21st Century Love

We definitely started off the year right! If you missed our first B&B meeting of the year, here is your chance to catch up. We have been reading The Right Swipe by the amazing Alisha Rai. This is the first book in her Modern Love Series, and we have fallen in love. 

We were hesitant to read a romance novel; afraid we would be walking a fine line between mushy love stories and overwhelming descriptive details. However, reading the first few pages, we couldn’t have found a book more relatable to romance and dating  in the 21st century. Alisha Rai did not disappoint, she definitely wrote this with us in mind. 

The conversations between the characters echoed the ones we’ve had and still have with our own friends. The reading was easy, incredibly funny and most effortless; making it difficult to put down the book and return to real life. 

Rai creates a world where there are no limitations to being black or any person of color and strong driven women run the world. It was reassuring to know that we didn’t have to think about racism or how to imagine the characters. They were never described as “pretty for a…”(you know what comes next), they were just people, beautiful people in their own right; with nothing and no one to compare or equate them to. At the same time, Rai promotes female empowerment and the ideas of being A Boss Ass B*&%h.

Our heroine Rhiannon doesn’t apologize, nor allows anything to come between her and her success. She’s the owner of a top dating app company and is holding her own in a predominantly male lead industry. She’s flawed, has insecurities and finds it hard to trust in love; but she is confident, supportive and surrounds herself with similar energy. Rhiannon takes charge of her sex and dating life and doesn’t allow it to be dictated by unsolicited dick pics or the the masters of ghosting; whom her love interest Samson is accused of.

“Theirs was a tale as old as, well, as old as a right swipe meaning you liked someone. They’d swiped, matched, met, fucked. Leaving out the part where he snuck under your defenses and then ghosted you, I see. She never thought she’d see him again, let alone here. working for the company she wanted to buy? Fate you bitch.”

Excerpt from Alisha Rai: The Right Swipe Page 10

Samson seems to be the perfect guy who is just looking for love and to be loved. He may have some skeletons in his closet, but right now we have all fallen for him…except for Rhi.

We’ve loved what we have been reading so far in this novel. The representation and relatable characters and events are a huge plus. Rhiannon is someone we’ve all meant or have been a point in our lives and Samson is someone we all hope to meet. We can’t forget the special scenes.

For me personally, I appreciated how descriptive and not overwhelming the juicy sex scenes were. She didn’t just scratch off the subject of imitate love, we got to sniff a little too.

If you already finished The Right Swipe Let us know what you thought. Or take some time to read the 2nd novel in the Modern Love Series Girl Gone Viral.