This book was so amazing! I enjoyed the characters and plot so much. Didn't think I was going to love the male POV as much as I did but, Samson is such a cinnamon roll!!! Him and Rhi together are just magic. Rai just has a with characters where you just feel for them so much. Also how she brings consent and other much need to know topics in books like: sexual harassment, racism, and not being embarrassed about telling your sexual partner what you want. I really can't wait for more books in this series and to read more of her other books.

I've been looking for a good contemporary romance for a while and this book exceeded my expectations. As someone who met my husband online, it is so rewarding to see someone write about online dating with not only detailed knowledge of how it works but also with so much empathy.

Both the main and minor characters were believable, funny, and charming. I rooted for all of them (except Peter, he can GTFO). Since this is the first of a new series, I can't wait to see who Alisha Rai chooses to focus on for the next installment. As other reviewers have mentioned, this book also covers sensitive issues without making them feel forced or didactic. This was the first book I've read from this author, and I'm looking forward to reading more while I wait for the next in this series.

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon for providing a digital advance copy in exchange for this review.

This is my first Alisha Rai book, though her books are always recommended to me and I have several on my TBR pile. Simply put, I loved it. If you think romance is just a kissing book, or unrealistic, or doesn't deal with real life, well, have a seat and read this one. A contemporary romance that really is of our times: dating apps and the "new" ways and rules of how people date, CTE and concussions in football, #MeToo and sexual harassment in the work place, how women of color navigate the world, anxiety and mental health, transitions between careers, parenthood, family, social media and immediate press - it is all here. Rhiannon is the creator of a successful dating app and CEO of her own company. A hook up with Samson Lima leaves her bruised, believing she's been ghosted. When she unexpectedly see Samson again - and he's working for her competitor - things get interesting. I love so much about Rhi. How can you not love a woman CEO? She's creative and smart and in charge. We really see Rhi's strong sense of right and wrong and fair and unfair. Her relationships with her family, friends and employees are strong and matter. She wants to protect her heart but also trust her instincts. So while she has walls up, she's not just hard ice and cynicism. The walls are up for good reason; when Rhi gets to face those demons from her past, Samson is there to support her, if she wants him to be. Samson is just a gem. He has real relationships with his friends and family, and those relationships are really at the core of who he is. I appreciate that he's not written as an ex-athlete stereotype. Instead, Samson has seen the impact - literally - of his career. He is facing the challenge of changing his career now that football is over, the anxiety and depression that can come with that. And he's also learning how to overcome things from his own past, how to turn the negative into a positive. I enjoyed that the story plays out over a longer period of time, as Rhi and Samson really get to know each other, and we, the readers, also get to know them. This is no quick hook up story - that hook up happened before the book even begins. In the end, I loved that Rhi and Samson each were willing to take a chance and trust that what was developing was real and worth it. That's a very satisfying HEA. Highly recommend.

Story CW: sexual harassment, dementia, CTE, anxiety
Sexy times heat level: high

Rhiannon runs a popular dating app; Samson, a former football star, is another dating app’s new face. Rhiannon is tough, determined, a hard-worker, and has relationship trauma in her past; Samson is caring, kind, actively works to lessen the harm concussions cause football players. Because this is a romance, these two hit it off, but will Rhiannon open her heart to Samson long-term or will her past prevent her from establishing any sort of new relationship?

This is a sexy story that features a very strong female protagonist. Not only does it cover intersectional feminism in the business world, but also the #MeToo movement.

Rhiannon and Samson meet for a casual hook up via a right swipe app. After he ghosts her after missing their second date. Months later they meet again, opposing sides of a dating oapp war. Rhi’s company and Samson’s aunt company, who he is spokes person for, are different types of dating apps. After a successful co-interview they strike a deal to produce dating tip videos as a co-marketing program. Samson is afraid of relationships and Rhi’s been hurt by an ex so badly she can’t trust...yet she trusts Samson. They just need to figure out how to be together.

This was a cute book, lots of in-depth character thoughts and backgrounds helped fuel this story along. This was a couple I cheered for. 4 1/2 stars, rounding up.

This isn't your average romance novel. It's diverse, it's progressive, it talks about *actual* issues happening in the world around our characters -- and the real world around us, as readers -- in a way that feels honest and not forced. I can't wait for the rest of the series!

Also, I've admittedly never read Alisha Rai before, but now I'm going back to read everything she's ever written ASAP.

Rhiannon "Rhi" Hunter is the CEO of Crush, an empowering dating app with millions of users. Rhi has climbed her way to the top despite many blows meant to destroy her. Now, Rhi is about to make her next big move to grow her empire: acquire Matchmaker, one of the first dating websites ever that still has a strong base of users. If only she could actually talk to the owner. And just when she thinks she's found her in, a blast from her past appears. Her last best date. The last man to blow her mind. The last man she trusted. The man who ghosted her.

