As usual, Rachel’s books are amazing! I really liked the setting of this one, I thought it was original and not something I’d seen before. I loved the romance!

This book is about Quinn, a recently-graduated 18-year-old who is working for her parent's wedding planning company. Though her parents and sister love the family business, Quinn is unsure if it is for her. This book follows Quinn on her summer of self-discovery and hard-learned lessons along the way, in both life and in romance (in the form of a childhood friend-turned-crush). This story has a unique lens with the wedding planning company as a backdrop. Some twists were predictable, but there were also some twists I didn't expect. We Can't Keep Meeting Like This is a sweet rom-com book for young adults. I would recommend this book for ages 16 and up. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book!

**4.5-stars rounded up**

You've swept me off my feet again, Rachel Lynn Solomon. I see you and it's like you see me too.

Quinn Berkowitz is the harpist for her parent's wedding planning business. Tarek Monsour is a cater-waiter, and aspiring baker, whose family's catering business is frequently hired on by the Berkowitzs for events.

Over the years, the two have worked a lot of weddings together. Somewhere along the way, Quinn became a skeptic of the whole love thing, while Tarek went completely in the other direction. He's now over-the-top romantic; full of positivity with regards to love.

Last summer, Quinn became fed up with watching Tarek's grand gestures to other girls. Perhaps she had secretly grown to like him more than she admitted. When she called him out on it though, her ire seemed to ruin everything. He left for college and they didn't talk for a year.

As summer returns, so too does Tarek, home from college and again working with his parents. The first wedding Quinn sees him at is uncomfortable as heck, but this is a romantic comedy, so y'all know what's coming.

We Can't Keep Meeting Like This is exactly as adorable as it sounds. Solomon always knows how to bring the cute, as well as relatable substance. This book is full of incredible OCD rep, sex positivity and exploration of other issues a lot of young adults go through; like, what the heck do I want to do with the rest of my life?

Solomon is always able to handle serious topics well and seamlessly incorporates them into otherwise light-hearted narratives. This is the YA Summer Romance that should be on everyone's reading list. I highly, highly recommend it!!

Thank you so much to the publisher, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, for providing me with a copy to read and review.

Rachel Lynn Solomon is an autobuy author for me and I can't wait to see what cutesy-creation she dreams up next!!!

We Can't Keep Meeting Like This is a richly complex book that navigates mental health, familial expectations, religion, college, sex, and romance. It thoughtfully raises questions about each topic while giving the protagonist room to be wrong and fix her mistakes. It is a mature read I would recommend for older teenagers or college students.

This was absolutely cute and I loved every second of it! This book has representation for depression and OCD as well as Jewish and Muslim main characters. I love Rachel Lynn Solomon’s writing so much, her characterization of teenagers is very organic and well done.

We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This is a sweet YA rom-com set in the wedding industry that also touches on complicated families, questions of the future, and mental health. Quinn’s family runs a wedding-planning business and Tarek parents are caterers, which means the two have grown up together in the Seattle wedding world. But last summer, Quinn confessed her crush on Tarek–only to have him leave for college without a response. Now it’s a year later, and Tarek is back for the summer. As the two keep clashing at wedding after wedding, Quinn is forced to confront her lingering feelings for Tarek and her uncertain future.

Quinn and Tarek are total opposites, and I loved watching them try to figure out how to fit into each other’s lives. Tarek is a hopeless romantic and is always planning huge grand gestures, but Quinn has a much more fraught relationship with love because of her parents’ rocky relationship. She’s not quite sure she believes in love anymore and shies away from letting anyone get too close. I really appreciated that the romance between Quinn and Tarek dealt with themes of healing and forgiveness.

We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This is a romance, but it’s also a story about reimagining your future, discovering & rediscovering passions, and coming into your own. Quinn feels a lot of pressure to keep things running smoothly, both in her family’s wedding planning business and in her parents’ marriage, and she’s afraid to tell her parents that she doesn’t want to work for their company. Her parents’ constant pressure has soured the love she once had for the harp, but when she begins to learn the art of harp-making, she starts to imagine new possibilities. Now, she’s questioning what she wants her future to look like and if she’ll ever really have the freedom to find her own way.

