe, the sparks fly—but her impossible-to-ignore family thwarts her every move. Liza wants Dorsey Fitzgerald out of her hood, but she’ll settle for getting him out of her head.
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The CHEMISTRY
- By Kristen Killen on 09-18-23
By: Nikki Payne
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#1 Crush
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Tia Monroe was smart, sassy, and successful. Sure, she could get a little crazy at times - life around Tia was never boring - but that was part of her appeal. And while she didn't see herself as classically beautiful, she had no shortage of options in the boyfriend department. She just hadn't found one who held her interest. Until she laid eyes on Eric Larsson, and then it was lust at first sight. He packed the perfect mix of smoldering sexy and unapologetic cool into his blond-haired, blue-eyed, ridiculously hot six-foot-four frame.
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Cute laugh out loud story
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By: T Gephart
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Tessa O'Connell is a girl as ordinary as they come - or so she thinks. Her aim for senior year is to keep her head down yet somehow manage to convince her childhood love, Jay Stone, to love her back. What she isn't prepared for is for Jay's brother, Cole, to return to town and change the life she's always been seemingly content to live. Tall, gorgeous as all hell, and a bad boy with ocean blue eyes and the perfect edge of adorability, he was her greatest tormentor, her number one enemy.
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I love this story!!!
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Princess Pilar is tired of playing by the rules. She’s sick of the spotlight and being seen as the uptight goody-too-shoes the media has cast her to be. She’s especially tired of the fact that her brothers are allowed to run off and do whatever they want while she sits inside watching the world pass her by. That’s why she decides that while her older brothers are off on their usual summer holidays, she’s going to quietly pack her things and travel to the one place her parents have always forbidden her to step foot on - Ibiza.
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An American girl finds her prince in this "fun and dishy" (People) royal romance inspired by Prince William and Kate Middleton. American Bex Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister Lacey was always the romantic, the one who daydreamed of being a princess. But it's adventure-seeking Bex who goes to Oxford and meets dreamy Nick across the hall - and Bex who finds herself accidentally in love with the heir to the British throne. Nick is wonderful, but he comes with unimaginable baggage.
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I deserve a medal for getting to the endless end.
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Unruly Red knows she’s no one’s idea of a sweet old granny. But with one long-distance phone call, the fortysomething bar owner with the tattoos and tight jeans is suddenly responsible for two young grandchildren she hardly knows.
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What a surprise
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For the past 20 years, Liv and Eliot Goldenhorn have run In Love in New York, Brooklyn’s beloved wedding-planning business. When Eliot dies unexpectedly, he even more unexpectedly leaves half of the business to his younger, blonder girlfriend, Savannah. Liv and Savannah are not a match made in heaven, to say the least. But what starts as a personal and professional nightmare transforms into something even savvy, cynical Liv Goldenhorn couldn’t begin to imagine.
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Distractingly bad narration
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What listeners say about First Comes Like
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- PMA1984
- 03-06-22
Possibly my favorite book by Alisha Rai
I'd been curious about Jia since we met her in an earlier book, and her story is full of loving and likable people...and family members who surprise the main characters in both good and bad ways. Both main characters work hard to be good people and to grow and have lovely story arcs. Just when I thought I couldn't like Alisha Rai's writing more, she brought us this book and proved me wrong.
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- Hannah V
- 05-07-23
Great slow burn
This was such a good slow burn! Plenty of tropes - mistaken identity, fake dating, one bed, etc. - and they came together well. Definitely left me wanting more to see what happens next with their story and life together! I loved that Dev respected Jia, and was so mindful of her boundaries. But I also appreciated that when the time was right, there were some steamy scenes. It make this authentic, sweet, and spicy.
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- Midwest Mom
- 02-25-23
Entertaining faux-mance
I’ve read all 3 Modern Love books by Rai and this was the best one. Good characters who grew emotionally . The story is predictable and yet still enjoyable.
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1 person found this helpful
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- AudioBookHoe
- 02-17-21
cute fake engagement
First comes like was an entertaining romance. I picked it up based on the interfaith desi/South Asian rep and I wasn't disappointed. I think I've given this author a chance on multiple occasions but where she shines is desi rep. I will probably never co-sign her writing a black woman again but I will absolutely devour when she has one or more South Asian MCs.
This is the 3rd book in this series. I walked into it with low expectations but I didn't need to. Dev and Jia fit well together(though I hardly felt their age difference was relevant as it was only a few years). Sometimes it was hard to follow since SA folk be having so many effing family, sometimes if someone wasn't mentioned every chapter, when they were reintroduced, I forgot them.
Jia was a practicing Muslim of Pakistani descent and without giving any spoilers, she got catfished by an actor who came from an extremely famous family. She was a celeb in her own right as she was a viral MUA. It was sweet how often he watched her videos and validated her career choice.
Dev was sweet, having taken custody of his niece after her father passed. Luna was really in need of reassurance as she was insecure as heck based on her father and how cruel he was before his passing. He also lived with his mother's brother(his mother was Muslim and his ftaher was disowned for marrying her) which he was close to.
I may be in the minority but I actually liked that they got to know each other a lot. I'm not sure this would count as a halal romance but it certainly respected Jia's right to choose whether she wanted to wait for marriage or not. They both read as virgins but it was hard to tell. Dev was super respectful of her being practicing and while being SA, there's societal expectations whether you're Muslim or not, he was concerned about respecting Jia's boundaries.
Some parts were slow of course. It took 26 chapters(there are 30) for them to do more than hold hands. But I realize that was their journey and it worked for them, and the other heroines got their journies that worked for them.
It wasn't a perfect novel and the female narrator at times felt like she was just reading lines vs the male narrator but there weren't a lot of reasons to give it less than a five. I cringed everytime Rhiannon was on screen though. I beg this author, please stop writing Black women if you aren't going to make us nuanced!
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- brownskinblue
- 12-11-23
What An Adorable Story!!!
I have really enjoyed this story series, and I hate that it’s coming to an end! I don’t really come across many romance novels that aren’t either from my own (African American) or a white American lens, so to read books like this has been a real joy. Alisha Rai definitely has a new fan in me; I’ll be looking out for more of her offerings in the coming years!
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