In the first 40 pages, Aidan stays in a hotel by himself during high school, hooks up with guys using some app, admits to having sexual relations with his friend’s dad, and is with a man when he gets killed. None of it is plausible, and yet I was interested enough to finish. But I will not recommend it to any readers at my schools....too violent and inappropriate, not to mention poorly constructed...

Aidan spends the night in a New York City hotel room, and then wakes up next to his dead date the next morning. He keeps getting messages on his phone from someone who calls him Mr. Preston, and he soon realizes that whoever is behind those messages believes he really is Mr. Preston and he's gotten caught up in a case of mistaken identity mixed with being at the wrong place at the wrong time. If Aidan wants to make it out alive, he is told he must return an object everyone wants. Can he do it before it's too late? Swipe Right for Murder is a nail-biting page turner!

Aidan finds himself on the wrong end of a one night stand. Being chased by the FBI, and Police, it's a classic case of mistaken identity. I found it to be very thrilling, and the pacing was quick. The characters were well developed, and I found myself surprised as to where the story was headed. It reads like a Young Adult Hitchcock novel.

I LOVE a good murder mystery thriller and that’s exactly what I got with Swipe Right For Murder! Fast paced and exciting, I read this title very quickly!

Thank you to Netgalley and James Patterson Presents for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. As always, the review is spoiler-free and unaffected by the free copy.

This book was extremely strange. I couldn't tell you what I thought I was getting, but it certainly wasn't this final product. The ironic thing is that the main character references Riverdale on the CW, and this felt a lot like reading a television show. It had that same insane disassociation with reality, inappropriately-timed quips, characters who randomly decide to tell the main character about their problems and/or randomly know all about his, lots of action and some well-timed emotional moments. I actually think this might've worked better in a visual medium. There's a lot of dialogue and the descriptions of the action would have looked good on the screen. If you like reading that sort of stuff, then you'll be entertained by this. For me, it was difficult to keep engaged.

Now, I don't really have a problem suspending my disbelief and I've been entertained by strange and insane things happening in books before. But I guess with this it was trying to be set in reality at times, so whenever unrealistic things happened it was more difficult to disengage my brain. My favorite parts of the book were whenever Aidan talked about his brother or Tom. Honestly, the only reason I kept reading was because I wanted to know more about his past and see him working through his grief and pain. But then the story would cut back to drones sniping people or people being killed with paper clips or some other action sequence.

I'm sure there will be an audience for this, but it's not me. It didn't go all the way with its action/murder mystery storyline because it kept pulling back to the emotional moments. It couldn't fully commit to Aidan's emotional journey because it also had to be this action/murder mystery story as well. I'm not saying it couldn't have been both, but it just didn't strike the right balance for me.

Actual rating: 2.5 stars.

As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I really wanted to like this book. I did appreciate the representation and the fact that it was written by an #OwnVoices author. However, I was also put off by the entire concept of an LGBTQ+ terrorist cell. Combine that with the perpetuation of the stereotype that gay men are promiscuous, and Swipe Right for Murder just didn’t work very well for me.

The Good: The thriller aspect of the book was quite thrilling at times. The author knows how to write a good chase scene. The book touches on important topics such as suicide and LGBTQ+ rights, but it also manages to maintain some levity.

The Bad: As a reader, I give authors a lot of room to create their fictional world, regardless of realism. But some of what happened in this book was so clearly unrealistic that it hindered the reading process. I also felt like the ending went on much longer than necessary, and I could have done without all of the “hit the reader over the head” with the emotional/social lessons portion of the story.

Younger LGBTQ+ readers may get a kick out of the wish fulfillment aspect of seeing the community take action against hateful bigots. For me, though, the best thing to come out of the terrorist group was the author’s clear statement against extremism of all kinds. Also, if a real life LGBTQ+ terrorist group were to start killing people in the U.S., it most definitely wouldn’t help our cause.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an arc. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

Swipe Right for Murder is utterly preposterous, possibly more prescient than I'd like to acknowledge, and immensely sensitive. It's an homage to classic films where the mostly innocent man finds himself caught in a web of suspicion and trouble, yet at the same time it reads more like a movie with someone like Shia LaBeouf.