One of my absolute favorite things about Rachel’s books is the thoughtful, nuanced Jewish representation. Quinn and her family, as well as several background/supporting characters, are Jewish. Throughout the book, there is a subplot about Quinn’s older sister Asher getting married; through her engagement, Asher is beginning to explore her Jewish identity and becoming more observant. As a non-observant Jew who values my cultural Jewish identity, I really loved this subplot that shows there’s no one right way to be Jewish, and that all Jewish experiences are equally valid.

In addition to the Jewish representation, We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This also includes some other valuable rep. Tarek is Egyptian-American, and there were several supporting characters who were queer and/or BIPOC. We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This also has mental health rep including OCD, anxiety, and depression. I especially loved the conversations around Quinn’s OCD, since this is a disorder that is often misrepresented in the media and widely misunderstood. While We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This is certainly a romance at heart, it thoroughly tackles mental illness stigma, normalizes mental health treatment, and deconstructs stereotypes about OCD.

Rachel Lynn Solomon is one of my favorite authors for so many reasons: the witty voices she creates, the authentically messy characters, and the palpable tension and chemistry she crafts between characters. Quinn and Tarek both felt like fully fleshed out characters who both have dreams, fears, and traumas, and I loved how different they were. Quinn had such a strong sense of voice, and I literally laughed out loud at multiple points while reading. I especially adored the little nods to rom-coms like Sleepless in Seattle throughout the book. The summer weddings setting gave the book a romantic, whimsical atmosphere, while the themes of mental health, familial expectations, and fears of the future created balance–making We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This everything I look for in a YA contemporary.

We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This was one of my most-anticipated reads of the year (as Rachel’s books always are, if we’re being honest) and it was everything I wanted and more. It’s a must-read if you like rom-coms, the opposite attracts trope, or stories set in the wedding industry. As I type this, I’m sitting at my window waiting not-so-patiently for my pre-ordered copy to arrive so I can finally have it on my shelves. I’ll be recommending We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This to fans of Marisa Kanter, Kristina Forest, or Gloria Chao–while I count the days until another gem from Rachel.

I love trying new to me contemporary YA authors. Even more than that? I love when it works out and I absolutely adore what I just read. We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon is a solid story about conceptualizing love as a performance and how that can negatively impact one’s relationships. I gobbled this book up in twenty four hours which truly felt like an indulgence — also found myself wanting to go visit Seattle by the end of it as well.

Quinn Berkowitz, main character of We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This and Tarek Mansour’s families have worked together at weddings for years. Quinn’s parents are wedding planners and own a business called Borrowed + Blue. Tarek’s parents are caterers. Last summer, Quinn emailed Tarek a declaration of love, to which she did not receive a response. When she sees him again, she’s full of dread and anxiety because she did lay it out on the line to get nothing back. As they will be working together a lot over the summer, they end up friends again but Quinn still has feelings for him.

Meanwhile, Quinn’s about to head to UW in the fall to start a business major and eventually go into business with her parents. Her whole life is planned out for her, and well, Quinn doesn’t want it. So, she’s agonizing over how to tell her parents. The story Quinn tells herself is that if she tells her parents she doesn’t want it, they’ll fight. It’ll be the last straw, and they will divorce. You see, Quinn has anxiety and catastrophizes, but she’s also got some unresolved childhood trauma.

Oh, and did I mention she’s a harpist and taking on some new lessons? But also that attraction between her and Tarek is budding and finally she also gets his side of the story.

One thing that I thought Solomon did so well in this book was the dialogue. It just flows so well and is so readable. I felt like all of the conversations in We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This were authentic and natural – albeit also awkward at times. In addition to the dialogue, this book also does a decent job with mental health rep. Quinn has OCD and anxiety. The way it is written is with sensitivity and doesn’t rely on stereotypes. We also see a character who has depression. And others who have anxiety. Mental healthcare is portrayed in a positive light. Therapy and medication are normalized. I am absolutely a fan and here for that.

We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This is a wonderful book about growth and coming into your own voice. It is so scary for Quinn to speak up and say what she does and does not want to do with her future. She also has to grow when it comes to her perception of relationships and really learn to lean into feelings. I think this was such an excellent read. So, I for sure will be checking out more books by Rachel Lynn Solomon.

