The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai | ARC Review

Title: The Right Swipe

Author: Alisha Rai

Series: N/A

Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Publisher: Avon

Publication date: August 6th, 2019

Pages: 400

My rating:

Rhiannon Hunter may have revolutionized romance in the digital world, but in real life she only swipes right on her career—and the occasional hookup. The cynical dating app creator controls her love life with a few key rules:

– Nude pics are by invitation only

– If someone stands you up, block them with extreme prejudice

– Protect your heart

Only there aren’t any rules to govern her attraction to her newest match, former pro-football player Samson Lima. The sexy and seemingly sweet hunk woos her one magical night… and disappears.

Rhi thought she’d buried her hurt over Samson ghosting her, until he suddenly surfaces months later, still big, still beautiful—and in league with a business rival. He says he won’t fumble their second chance, but she’s wary. A temporary physical partnership is one thing, but a merger of hearts? Surely that’s too high a risk…

“Everywhere and everything was terrible and on fire and if you did meet someone you clicked with, you could chalk it up to pure timing and luck.”

Wow, just… wow. This book was utterly fantastic. I went with pretty high expectations into it since I read an Alisha Rai book in the past and really enjoyed it, but The Right Swipe ended up being much more than what I was expecting, and totally made me fall in love with it. I think from now on Alisha Rai is going to be an auto buy author to me, because I adored this book so much.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I first started this book, but it was so much different from what I had in mind. Though it was a romance story and had a romantic relationship between our two main characters, The Right Swipe had a very strong plot and was more focused on it and the characters, rather than the romance, which is something that I really enjoyed.

The plot of the story was so interesting. Not only despite this book being on the longer side was so incredibly fast paced and easy to get into, but also having that plot made the story more unique and stood out.

It also brought quite a lot of things up to discussion, which I think is amazing. It addressed and brought to light mental health in sports and how poorly head injuries were treated and how that made major issues in that person’s mental health in the future, along with a very realistic portrayal of what it was like for a woman that has a job in that industry had to endure and how sexist some things were, which I think have a lot of resonance nowadays and are some important topics to talk about.

“Being vulnerable is a risk. […] But a moment of that love, is worth it. If you have a second, a minute, a month, a year, a decade with that person? You could count yourself lucky. You can use that love and the lessons it taught you to plant more seeds for love. You can live off that love for a lifetime.”

Also, her writing had improved a lot since the last book I read by her. In this particular novel, I don’t know if it was because it wasn’t as heavily involved in the romance or why, but it was so flushed and detailed, and full of descriptions about the characters and their feelings, which made the reader empathize more with what these characters had gone through and understand the reasons behind their actions.

And the characters were simply amazing. You could feel the chemistry between them in their dynamics and interactions throughout the story, and that was something that I appreciated a lot. And not only that, but also I think they complemented each other really good, and the evolution of their romantic relationship was so well done.

Overall, I was so impressed with The Right Swipe and fell head over heals for it. The characters were so engaging and complex, and had a lot of layers that the reader got to discover as they kept reading the novel, and also it had quite a strong plot and it wasn’t just about the romance, which is something that I’m looking for sometimes in these types of books, so I was so happy I added it to my TBR in the first place.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. This doesn’t change my opinion whatsoever. All thoughts are my own.