Samson Lima is a former pro-football player and--at the request of his Aunt Annabelle--is the new face of Matchmaker. Now that football is behind him, and his Uncle Joe has passed away, Samson doesn't know what his future will hold. So the last thing he expects is to see a face in the crowd at his debut event for Matchmaker. The face of the woman who was his last date. The last woman whom he started to fall in love with after one night. The woman who he hadn't been able to contact sense. The woman he accidentally ghosted.

Funny, fluffy, and quite modern in lingo and how the characters interact with each other, "The Right Swipe" is a delightful, addicting read. It's also incredibly powerful and addresses two major concerns in today's news: the first being the #MeToo movement and sexual harassment in the workplace, and the second being how major sports empires--the NFL especially--address head injuries. The presentation of both of these issues is natural and direct the plot without letting the two issues consume the main characters and their respective goals and arcs. A phenomenal start to the Modern Love series, I can't wait to return and see which of the fabulous side characters will become the next main character.

I'm a huge fan of Alisha Rai's books and this one was no different. This talked about tough issues that so many people can relate to. I especially loved Samson's family dynamic. It was wonderful to see these characters grow throughout the book and I cannot wait for the next book!

A contemporary romance with great diversity that takes on timely issues of workplace harassment, online dating, and more. Rai is a great writer, and I really enjoyed the first third of the book, but once the two leads began to interact and talk more, I had trouble getting into the narrative. Samson was a really nice guy - which is great - but it felt too careful, and he was always saying the right thing which isn't that realistic. I liked Rhi, and I understood why she was apprehensive about getting too close to people, but her flip-flopping and treatment of Samson got to be a little too much. I do appreciate the conversations this book has on feminism, harassment, and intimacy in the digital age, but the characters and the romance element of the novel was just okay.

I did not realize that this was Gabe's sister from the Forbidden Hearts series till like the end of the book! I don't know how I could be so dense. This is not the Forbidden Hearts series though. Yes there is drama. Yes there is awesome chemistry. But this new series has a little more laughter. It still has a heart felt story that feels modern and wonderful. I loved the inclusion of the #metoo movement towards the end of the book that I wasn't expecting. Rhi is a modern and complex heroine that feels real and Samson is just the best cuddly teddy bear.

You will not be disappointed in Alisha Rai's newest book!

Another charming and beautifully nuanced contemporary romance from the author of the Forbidden Hearts series, The Right Swipe is about the one time you should consider forgiving a guy who ghosts on you. This one is a little high on the angst scale for me, but has a pitch-perfect HEA and one of my absolute favorite Rai heroes.

3.5 stars!

A great start to a new series!

I thoroughly enjoyed the world and writing in this book. This was my first book by Alisha Rai but it will definitely not be my last. I love how this book tackled quite a few important topics like sexual harassment, consent, domestic verbal abuse and so much more. It also had a very diverse cast which I greatly appreciate.

The romance was also very swoony. We have a soft hero with a hard heroine; he is patient and sweet and thoughtful and she is confident and sure of herself (except when it comes to her feelings of course). Both are perfect for each other though their love doesn't come easy. It was interesting to see the author turn the whole hard and soft thing on it's head and have the heroine be the alpha and him the beta. Well accept when it came to sex, because then things were on a more even playing field. If there's one thing I didn't like about the romance, it was that I didn't like how it felt that Samson had to pay for the drama and past mistakes of other men in Rhiannon's life. Which leads me to my next part:

My biggest problem with this book, unfortunately was the heroine. She has trust issues a mile long, she's stubborn as hell and lets pride get the best of her in almost every capacity of her life. The one thing I really liked about her, even as I found myself becoming insanely irritated with her is that she is 100% herself, always.. I feel like the author wanted her to be this extreme sort of alpha-female who makes no apologies for who she is and while I understand what she was trying to do with this character(and one could argue that it's important to have female characters like her), it made it really hard for me to like her at times. She's bitter and hard basically the entire book and even by the end, she doesn't really go through much character growth. I'm not saying I wanted her to just be free of her trust issues and be a soft and sweet bunny rabbit, because that wouldn't have been realistic at all. But I was a bit disappointed with how little growth she really had overall. Which I guess makes sense when you take in the face that Rhiannon is unapologetically herself. Why would she see wrong in her actions when she thinks she can do no wrong, that she doesn't need anyone ever and if they want to go she could care less, etc etc?

Despite my warring feelings about the heroine, I really did enjoy this book. I hope we can get a book for some of the secondary characters like Lakshmi and Katrina because they were awesome and so interesting. Pick this up if you are in the mood for swoony romance with a great cast of characters!

