when men cheat

Dating is hard. Using dating apps makes it even harder. And that’s where Gwen Turner finds herself. Even at her best friend’s bachelorette party, she is on the Connector app, trying to find a date for the wedding (and a half-decent guy to spend time with). But instead she sees an article about a man found dead in a nearby park. The man in the article is someone she’d gone out with a week before.

Gwen had been in a relationship with the love of her life, Noah. But he’d lost his mother and started talking about buying an old ice cream van and going on the road, selling coffee and snacks to tourists. After Noah had bought the van and Gwen had quit her job, she had freaked out about living on the road and broke up with him. So she had no job, except for selling coffee out of a van, and no relationship. And her roommate Sarah is moving out to get married to Richard, so Gwen is left with her phone and the Connector app.

Gwen had gone to a wine bar with Rob, and while it started out all right, as the drinking increased, he became stranger, acting like he was on a reality show, and then maudlin, and then handsy. Gwen had gotten on her bus and went home alone, blocking Rob on the app and going to bed. And then he turned up dead, in the park where she had left him. She was certain it had just been an awful coincidence until the police showed up to talk to her about it. That’s when she found out that they had found another body and hadn’t released the information about that yet. It was the man Gwen had gone out with the next night.

Gwen makes a list of her recent dates, sure that it’s just a really bizarre coincidence that two of her dates turned up dead. But when she herself finds the body of the next one, she knows that something really bad is happening. Clearly, someone is stalking Gwen and maybe trying to set her up to look like a murderer. She doesn’t think she can trust the police, even though she knew Detective Lyons from high school. So that means Gwen will have to investigate the murders herself, to clear her name and figure out who is doing this to her.

But the closer she looks at the men and their deaths, she realizes that there is no one in her life she can trust. It could be literally anyone around her who is trying to set her up, and after what she did, she thinks maybe she even deserves it.

Swiped is a comedic thriller by L.M. Chilton that looks at the online dating apps and how people present themselves to potential dates, by touching up a photo or lying about their age or forgetting about their pregnant wife at home. The dark humor mixes well with the plot of revenge and payback, and it works well with Gwen’s character.

Swiped is a fun read, especially if you’re already paired up and not having to deal with dating apps anymore. There are some fun surprises along the way, and lots of red herrings about who is behind the killings. I raced through this book in two days and enjoyed every step along the way. If you have a dark funny bone, then you’ll want to consider swiping right on this one.

Egalleys for Swiped were provided by Gallery Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.