Seventeen-year-old Aidan is a high school senior, desperate to find someone to love. His parents have kept their emotional distance since he came out of the closet, allowing him to go to boarding school. He has good friends, yet he always feels that they treat him like a kid and don't take him seriously.

With a free night at a posh hotel in New York City, Aidan does what any horny teenager might—looks for a hookup on a "dating" app. After a disastrous encounter with a closeted classmate, he finds an older man. And when Aidan wakes up in the man's hotel room in the middle of night, everything has gone awry—the man is dead, Aidan gets a mysterious phone call from a man addressing him as someone else, and he threatens Aidan and his family if he doesn't "give it" to him. But as menacing as the call is, the man also seems to know more about the issues that Aidan struggles with emotionally, and taps into his greatest regrets and fears.

The phone call catapults Aidan into a severe case of mistaken identity, putting him on the run from the authorities (who may or may not be the good guys), his family, and a shadowy terrorist group with an interesting set of priorities. Along the way, he meets a handsome stranger whose loyalties are confusing, he struggles with his own fears and issues, and he has to tap into his inner action hero more than a time or two. Will he help save the day? Does he want to stop the terrorists from their mission—which at its core isn't wrong, even if their methods are?

Swipe Right for Murder is full of twists and turns, double crosses, and lots of jarring action. But at the same time, there is a lot of raw emotion in this book, too, as Aidan is forced to confront some of his greatest anxieties, fears, and regrets. Many of the feelings Aidan has are familiar to those whom have come to terms with their sexuality and/or struggled with self-esteem and the desire to be loved. There are some tremendously powerful scenes interspersed with the craziness.

"I hate this thing inside myself, this need to become attached to people, this brutal loneliness that drives me, drives all my mistakes."

This book really reads like a movie, but it was very uneven for me. At times it was just so utterly ludicrous and complicated that I considered stopping but then there would be a powerfully poignant scene and I just kept on with it. I think if you can completely suspend your disbelief and just enjoy the ride, it may be a fun book for you. There's no disputing Derek Milman's ability to tell a good story; there was just far too much going on for me here.

NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company provided me an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!

This book will be published August 6, 2019.

Disclaimer: I received an eARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

While on spring break in New York City, Aidan finds himself alone in a hotel room, bored and wanting to hook up with a guy. So he does what he’s done before: he downloads an app filled with similar people looking for hook-ups. After his first one goes nowhere, he finds himself on the app again, looking for someone else.

After he goes to this hotel room, he ends up falling asleep with this guy and wakes up to the guy, Benoit, having been shot in the head. Benoit’s phone is ringing, and Aidan answers it. On the other end of the line, the voice tells him that the police are coming for him and that they are coming for him too.

Aidan quickly finds himself on the run from the police and from an organization called the Swans which is a terroristic cult.

Swipe Right for Murder is fast-paced and complex. The story is engaging, and while the plot requires some suspension of disbelief (including the age of the narrator), the “what if” components of the plot still make it grounded in reality.

Swipe Right for Murder comes out August 6.

I did not intend to read this book in a day and a half. It was an accident, I swear, and it was all the book's fault! I'm a big fan of Scream All Night so I had high hopes for Swipe Right for Murder and it surely did not disappoint. It's a wild ride full of mystery, thrills, self discovery, and action with a dash of romance and horror. Milman's passion, writing style and plot pacing are phenomenal. I'm extremely critical with books and I do not praise highly. It's very rare for a book to suck me in to the point that I forget everything else, as if the story is real. Everyone should read this bent, genre mashup. I think this story proves that I will read anything Milman's pen puts to paper!

Thank you netgalley for providing me with a copy to review.

Swipe right for murder might just be my new favorite book ! I loved how the story captures you from the very first moment and doesn’t let you go, not even in the end. It’s an amazing story that relates to the times we’re currently facing with LGBTQ community, our government and homegrown terrorism. I loved how Aiden was a character that many can relate to, and how the story unfolded. I couldn’t put it down, finished it in one day because it’s so page turning you just have To find out what will happen next and who will win the battle.