Today, Tonight, Tomorrow set the bar so high that it's a little unfair to "We Can't Keep Meeting Like This." It has Rachel Lynn Solomon's requisite charm, but the actual plot is rather thin and the dynamic between the main characters never seems to go very deep.

I got my dates wrong and missed that this book came out last Tuesday! We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This tells the story of Quinn, a teenage harpist whose parents run a wedding business, and Tarik, one year older than Quinn with parents who run a catering business. Working for their parents, the two overlap at gigs and romance ensues. I enjoyed reading and recommend it to others! I thought the author did an especially good job detailing mental illness struggles for teenagers in a way that didn’t take over the story but was informative and natural. I think many readers would identify with the struggles portrayed by the main characters. I enjoyed reading and recommend it to others. Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing for the ARC.

Once again, Rachel Lynn Solomon has written a complex and nuanced story about love. This was my second YA novel by Rachel Lynn Solomon, and it definitely won’t be my last!

This book follows Quinn, whose parents run Borrowed + Blue, a wedding planning business, as she navigates the last summer before college. Complicating matters is Tarek, the son of the caterers that Quinn’s family tends to work closely with at weddings. After a disaster of an argument the summer before, Quinn and Tarek have to redevelop a friendship that might turn into something more.

I’m honestly not sure where to start with my praise for this book, because I feel like there were so many things that were just done so well! First off, we have Quinn herself. Quinn is jaded about love, having seen the numbers on how many of the weddings they planned ended in divorce. She also has seen firsthand that a seemingly stable marriage can get rocky and that realization scared her a lot, and framed her perspective on love. Just the idea of a jaded wedding planner was such a fun concept. Quinn’s parents and older sister both work for the business as well, but they love every second of it. Quinn on the other hand has slowly grown to hate the business, but doesn’t have the heart to tell her family, fearing that working together is what keeps her close to her family.

One of the things I loved about Quinn was how she was fully fleshed out, without being perfect. She knew what she wanted, or rather, what she didn’t want, in some areas, but was struggling to figure out other aspects of herself. She knew the wedding planning business wasn’t for her, but couldn’t quite figure out what spoke to her instead. What I liked about this was that Quinn knew herself. Even knowing that you don’t have everything figured out is a big step.

Although Tarek is seemingly Quinn’s total opposite I also really enjoyed his character. He loves weddings and romance and is a big fan of a grand gesture. He also knows what he wants to do in the future, which aligns with the culinary arts, just like his parents. What I appreciated most about Tarek though, was his ability to admit when he make a mistake. I find that’s a rare trait, and it made the communication in this book flourish.

In general, I found that I really enjoyed the discussion around working with/for family and the complications that arise because of that. The pressure, the responsibility, the expectations, all of those were discussed throughout the book in ways that showed both the upsides and downsides to this strange dual relationship. Like all things in this book, I appreciated that it was a nuanced discussion, where some characters loved it, while other characters didn’t, and each of those were presented as valid outlooks.

Another thing that I need to discuss is the fantastic romance! I loved how this was a friends to lovers story, but I appreciated how Quinn and Tarek were never best friends. They still had so much to learn about one another and I enjoyed seeing both their friendship and their romance evolve. One thing that especially stood out to me was the fact that Quinn and Tarek had very different love languages. The way they viewed love and the ways they wanted to receive love were very different, and I enjoyed seeing them navigate these differences.

On top of all of that there were wonderful discussions of mental health, including OCD, anxiety, and depression. Tarek also has eczema and is self conscious about how he looks because of it. There are great discussions about religion, and how there isn’t just one way to be Jewish or Muslim. There were so many little discussions throughout the book that stood out to me because they’re rarely given a platform in most media, so I appreciated the inclusion and thorough exploration they had in this book!

All in all this book was absolute perfection. It discussed so many things so well, that I would have to write a book of my own to discuss all the fantastic aspects of We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This. I gave it 4.5 stars, and would highly recommend adding it to the top of your TBR!

We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This Review

What is this book about?:
We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon follows Quinn Berkowitz and Tarek Mansour whose families have been in business together for years. Quinn’s parents are wedding planners and Tarek’s family owns a catering company. At the end of last summer, Quinn confessed her crush on him in an email right before Tarek left for college without a response.

