#modern romance
3. coitus
2. kissing
1. holding hands
TV on the Radio / Modern Romance (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
Books I Read in 2022
#7 – First Comes Like, by Alisha Rai
- Rating: 4/5 stars
Starts with a solid setup, rushes through a few common and somewhat artificial tropes to get to a happy ending that maybe could have been better earned. What rescued this from a lower rating (I did debate between three and four stars) was how much I loved the characters.
Jia is a hot mess in many ways, and she’s painfully aware of it because she believes she’s the current black sheep of the family. While they may often see her impulsiveness as a negative quality, the story frames it positively (and to some extent uses it to justify the rushed wedding.)
Dev can go on my book boyfriend list with a big gold star next to his name, because at every point in the plot he takes Jia seriously–her grievances against his family because of the situation that brings them together, her job, her needs and desires–and it’s clear that no one else in Jia’s life has ever done that to the same extent. Which obviously makes them perfect for each other, and I’m thrilled about that!
The plot… ugh. It does jump through a series of really common tropes (there’s only one bed, fake dating, fake or real engagement, let’s get married tomorrow) and tropes in and of themselves aren’t evil, having so many crammed together in such a small space (the second half of the book) felt like an escalating comedy of errors, only not in a good way. I see why this is the way it has to go, to some extent, in order to get these two to a happy ending: neither of them, for their various personal reasons, is going to hop in the sack before marriage, and I respect that. But it does mean in order to get the sex scene before the end, everything else needs to rush to get them there.
I did still enjoy it, obviously, and any problems aside, four stars feels like the right rating because I liked it better than The Right Swipe (which I gave three,) but not as much as Girl Gone Viral (which I gave five but it could have been six or ten or twenty, if that were the scale.)
fromThe Girl and the Geek
fromThe Idols Of My House
Something About Us
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Blushing Men #1
She’s My Type
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