Book Review: First Comes Like by Alisha Rai

´Not a date. Just a chance to pretend he was on one´.

First Comes Like by Alisha Rai is a Pakistani-Indian romance which starts as a ridiculous catfishing story. Dev, the heir of a famous Bollywood family, has been set up an online dating profile by his close male relatives. Out of all the virtual matches, it is Jia, a Pakistani-American make-up YouTube influencer who keeps chatting with ´him´. The fake will eventually discovered for a while, but the real Dev wants to apologize for the treachery and ends up marrying her.

The book is the third installment from the Modern Love series, but it can be read as a stand alone book, although the characters do move from a book to another. 

Despite of being interested in any kind of modern times dating stories - especially online - the multi-cultural aspect was of interest for me as well. I am equally looking for a more diverse representation of relationships, far from the current Western/American model, with a different spin and/or approach. Shortly, I had certain expectations from this book, both in terms of story and of character development.

After a bit over 400-page of reading, I may confess that I wasn´t very much convinced about. There are several reasons for it. First and foremost, despite the relatively spectacular start, after the first quarter, it evolves clearly and predictably towards an expected ending: they are getting married. Definitely, when you meet the love of your life, it is a normal way to re-start things, but in this case, the attraction is rather suggested than it really happens. Dev´s story is much more detailed and represented, while Jia is rather reduced to the fact that she is hijabi, but at what extent her choice and her cultural background define her identity is largely unclear. Last but not least, the timeline of some episodes, particularly after they are getting married looks completely wrong to me, as they do not correspond to their assigned time slot - too many events in such a short time etc.

I deeply wished to like this story but my interest diminished considerably in the second half of it. Sometimes, there is nothing to do about it, either it comes to books or to relationships.

Rating: (an indulgent) 3 stars