Audiobook Review: The Right Swipe (Modern Love #1)

Author: Alisha Rai

Narrators: Summer Morton & Brian Pallino

Audiobook Length: 10 hours 13 minutes

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…

The Right Swipe is the first novel in the Modern Love series that follows connecting characters and each story can be read as a standalone. This novel follows Rhiannon Hunter, the creator, and CEO of the dating app Crush. After swiping right on Crush on Samson Lima, a retired football player, the two of them have an amazing date together and he seemingly ghosts her. The two of them are forced to interact again when it is discovered that Samson is the new spokesperson for Crush’s rival app, Matchmaker. As Rhiannon wants to acquire Matchmaker, the two of them end up spending time together during a marketing campaign.

The story starts off slow as it builds up the conversations between Samson and Rhiannon that eventually lead to the campaign and the two working together. Despite both of them still being attracted to the other, there are many past traumas that they are going through that result in some obstacles before they can become a couple. While the writing seems to tell the reader that the two characters shared a great connection that draws them to each other, to me, it came across as they were very sexually compatible during their initial date, but I never felt there was more to it. Their relationship and connection grew on me as the two opened up more to each other and I liked the progression of their story.

As a younger black woman in the business world, she faces many obstacles, such as sexism and racism, which are explored in the story. There is also the topic of sexual harassment discussed in more depth. For Samson’s side, his past deals with the impacts of concussions in the NFL. I liked how the author integrated these deeper topics in an accessible way within a lighter romance read. It brought some nice balance to the story as the novel was still an easy read yet there was complexity with everything that the characters were going through. Overall, this was a sweet and enjoyable story and I look forward to continuing the series.

[Click Here for Trigger Warnings]