Pros:
- black woman boss lady slaying the tech game but still got to have feels
- positive women relationship models
- Samoan rep!!! Where has this been
- the conversations about CTE and brain / mental health were a surprise especially coming from the jock-world of things .. really liked the way this was woven in and added other layers of disability rep into the book.
- if you like steamy, this one is descriptive. I wasn’t in the mood for it but I can see it being a plus if you were
- quirky aunt characters. I always always love quirky aunts. May i be the quirkiest aunt everrrr.
- a refreshing / different enough plot for a romantic fiction type book

Cons
- some of the character development felt repetitive / stuck.. I think I could have really fallen for these characters if they got explored with a bit more depth .. this was a big one for me so it’ll be why this one didnt soar for me.
- believability. I know it’s a book but sometimes some of the moments seemed lacking believability to a degree which cooled me off a bit..

Overall: 3.5 for my enjoyment of it overall, strong 4 for what it brings to the table for this genre ! Enjoyable read I think people will really like this one when its out- I inhaled it.

Rhiannon is a strong woman who runs her own business, a mega-successful dating app called Crush. She's looking to making a big move by buying out the competition, a company called Matchmaker. But then she meets their their new spokesman: Samson, the guy who took her out for a great night a few months ago, told her he'd call...and then ghosted her. Rhi has to figure out a way to move past her anger (at herself for opening up to this man, and at him for disappearing on her) so she can sweet-talk him into putting in a good word with his boss. When it turns out that he actually had a pretty great reason for not ever reconnecting with her, she can feel herself start to care about him and that just can't happen. Rhiannon is strong, she's motivated, she's all about powerful women running successful businesses and there is just no way she's letting a man get in her way. Right?

I loved all the characters in this book. Rhi has a huge chip on her shoulder and seems kind of cold at the beginning, but then you find out more about her history and realize she has every reason to protect herself the way she does. Samson is more than just a handsome former football player (and let me say, I've read plenty of romances about former football players and they're great and I have nothing against them, but this guy takes it up a notch!). His father and uncle both played in the NFL, too, and were diagnosed with CTE (brain trauma experienced after repeated concussions). Samson walked away from the game because he felt his team was placing more importance on winning than on protecting the players, and he didn't want what happened to his family members to happen to him or his friends. Rhi's roommate and silent business partner is a former model who deals with anxiety and panic disorders and is now mostly homebound...but she's working on it. (I REALLY hope she gets her own book at some point! Hint, hint!) Rhi's assistant, Lakshmi, is a kick-ass lesbian who has awesome fashion sense and totally keeps Rhi's world turning. Samson's best friend, Dean, is a new daddy OBSESSED with his daughter to the point of grossing out his pals with TMI diaper stories. I mean, I could go on and on. Even the smaller characters here are well-developed and memorable. And the diversity! HOORAY. African-American, white, Samoan, Thai, men, women, straight, lesbian....a little bit of everything all mixed in together, just like the real world.

Also, this book deals with a lot of important issues. It's a romance novel, yes, but come on: CTE, panic disorder and agoraphobia, sexual harassment, ways women have to think about the way they dress, their office furniture, their drink orders, etc. all not to be seen as "weak" by men in the workplace? This is all really important stuff, very current and fresh, and it added great depth to an already fun story. I would probably have given this book 5 stars, which I almost never do for romances, but for the fact that it started a little slow and I had a hard time getting into it.

I've read some of Alisha Rai's other books and I was already a fan, but she takes it to a new level with this new series. I'm already trying to guess who the next books might be about, and I can't wait to read them.

**Thank you to NetGalley, Harper Collins and Avon for a romantic read!**

I'd heard good things about Alisha Rai, which spurred me to request this book on Netgalley-- and it did not disappoint one bit! Very good contemporary romance with great diversity and feminist representation. Steamy and swoony, with lots to say about the dating world these days, current technology, and workplace harassment. Very relevant in addition to being a fun, fast-paced read! I really liked it.

I found Alisha Rai when I listened to an interview that she gave on The Wicked Wallflowers Club Podcast and I have wanted to read her ever since! I am really excited to read the Forbidden Hearts series, but I want to wait until I have the final book before I go all in, so I choose The Right Swipe to be my first book and it was definitely the right choice. I fell in love with this book so hard — it was absolutely incredible!

The Right Swipe had everything going for it from the fierce, strong, ambitious heroine that we have in Rhi and the utterly sweet, compassionate, patient hero that is Samson to a wonderful storyline full of depth, heartache, beauty and empowerment. Going into this book, I briefly skimmed the synopsis, so I was really only expecting a light, fun book with a little bit of enemies-to-lovers type action and some mild heartache and while I wasn’t completely wrong, there is so much more to it than that.

