First Comes Like
First Comes Like by Alisha Rai is $1.99! If you’ve been waiting for this to go on sale, now is your chance! Shana loved this one and gave it an A-:
My perfect pandemic read has enough drama to keep me guessing, but resolves conflicts before they stress me out. First Comes Like gave me everything I wanted, except for tips on moisturizing lipstick. Sadly, I’m still searching for my perfect shade. But if you’re looking for a trope-filled story with characters who overcome family expectations, First Comes Like was delightfully likable.
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?
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RECOMMENDED: The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang is $2.99! I adore this graphic novel so much. A genderfluid prince seeks out a seamstress to make beautiful dresses. The artwork is gorgeous and it’s a hefty graphic novel, which I liked because I wanted to prolong the reading experience as much as possible. I will issue a warning for a a very public outing scene.
Paris, at the dawn of the modern age:
Prince Sebastian is looking for a bride—or rather, his parents are looking for one for him. Sebastian is too busy hiding his secret life from everyone. At night he puts on daring dresses and takes Paris by storm as the fabulous Lady Crystallia—the hottest fashion icon in the world capital of fashion!
Sebastian’s secret weapon (and best friend) is the brilliant dressmaker Frances—one of only two people who know the truth: sometimes this boy wears dresses. But Frances dreams of greatness, and being someone’s secret weapon means being a secret. Forever. How long can Frances defer her dreams to protect a friend? Jen Wang weaves an exuberantly romantic tale of identity, young love, art, and family. A fairy tale for any age, The Prince and the Dressmaker will steal your heart.
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The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa is $1.99! This was recommended by Aarya in our Ready, Set, Go: Funny Romances post. I think Sosa has a new romance coming out in April, if it isn’t on your radar, Have you read this one?
Critically acclaimed author Mia Sosa delivers a sassy, steamy enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy about a wedding planner whose new job opportunity forces her to work side-by-side with the best man who ruined her own nuptials: her ex-fiancé’s infuriating, irritating, annoyingly handsome brother. Perfect for fans of Jasmine Guillory, Helen Hoang, and Sally Thorne!
A wedding planner left at the altar. Yeah, the irony isn’t lost on Carolina Santos, either. But despite that embarrassing blip from her past, Lina’s managed to make other people’s dreams come true as a top-tier wedding coordinator in DC. After impressing an influential guest, she’s offered an opportunity that could change her life. There’s just one hitch… she has to collaborate with the best (make that worst) man from her own failed nuptials.
Tired of living in his older brother’s shadow, marketing expert Max Hartley is determined to make his mark with a coveted hotel client looking to expand its brand. Then he learns he’ll be working with his brother’s whip-smart, stunning—absolutely off-limits—ex-fiancée. And she loathes him.
If they can survive the next few weeks and nail their presentation without killing each other, they’ll both come out ahead. Except Max has been public enemy number one ever since he encouraged his brother to jilt the bride, and Lina’s ready to dish out a little payback of her own.
But even the best laid plans can go awry, and soon Lina and Max discover animosity may not be the only emotion creating sparks between them. Still, this star-crossed couple can never be more than temporary playmates because Lina isn’t interested in falling in love and Max refuses to play runner-up to his brother ever again…
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Rescue Me by Sarra Manning is 99c! I mentioned this one on a previous Book Beat. One of my romance book club members mentioned this one. At the start of every meeting, we talk about books we’ve enjoyed recently, and they listed this one!
Margot and Will cross paths at the local dog rescue centre where – after a series of misunderstandings and a lot of consternation – they agree to foster Blossom (a staffy with a giant head, soft, floppy ears and kohl-rimmed brown eyes) together: one week on, one week off.
Margot and Will don’t get off to the best of starts: he thinks Margot is demanding and needy and Just So Much. And she thinks Will is emotionally unavailable, slightly brittle and very mistrustful. They’re both right.
But the more they bicker, the worse Blossom behaves, and they realise they have to form some sort of truce in order to dog-parent (or “pawrent” as Margot calls it, to which Will rolls his eyes) her together. It’s almost as if Blossom has plans of her own…
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Have you ever read a book by an author for the first time, hated it so much, and now you’re shy about reading another book by them? That’s THE WORST BEST MAN by Mia Sosa for me. It was easily one of the three worst books I read in 2020. To be somewhat fair, it has tropes I don’t particularly like, but the plot was a mess, character development and motivations were horrible and infuriating, and the writing while good wasn’t strong enough to make up for it.
