Jackie Collins: Queen of trash or feminist icon? Why not both usatoday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from usatoday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
First Comes Like, by Alisha Rai. ★★★ (out of four.)
Out now. A perfect blend of modern dating in the digital age and some good old-fashioned courting, First Comes Like is the latest in Rai s modern love series. Instagram beauty influencer Jia Ahmed is cutting edge when it comes to promoting herself on social media but fails to realize she has been catfished until it is far too late. Not until she is standing in front of Bollywood soap star Dev Dixit, her supposed beau, that Jia figures out there is a problem. Dev has no idea who Jia is. After Jai storms off Dev makes an effort to clear up the confusion only to add to it thanks to some well-placed and pesky paparazzi and prying parents. As a result, a whirlwind fauxmance to romance is born. But don t let the old-fashioned descriptor fool you. While clearly chaste at the start, this is a romance that builds to a slow, sweet, and at times steamily, satisfying end. –
Jasmine Vaughn-Hall
USA TODAY Network
Ajayi Jones, 36, turned down Ted Talks twice because she felt like she wasn’t ready, comparing herself to other speakers who she assumed had more training.
What if she was too busy to prepare? Or worse, what if she tried and failed?
Before she resorted to saying no a third time, a phone call with a friend changed her life. Even Ajayi Jones, a woman who has jumped out of a plane thousands of feet above the ground to skydive, needed some reassurance.
Her friend loaned her the courage she needed when she couldn’t muster up enough for herself.
USA TODAY
Goodbye, 2020 – you won’t be missed. We gave you a hero’s welcome, rolling out the red carpet with champagne, fireworks, resolutions and hope, and you repaid us with a global pandemic, raging wildfires and deepening political rancor. And on top of all that, Chadwick Boseman died? Just a trash year, top to bottom.
But if you squint really hard at this terrible, no-good, very bad year, it is possible to make out some thin silver linings. One positive byproduct of spending so much time socially isolating in our homes is that many of us found ourselves with more time to read and fewer excuses not to.