Now that it’s summer vacation and Tarek is back home, Quinn dreads seeing him almost as much as she dreads playing the harp for her parents’ weddings again. When Tarek shows up for first wedding of the summer, they clash immediately and start hanging out.

Now, Quinn needs to figure out her feelings for him and what she wants to do instead of working for the family business.

Overall Thoughts:
This YA romance was full of diversity as the main character was Jewish and the love interest was Egyptian, had a realistic portrayal of a mental illness, featured memorable characters, had a great scenic atmosphere, and portrayed complex family dynamics well. Overall, We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This was a great well-written novel full of hilarity, heart, and self-discovery. 5/5

Who would like this?:
Anyone who enjoys YA romance books with Jewish main characters and mental health representation.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: OCD, anxiety, depression, antidepressants, mention of therapy

Last year I read a book that unexpectedly made its way to my favorite books of all time, and made me discover one of my new favorite authors. That book was Today Tonight Tomorrow, So when I found out this book was coming, I pre-ordered it immediately, and then months later I got an eARC.
I love books about weddings, so I was very excited to read this and We Can't Keep Meeting Like This did not disappoint, it was an intriguing and fantastic read.
The mental health rep was amazing, I could relate to Tarek's journey in a lot of ways, and the insight into how OCD can work was great too. And the Jewish rep was the best!!, it made me really happy. (me being a nonpracticing Jew).
But man did Quinn make me mad and frustrated. Sometimes while reading I was like, just say thank you Tarek, and move on!!! but obviously, there was something to be learned there and I ended up liking how she grew as a character by the end of the book, how she understood that she deserved love and that it wasn't a performance or an act. (I swooned when she gave the speech at the wedding).
Rachel Lynn Solomon still holds the spot as one of my favorites authors and I can't wait to read what comes next!

I was expecting this to be a fun, probably fluffy YA romance but it was so much more than that. I connected with Quinn in so many unexpected ways and even when I was frustrated with her I found her actions and thought process understandable and often relatable.

Quinn was raised around weddings as the daughter of two wedding planners. Too bad she doesn't believe in love. Last summer she was close to believing it when she developed feelings for her long-time friend Tarek, the son of her parents' go-to caterer. But after she attempted a grand gesture in the form of an email confessing her feelings only for him to never respond and in fact ignore her the whole year she's convinced more than ever that love isn't real. But now Tarek is back from school and when he reveals the real reason he never responded, and that he feels the same way, Quinn might just have to reconsider.

Quinn has anxiety and OCD which she's seen therapists for and takes medication for and I loved that representation because all too often in YA you see the characters just trying to come to terms with their mental health or even acknowledging that something is wrong or trying to put a term to what they're feeling so to see a character who's already sought help and has the support of her family and is taking medication was so refreshing. Not to mention the way that it's represented and the way that she describes intrusive thoughts and how OCD is so much more than washing hands and cleaning and basically being germaphobic. I don't think I have ever felt so seen and represented by a character with anxiety and intrusive thoughts. Additionally, Tarek's struggles with depression and how it became noticeable when he moved away to college and lost his support system and routine felt so raw and real and that feeling of the longer time passed the harder it gets to respond or reach out.

I really liked that Quinn wasn't the only one who had stuff to learn and had to grow and develop but Tarek as well because it would've been easy for Tarek to just be the hopeless romantic love interest with little to no flaws, but this book tackles how his love of grand gestures hit a level of performance and was an act more for himself than for the recipient. They both had a lot to learn, but it was about learning and growing together and their connection was so sweet and so real and I liked how they'd known each other so long, but were still learning more about each other.

I don't think I can say anything to do this book justice, but if you love YA contemporary and are looking for a romantic read that's sex-positive, diverse, funny, and deals with heavy topics while hitting you right in the feels then this book is probably for you.

Trigger Warnings: Anxiety, OCD, Depression

Rachel Lynn Solomon is an author whose works will always; and I mean it, always sneak up on you.

You would pick her book, because hey, the blurb seems to be intriguing and the cover is oh so pretty that you just can’t seem to resist it.

Quinn Berkowitz is currently working with her parent’s in their wedding planning business. One that she does, because it’s expected of her; not that there is anything wrong with the work. It’s just not what she is interested in, even if it’s already a given that she would be joining them.