The Right Swipe was fascinating, it made me cry, it made me melt, and it touched my heart. It’s inspiring, moving, and so relevant to the topics of today. I wholeheartedly loved The Right Swipe and I can’t wait to read more from this series and Alisha Rai in general!

~ A Hopeless Romantic’s Booklandia, 5 Stars

*Biiiiiig thanks to HarperCollins Publishers for this free copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

I’ve really been feeling romances lately, and this one did not disappoint! The story line was a little predictable, but still super cute. The ONLY reason I withheld the last star was because this was a little slow on the uptake...meaning it took a while to pull me in.

Rhiannon is our MC and she’s the CEO & cofounder of Crush, an app that sounds very similar to Bumble with its woman-centered matching process. Her direct market competitors are Swype, a Tinder-like hookup app, and Matchmaker, the eHarmony type brand. She’s been through some rough times and feels that she has to be tough or else things will come crashing down.

Queue Samson Lima, ex-NFL player, exceptionally patient man with a rather large chip on his broad Samoan shoulders. He believes in love, and he believes he could have it with Rihannon...but she’s not making it easy.

The Right Swipe is a cute story about second chances, stepping out of your comfort zone, and opening your heart so that love can find its way in.

The Right Swipe really took a long time to connect with me. If it wasn’t by Alisha Rai, who I love, I might not have gotten past the first third of the book. I had a difficult time connecting with Rhiannon, the extremely wealthy and successful but prickly and defensive tech queen with commitment issues. As the story goes on, the reasons for her issues, as well as for Samson’s issues, becomes more clear, and they become more relatable. Once I finally started caring about what happened, I tore through the rest of the book.

I appreciated a lot of things about this story–especially the elements of #metoo and NFL activism involved in the story and the diversity of the characters. Many of the issues addressed in the story were both incredibly relevant and yet written in a way that made them timelessly relatable. The diversity is wonderful too. This is not an #ownvoices novel, but it’s fantastic to see an author creating such an effortlessly diverse world. Rhiannon is African-American. Her friend Katrina is biracial Asian. Samson is Samoan-American (the first romance I’ve read featuring a Samoan-American hero). There are Muslim characters and plus size characters and LGBTQ characters and characters dealing with mental illness. I also appreciated how Rai melded NFL activism with the issue of CTE in retired football players. Not Colin Kapernick, but it made me think of him.

Most of the characters were pretty likable. Go figure that it was the white lady, Annabelle, who annoyed me the most. I struggled to really understand her and her motivations–she just seemed flighty and spacey and eccentric to the point of mental illness sometimes. I understand her connection to the story, but I did not like her, I didn’t know how she had succeeded as well as she had in life, and I didn’t see how any of the characters in the story liked her either. I also didn’t like Peter, but we aren’t supposed to like classic narcissist/ sociopath/ abuser Peter. He was thoroughly horrible, in the worst kind of believable way. I DID like Rhiannon’s dashing assistant Lakshmi (one name only), and hope we see more of her in the rest of the series. and I was excited to see Jia towards the end of the book, and look forward to what I presume will be her story in one of the next books. That would be a first for me as well, and I welcome it. I also hadn’t realized the connection between this book and the Kane/ Forbidden Hearts trilogy until Gabriel and his fiance and then Jia appeared. Once I realized it, it gave the story added depth.

Much of what I didn’t like about the story was just personal preference. I couldn’t care less about professional football, and am tired of reading about super wealthy and/or famous characters. I just don’t relate. I’m also not crazy about the second chances for a past random hookup trope. So these were my own personal issues, that shouldn’t reflect poorly on the story itself. Which is why I rated it 4 out of 5 stars, even though I didn’t love it. Also, because I love the cover, which is bright and modern and fun and highlights the diversity of these characters.

Despite not absolutely loving this book, I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this series. I trust Alisha Rai to write complex, diverse characters, and I’m excited to read more about Jia, who I presume will be the next romantic heroine in the series. If you enjoy diverse romances starring rich and famous characters with likable sidekicks and acknowledgement of real-life issues as well as true love and sexy times, I hope you’ll check this out.

Thanks, #Netgalley, for letting me read a free advance copy of #TheRightSwipe in exchange for my honest opinion.

What a fun read! I love everything I have read by Alisha Rai and I was so excited to read this one... Can't wait to recommend it to my library patrons!

This wasn't my favorite book that I've read by Alisha Rai but I enjoyed it. The plot was interesting, with Rhi being the creator of a more feminist dating app and Samson being the new spokesperson of a rival app. I liked the story and characters but I didn't love it. The relationship between Rhi and Samson fell flat for me and I struggled to connect with the character of Rhi. However, I did really enjoy the side characters and I hope that Katrina and Lakshmi get their own book! Overall an enjoyable read.