{"id":5945,"date":"2026-03-31T05:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5945"},"modified":"2026-03-31T05:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:00:19","slug":"the-night-we-met-by-abby-jimenez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5945","title":{"rendered":"The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a particular cruelty in realizing you chose wrong. Not catastrophically, not obviously, but quietly \u2014 in the way a split-second decision at a concert can redirect an entire life. That is the breathtaking premise at the heart of The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez<\/em>, the second book in her Say You\u2019ll Remember Me<\/em> series, and it delivers the kind of slow-burn romance that keeps you staring at the ceiling long after the last page.<\/p>\n

The first book, Say You\u2019ll Remember Me<\/em><\/a>, set the stage for this world and its characters. But The Night We Met<\/em> functions as a complete story in its own right \u2014 anchored in the quiet, devastating space between two people who feel everything and say almost nothing.<\/p>\n

The Setup: One Ride. Two Men. A Year of Consequences.<\/h2>\n

Larissa Soto is broke, resourceful, brilliant in the way people who have always had to figure things out tend to be, and perpetually outrunning disaster. When we meet her, she is juggling seven jobs, supporting her mother through surgery, and carrying $30,000 worth of fraudulent debt courtesy of her criminal father. She is also dating Mike \u2014 charming, magnetic, protective Mike \u2014 who she chose over his quieter, more guarded best friend at a concert the night they all met. She chose Mike because he smiled at her. Because Chris looked tired and impatient, and she had enough tired people in her life.<\/p>\n

What she could not have known is that Chris Wright had wanted to drive her home too.<\/p>\n

The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez<\/em> begins not with a romance but with a favor: Chris, dragged out of bed at five in the morning by Mike\u2019s hangover, drives Larissa and her mother to the hospital. What unfolds at a bakery across the street \u2014 bread rated on a handwritten scoreboard, pumpernickel crowned as a ten out of ten, two strangers discovering they are the only people alive who have read the same obscure 1986 science-fiction novel \u2014 is something Jimenez handles with the delicacy of someone who understands that falling for someone is rarely loud. It is almost always bread and a ballpoint pen.<\/p>\n

The Relationship at the Core<\/h2>\n

A Slow Burn That Actually Burns<\/h3>\n

What makes The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez<\/em> sing is that it earns every ounce of its tension. This is not manufactured angst. The obstacle between Chris and Larissa is not a misunderstanding or a villain; it is loyalty, and decency, and a man Chris loves like a brother. He will not cross that line. He will buy an EpiPen out of pocket for Larissa\u2019s severe nut allergy. And he will clear six inches of snow off her car at four in the morning and say nothing. He will gently orchestrate small kindnesses she assumes are from Mike, because all he wants is for her to be happy \u2014 even if that happiness belongs to someone else.<\/p>\n

This is the architecture of the book: a man quietly falling apart and a woman slowly realizing something is off-center. Their friendship deepens through shared custody of a feral, beloved rescue Yorkie named Woofarine \u2014 a creature of absolute chaos and total devotion who serves as their most legitimate reason to keep showing up in each other\u2019s lives. Every doorstep conversation that stretches twenty minutes past its intention, every book they debate with the ferocity of people who don\u2019t have anyone else to argue with, every disaster they stumble into together \u2014 eleven-mile hike gone wrong, snake on the trail, deer encounter at a Toilet King billboard at one in the morning \u2014 is Jimenez stacking wood before the fire takes.<\/p>\n