She doesn’t know where her passions lie; she loves playing the harp though. And she knows that Tarik, her best friend - cum - crush has been ignoring her since she confessed it all in an email, even if she doesn’t believe in romance or the grand gestures that Tarek seems to love.

Tarek, on the other hand, loves the grand gestures, the one where you shout out to the world that he is in love - he believes it to be the only way to show off to the world that they are in love.

Wedding planning and bakers go hand in hand - and when Quinn and Tarek collide for the summer of weddings, Sparks are definitely gonna fly and just maybe, even end up with a HEA.

Both Quinn and Tarek have their own struggles, biggest of them being their own minds - and it’s that struggle that not just becomes the biggest obstacle at times in their romance, but also one that many would relate to - and the wonder of finding something special inspite of their struggles is the foundation to this book.

Rachel’s books have this fresh quality in them - no matter how many books that you read by her, there is the element of freshness; beguiling characters with their realistic outlook that will always steal your heart away!

This was another heartwarming, funny, thoughtful rom-com by Rachel Lynn Solomon, who I'm beginning to rely on for just this kind of story! The match-up of a cynic and a romantic is prime fodder for romantic mishaps, and Solomon includes a sensitive, positive representation of mental health for teens. This book was a joy from start to finish!

Oh my goodness, this book was SO FREAKING CUTE. I absolutely adored it! Not only did I love the main couple and was rooting for them the whole time, but there was so much good representation and so many important themes covered by this book. Here are a few things I loved:

- The lead characters: Quinn and Tarek are the best. Quirky, smart, funny. I loved them.
- Removing the stigma around mental health: Between Quinn’s OCD and Tarek’s depression, this book really normalized talking about mental health and therapy and getting help.
- The romance: Hello, steam!! Wasn’t expecting that in a YA book but was done perfectly.
- Sex positivity: There’s usually a huge stigma about sex with teenagers or when sex is covered, or it’s a BIG DEAL and about their first time, but that wasn’t the case here.
- The Jewish rep! From a casual BBYO mention that made me laugh (I was in BBYO), to Quinn describing her family as “high holiday only Jews” (same, same) to planning Jewish weddings, this book really covers a wide range of Jewish rep and it’s wonderful.
- Pressure to have a life plan when you’re 18: Woof, remember that?

Highly recommend!