ACT LIKE IT by Lucy Parker and TRUTH OR BEARD by Penny Reid are two others that just have me noping the F out when I see those authors mentioned as I had serious issues with those books. The plot of Adriana Andrews’ WHITEOUT was bonkers and way off the charts on the WTFery scale. WHITEOUT could have been “it’s so bad that it’s actually funny and entertaining” if I was in that sort of mood when I read it, but I wasn’t. So now I’m hesitant to read another book by AA.
Anyway, the Rai is on my TBR and I adored THE PRINCE AND THE DRESSMAKER. I was very surprised to find that my library had a digital copy since most of the graphic novels they buy aren’t romances.
@M Yes, M! I actually found the same thing with those exact same authors, although I continued to read each new Lucy Parker book for awhile because I only ever see people raving about them and I kept trying to search for whatever it was I was missing. With Penny Reid I don’t even second-guess myself because I had problems with Truth or Beard and didn’t even finish it. (Before that I had read the first Knitting in the City book and didn’t like that either for the slut-shaming and “not like other girls”-ness.) If I don’t have major problems with the content itself (something that makes me think I’ll probably never like that author’s books) I can sometimes find myself reluctantly wondering if I should try a new and shiny book that everyone is talking about, but most of the time it’s probably not worth it because there are so many other books out there on my TBR list and on the backlists of authors who I generally trust.
Heiress in Red Silk by Madeline Hunter is 99¢. I’ve been wanting to read this!
Use caution if you don’t use the link because there are three “Worst Best Man” titles at Amazon. I haven’t read Sosa’s, but will add that the one written by Lucy Score was fun to read.
ANCILLARY JUSTICE is a daily deal today at Amazon ($2.99). Tremendous science fiction, no romance.
RESCUE ME sounds like fun!
FIRST COMES LIKE is not my favorite Alisha Rai—definitely prefer the other two books in her Modern Love series (THE RIGHT SWIPE and GIRL GONE VIRAL). My favorite of Rai’s books are her Forbidden Hearts series—it’s basically a soap opera with the main family owning Wegman’s. It’s fantastic.
@M—I’ve tried Penny Reid twice and just been baffled by them, but clearly lots of folks love her books. Obviously a YMMV situation!
To Love and to Loathe by Martha Waters $1.99 @ amazon
(#2 in Regency Vows series. First in the series is “To Have and to Hoax”). I liked the first one – this one sounds like fun. Hero and heroine hook up just so he can improve his technique…….
I’m on board!
Speaking of being on board, (lol!)…..
In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens, $1.99 @ amazon. Queer YA fantasy with a prince and a pirate!
I do enjoy swash buckling AND derring-do. 🙂
@M I have definitely done that, although not with those authors – I like both Lucy Score and Penny Reid’s books. It’s even happened when I was particularly frustrated with a novel from an author I otherwise liked, or even just a “meh” first read; my TBR is long enough that they’ll just drift to the bottom of the list and stay there.
Although as a contrapoint, I frustratedly quit a series and was reluctant to return to that author until I read a short novella of hers in a collection. Turns out, her other series had ALL of my catnip while the one I quit had some of my least favorite tropes AND I was going through a breakup so not in the right mood. And now she’s one of my must-buy authors. So, I guess, worth keeping an open mind?
My dog is a staffy! That’s as far as I got in the Rescue Me description before one clicking.
@Susanna – thank you so much for the heads up on Ancillary Justice! I’ve wanted to read that for ages and I’ve been hoping it would go on sale.
I was curious about The Worst Best Man but it sounds like that’s maybe a no based on comments.
@FashionablyEvil: I’m the same way with Penny Reid! I desperately want them to work for me because she has a ton of books and my fellow readers really enjoy them, but they just don’t.
I’m enjoying Rescue Me – purchased yesterday but started reading too late to finish – although I read while pushing down my regret that they didn’t give homes to two dogs instead of sharing one dog. So silly. But also shows how real and alive the author’s writing is.
Not buying Worst Best Man; but my library has it, so I’ll think about checking it out. Much safer that way.