What Works Brilliantly<\/h3>\n

The dual POV is handled with exceptional precision. Chris\u2019s perspective is restrained almost to the point of aching; Larissa\u2019s is sharper, funnier, and eventually haunted by her own growing awareness.
\nJimenez writes working-class financial stress with specificity and dignity. Larissa\u2019s side hustles \u2014 plasma donation, snackle boxes, mystery shopping, a pig in a hot tub \u2014 are not quirky accessories. They are a portrait of a woman in survival mode who has never once stopped running.
\nThe secondary characters breathe. Lexi, Larissa\u2019s best friend, is hilariously unfiltered and occasionally right. Nancy, Larissa\u2019s mother, is a cautionary tale in a housecoat who somehow manages to be lovable. Mike himself is drawn with enough complexity that you understand why Larissa stayed as long as she did, even as you watch him unravel.
\nThe anaphylaxis scene and its aftermath \u2014 the true crisis point of the novel \u2014 is handled with terrifying competence. When it arrives, it recontextualizes every small precaution Chris has quietly taken, and Jimenez makes you feel both the relief and the grief of it simultaneously.<\/p>\n

Where the Book Asks You to Be Patient<\/h2>\n

The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez<\/em> is not without friction. Readers hoping for a traditional romantic payoff may find the ending both emotionally satisfying and structurally open-ended. The book is less concerned with resolution than with the precise, honest moment before it \u2014 the moment when two people finally stop lying to themselves, even if they cannot yet act on the truth. For some, this will feel earned and courageous. For others, it will sting.<\/p>\n

Mike\u2019s arc, too, asks for nuance rather than a clean verdict. His alcoholism is not sensationalized, but it is also not fully explored. The book gestures at the roots of it \u2014 a derailed athletic career, depression, insecurity<\/a> \u2014 without fully settling his story. Given how central he is to the emotional machinery of the novel, a little more attention to his interior life would have made the final rupture land with even greater weight.<\/p>\n

That said, these are not dealbreakers. They are the kind of choices a writer makes when she trusts her readers enough to sit with something incomplete.<\/p>\n

The Abby Jimenez Signature<\/h2>\n

Jimenez fans will recognize her voice immediately in The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez<\/em> \u2014 the conversational warmth, the dry observational humor, the way she drops grief and tenderness into scenes that are ostensibly about soup or a dead snake on a hiking trail. She wrote about a pharmacist\u2019s inner life in previous books like Yours Truly<\/em><\/a> and The Situationship<\/em><\/a>, and her comfort with emotionally guarded men who love in the most exhaustingly devoted ways is on full display here. Chris Wright may be the most quietly heroic character she has written.<\/p>\n

If you loved Just for the Summer<\/em><\/a>, Part of Your World<\/em><\/a>, or the original Say You\u2019ll Remember Me<\/em><\/a>, you will find yourself at home here, perhaps a little wrecked, but home.<\/p>\n

If This Book Found You at the Right Moment<\/h2>\n

For readers who want more in this vein:<\/p>\n

People We Meet on Vacation<\/em><\/a> by Emily Henry \u2014 same slow burn, same heartbreak of timing
\nBetter Than the Movies<\/em><\/a> by Lynn Painter \u2014 love triangles done with real emotional stakes
\nIt Ends With Us<\/em> \/ It Starts With Us<\/em> by Colleen Hoover \u2014 for the complicated relationship arcs
\nJosh and Hazel\u2019s Guide to Not Dating<\/em> by Christina Lauren \u2014 friends-first chemistry with generous humor
\nThe Unhoneymooners<\/em> by Christina Lauren \u2014 for the banter and the buried feelings
\nBeach Read<\/em><\/a> by Emily Henry \u2014 for the writer\u2019s melancholy and unexpected connection<\/p>\n

Final Thought<\/h2>\n

The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez<\/em> is, at its core, a book about the roads not taken \u2014 and the grace it requires to accept that some things cannot be undone, only gently moved past. It is also about a very small, very unhinged Yorkie who kills things and brings them as gifts, and somehow this is not a contradiction. Jimenez has written something rare: a romance where the most romantic act in the entire story is a man silently checking an expiration date on an EpiPen.<\/p>\n

If that sentence makes you feel something, this book was written for you.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a particular cruelty in realizing you chose wrong. Not catastrophically, not obviously, but quietly \u2014 in the way a split-second decision at a concert can redirect an entire life. That is the breathtaking premise at the heart of The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez, the second book in her Say You\u2019ll Remember […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}