We Can't Keep Meeting like This is the perfect storm of funny and steamy and romantic and sweet and honest and so so good. I'm going to be working hard over the course of this review to try to put into words exactly how much I loved this book and how much I want everyone I know to read this. There is something just so uniquely charming and comforting about books by Rachel Lynn Solomon that both captivate me and make me feel at home right from the get-go.
We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This is about Quinn who has just graduated high school and is all set on a conveyor belt to join Borrowed + Blue, her family’s wedding planning company, the only problem is that it’s not what she wants. The company means so much to her parents and older sister but to Quinn, it’s felt more and more like an obligation. She’s been playing classical pieces on her harp at these weddings so long she’s forgotten what it’s like to play for fun. And with the memory of the six months her parents split up when she was a child, six months they still don’t talk about, it is hard for weddings and romance to not feel like a performance to her. Enter Tarek, the son of her parents’ favorite caterer for weddings whom Quinn grew up with and to whom Quinn confessed her feelings for before not hearing from him all year while he was at college. Only he’s back for the summer and back in her orbit and it’s hard for Quinn to forget all the old feelings she used to have not to come back up. Even if they bicker about everything and disagree about things like grand gestures of love and rom-coms, Tarek is one of the few people Quinn can open up to. In this earnest, open, funny, and sweet exploration of family, relationships, religion, mental health, and mug cakes, Rachel Lynn Solomon’s words will steal into your heart and knock you off your feet.
This is the 4th book I've read by Rachel Lynn Solomon and with this one and the previous two (The Ex Talk and Today Tonight Tomorrow), I've basically spent the entire time reading it clutching my chest going "oh. oH, this one! This is my favorite Rachel book." I have no idea how she managed it. Considering Today Tonight Tomorrow was only the second book I’d read by her, it didn’t seem so strange, it felt natural. Then next came The Ex Talk and she’d done it again. This time, I attributed it to the new genre. The Ex Talk must have resonated with me so strongly because the protagonist was my age and it was a proper adult romance and truly touching. We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This just firmly solidifies something I’ve come to suspect for a while- that Rachel has become one of my favorite contemporary ya authors and that she really is just that good. Also, she truly does just keep better with each book as she learns more about her craft. I have to say that it has been such a joy to watch Rachel grow more as a writer in every book. Like wow. Every single book she just gets stronger and more confident and more open about exploring such important and sensitive issues in such thoughtful and real ways.
First and foremost, Quinn has OCD and Rachel addresses it and talks about it in such a real and healthy way that I am sad to say I’ve never seen it before in a YA book. This is a perspective that is so important and good. I feel so strongly about representing all types of mental illnesses and neurodivergences and to that end, We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This was just so damn good and necessary. Not only do we have the protagonist living with and talking about OCD but our Love Interest Tarek has clinical depression and together Quinn and Tarek talk openly about treatment and therapy and medication without any shame and it was so lovely and refreshing. As someone who lives with depression and works so hard to be very forthright and open about it to try to normalize talking about it and treatment, books like this mean so so much to me. I’m so glad teenagers today are going to get the chance to read this book.
Another thing that I always appreciate about Rachel's books is the different ways she talks about and depicts her character’s relationship with their faith and Jewish culture and practices. As someone who grew up in Very Christian Texas without any Jewish classmates, books like Rachel’s are important voices to add to the tableau of Jewish stories. Considering all the harmful stereotypes you can see on television and in movies, I feel like I’ve learned a lot reading her books.
I have many favorite things about this book- the romance, the mental health rep, the writing itself but another also favorite of mine was Quinn’s friendship with Julia and Julia in general. The two of them just had me cracking up so hard because they talk so much like how I talk with my best friends and their love and friendship felt so organic and real and I loved them. Julia and Noelle were also just so so very very cute. I loved those beautiful queer girls and when Julia flirted by asking about Kristen Stewart, I just died. It was perfect.
Asher and Quinn’s relationship also meant so much to me. Asher is 7 years older and their relationship could remind me of me and my oldest sister. My oldest sister is only 5 years older than me but a lot of the feelings Quinn talked about here, I felt for sure, especially around the wedding. I went through that when my older sister got married and I just love that Rachel always allows space for multiple relationships to breathe and grow and blossom. It does my heart so good.
It brings me such joy to see this book in the world and now I must tell you all, please, for the love of pants, go buy this book. Read it now. This is a beautiful labor of love and I am so honored that this is a book I'm acknowledged in. Everyone run to your local indie bookseller (or swipe frantically to their website) and get this gift of a book in your life. You won’t regret it.

I am the biggest sucker for stories about wedding planners and weddings in general, and there have been a lot of great ones in this genre lately. I love the idea of a family-run wedding planning business. While Quinn knew it wasn’t the career she wanted, I was completely jealous that she and Asher had that in!

I loved how candidly Rachel as the author and Quinn as the character talk about mental illness and therapy. It feels especially important in YA books, to let young readers know that these things are okay to be open about and shouldn’t have a stigma. I enjoyed the Jewish and Muslim representation and appreciated that both MCs wanted to get closer to their respective cultures.

Quinn’s growth throughout the book was great--exactly what I look for when I read YA. She is certainly more mature than a lot of teens her age but still isn’t sure what she wants her future to look like. Instead of going with what she’s told she should do, she takes the time to figure out what she actually wants to do with her life.

The rom-com references and the mouthwatering dessert descriptions were just the icing on the cake.

If you know me, you know I'm a HUGE fan of Rachel Lynn Solomon's books. I've convinced everyone to read "The Ex Talk," so I was absolutely ecstatic to be chose as part of #ownvoices to read this before it came out!

One of the reasons why I love Rachel's books so much is that they prominently feature Jewish heroines, which is surprisingly rare in fiction. Her books remind me of Judy Blume, one of my favorites. They both have frank conversations about sex, Jewish main characters and poignant coming-of-age stories.

But I have to say, this was not my favorite. I found Quinn, the protagonist, to be incredibly immature. Obviously I expected it because she's 18, but I found her to be a bit annoying. I also didn't understand how she was working a full-time job planning weddings while still in high school. I know family businesses have their quirks, but this just felt a little too unbelievable for me.

I liked the ingredients to this story, but not the final product. It was cute, but pales in comparison to her other work. But I'm really looking forward to her next release, "Weather Girl!" Hopefully it'll meet my (admittedly) high expectations.
•••
Thank you Net Galley and Simon Teen for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

This cover, y’all, I cannot deal with the cuteness. And it’s a perfect representation of the book inside, filled with honest conversations about mental health, hilarious characters, and a delightful friends-to-lovers, opposites-attract romance.

Quinn and Tarek were friends as children because of their parents’ businesses – Quinn’s family runs a wedding planning business while Tarek’s does catering. While they spent a lot of time together, they never hung out outside of those events, but Quinn still managed to develop a crush on Tarek, which culminates the summer before he goes off to college. After watching his “grand gestures” with his various past girlfriends, she finally confesses that she has a crush for him in an email…. and then he completely ghosts her. With him back for the summer and working many of the same events, it’s awkward, especially since Quinn thought she was finally over the crush (spoiler: she’s not). But in trying to resurrect their friendship, they end up opening up to each other, and maybe.. jut maybe, that unrequited crush isn’t so unrequited after all.

“I did like kissing him. But I’ve seen so many miserable brides, miserable grooms, miserable families putting on a show because they think they’re supposed to. I’ve seen the expressions my parents wear with their clients. None of it is real, and I already do enough pretending.
I learned from my parents like I learned how to bustle a wedding dress: love is a performance.”


The book is told solely from Quinn’s first person POV, and she was a character you could really root for. The thought of a teenage wedding harpist was, honestly, one of the things that really interested me in this book, and I was glad to see how much it played a part in her arc. With high school over, she’s looking forward to her first year of college… or at least she would be if her parents hadn’t hand-picked all of her courses in order to make her a better employee for the family business. Problem is, Quinn doesn’t want to join the family business. After watching her parents separate temporarily as a child (and then never talking about it again) she has a dim view of romance, especially her own chances for it. But her family’s life is tied so inextricably to the business – their “family brunches” are actually used to update everyone on work hurdles – that she doesn’t know how to fit into the family without being a part of the business, and it’s not really like she knows what she wants to do with her life anyway. So rather than spending her last summer before college hanging out with her friends, she’s unenthusiastically playing the harp or trying to live up to her parents’ high expectations at various cake tastings, bridal fittings, and weddings. But a chance encounter at a wedding opens a new door to her, something she’s actually passionate about, and telling her family she doesn’t want to work with them becomes more pressing.

Tarek’s the complete opposite of Quinn in many ways. He loves working with his family, especially doing the desserts, and his main concern is convincing them that he could handle more. His love of baking really shown through in the book and I loved his passion. Tarek’s parents got together due to a grand gesture, and for Tarek, love is supposed to be big and splashy. But he’s a great friend (he saves Quinn desserts! *swoon*), and he’s very invested into rescuing the friendship between him and Quinn. Unlike previously, though, their friendship goes deeper, and they start talking about their hopes and aspirations (or lack of them), and their new closeness leads to a romantic relationship. They have differing ideas about how romance “works” and, unlike other books, the hurdles they had to overcome felt evenly balanced.

“We’re all hurting, Quinn. In different ways, some that we can treat with medication and therapy and some only with time. And some in ways that might never heal. Sometimes the good outweighs the bad. Sometimes those great times are so fucking great that they make the bad times a little easier to handle.”


There’s quite a bit of rep in this book. From a mental health standpoint, Quinn has anxiety and OCD, which she treats with a combination of therapy and medication, and she talks about it a lot in the book. I thought her description of OCD was excellent and really helped me understand the thought process behind it. Tarek also had some mental health struggles, though they’re a bit spoilery, so all I’ll say is that I felt like it was handled well. Their discussions about their mental health are so honest and accepting and yes, please, more of this in YA, thanks. Quinn’s also Jewish, though her family isn’t particularly observant, but it’s something that’s woven into her family life, as is the fact that Tarek’s Muslim. Neither of their religions is a pain point, it’s just part of their identities, and I loved that.

Overall, I very much enjoyed how sweet and fun this book was, along with the stellar mental health rep. I’ll definitely be picking up this author’s backlist!

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.