Ari is a free spirit and aspiring comedian. She is living in New York with no sense of permanence. Subletting apartments or sleeping on couches while taking any job she can find. Josh is a chef. He is very set in his ways and has lived in New York his whole life in the shadow of his father and his well beloved diner. They are thrown together by fate on multiple occasions over a span of years and to say it doesn't go well would be an understatement! They meet for a third time at their lowest points. Ari has been left by her wife for a younger woman. Josh failed spectacularly when he took over his deceased father's restaurant. They find unlikely friendship with each other. Netflix and actual chill, Ikea trips and long text conversations. Together they begin to heal and possibly find more than just friendship.

I loved this book! Ari is such a lovable mess and Josh is adorably uptight. They are both so complicated in their own ways. I was sobbing by the end. I really enjoyed the way the book shows us the characters in different stages of their lives. They both grow on their own but find their best selves when they are together. They are surrounded by awesome side characters that add so much to the story.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review. The following opinions are my own.

I'm not admittedly a huge romance person. I thought with all the glowing reviews of this book I would give it a chance. Unfortunately it was not for me. The main character really got on my nerves. And I couldn't get over it. I ended up skimming the book simply to finish it.

This was EVERYTHING and MORE I was hoping for!! Fucking the BEST friends to lovers romance I’ve read in ages!! NYC setting, Millennial angst, REAL conversations, intimacy, tenderness, bisexual rep, Jewish rep, ALL👏🏻THE👏🏻FEELINGS!!!!!🥹🥹

AND THIS WAS A DEBUT!!!!!🤯🤯🤯🤯

A must read IMMEDIATELY especially if you love Nora Ephron and When Harry met Sally.

🔥Steam level: slow burn, door WIDE open 🥵🫠

HUGE thanks to @prhaudio for the complimentary ALC in exchange for my honest review!!!!

Oh don't mind me requesting an arc of a book because it's frenemies to lovers and it TEARING OUT MY HEART!!!

Ari is a walking catastrophy in all the best ways, and I need to be her when I grow up. Her emotional vulnerability is both scary, and idilic! Also, her sex health..... Yass Queen!

Josh is managing some things well, and other things...maybe no so well. He definitely isn't prepared to run into Ari over and over again in a city of millions.

After years of chance encounters they're finally friends. But can two broken hearted people really remain friends when they're so invested in one another?

This book is utter magic and I was hooked from the first paragraph. I texted no less than five of my bookish besties to tell them to open it IMMEDIATELY. And then it was a BotM choice! Clearly that team also knows this is a romance goldmine!

Don't sleep on this one! You NEEDS it!

What a refreshing take on a rom-com. It felt very Harry Met Sally with the enemies to friends to lovers trope and being set in NYC.

A modern retelling of the classic movie When Harry Met Sally!- who wouldn’t love that?! This novel is funny and smart with characters who feel like you know them at the end. Even though, because it’s a retelling, I knew how things would turn out, I enjoyed every page of Josh and Ari’s angst and banter. The book is long, but the pages flew. I enjoyed this one. Go read it.

DNF @ 52%

I picked this book up twice, hopeful I would fall in love with these characters and their story. Sadly, that was not the case. Since the cover is gorgeous with the pretty colors and the fall vibes, I was so bummed to find that this title just did not work for me. There were far too many time jumps for me to ever feel connected or settled with Ari and Josh. I could still myself checking out Kate Goldbeck's future work since the writing was good.

I love when I start a book and it’s immediately the chaos in the absolute best way. And that’s what this was. And it was perfect! I loved every second, every silly goofy second, every heartbreaking second, every single second of Ari the CHAOS demon, every second of Josh being the grumpiest guy in the land! I loved it so much. I’ve had this for a while and I hate that I waited so long to read it! But now I’m going to be thinking about it forever.

Josh and Ari’s journey was messy and chaotic, but it was also real and honest and SO good. They had the absolute worst first meeting, and every time they happened upon each other after that it somehow got worse?? Until all of a sudden they were sort of friends? Then they were sort of the most important person in each others life? It seemingly made no sense, but simultaneously made perfect sense.

They finally stuck together when they were at their lowest points, because they really had nothing to lose right? And somehow that was exactly what they needed. They didn’t have any room to judge, they got each other in way they hadn’t gotten from anyone else. Their friendship was so unexpected and odd, but it forced them (eventually) to really work on themselves, healing and growing and grieving. They were so imperfectly perfect in the best way.

I loved the POV switching throughout the chapters?? At first I was confused and unsure, but it worked SO WELL for this story. It made perfect sense and I actually really enjoyed it. I loved all of the second characters. The found family makes my heart swell every single time. The black and white cookie soulmate reference that kept coming up. Briar referencing Taylor Swift so many times in .4 seconds! Ari and Radhya’s friendship!!

Thank you so much to Kate Goldbeck for writing this book! I cannot wait to have it physically in my hands in a couple weeks!!

And of course thanks to Netgalley, Penguin Random House - Dial Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I loved this romance!
It was complex and a little awkward in a way that felt perfectly realistic. It also managed to be a wonderful nod to the classic When Harry Met Sally. Goldbeck really epitomised that intertwined nature of their friendship and budding relationship.
The bi rep was handled beautifully and I’m so happy to have this as a recommendation to pass on to others.
The perfect New York autumn read!

Thank you NetGalley and Dial Press/Random House for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review, all opinions are my own.

Ari and Josh have so many layers of success followed by failure which leads them into these ruts of not knowing what they should do next. Through lots of trial and error and many years, they eventually figure out that maybe they're meant to be, messes and all.

"Can we try that again? I feel like I wasn't ready for that...That could be the pull quote for our entire relationship."

"Maybe being in love is knowing that you’d live it all over again—every part, suffering included—to get right back to the place where you’re standing."

I recommend this if you love:
- The Amazon Prime show Modern Love
- "Yes, Chef"/The Hulu show Bear
- When Harry Met Sally
- bi/Jewish rep
- slow burns
- enemies to friends to enemies to lovers

You, Again is an enemies-to-lovers romance told over multiple years in the third person. You, Again follows Ari and Josh after their disastrous first meeting. They’re constantly thrown back together and when you think it can’t get worse between the two, it does.

I loved the idea of You, Again, but the third person narrative and female lead, Ari, made it difficult for me to love the novel wholly.

The third person narrative did not jive with me. You, Again is an emotionally charged novel, but the third person narrative did not allow me to fully connect with the characters. The best way to describe the feeling is that it felt like there was a glass wall between me and the characters.

Ari is a difficult character to like. She’s annoying at times (though it can be endearing) and her emotional illiteracy is frustrating. There were times I wanted to reach into the pages and shake her.

Goldbeck’s banter is top notch and helped keep the story light, especially in the highly emotional charged moments.

Though I didn’t like You, Again as much as I would have because of the third person narrative, at its core it’s still an emotionally charged enemies-to-lovers romance with depth.

It had a lot going for it. Interesting but also pretty unlikeable characters that wallow in their misery together. Chance meetings going on for years before they ever even think about being friends. The guy falls first, which I'm always here for. He's slightly unhinged with it and borderline obsessive/stalkerish, so truly only a bookish boyfriend could get away with acting the way he does. There was just one scene that felt too weird for me to give this much of a higher rating. Despite enjoying it and reading it in basically one sitting, their first actual sex scene was so uncomfortable. She going on and on in her head that she doesn't think it's a good idea. Granted, she doesn't really say it outlaid, but he so pushy with it and it's just uncomfortable and gives off rape-y vibes. And then she cries, supposedly from how good it was and whatever, but pairing that with her thoughts about how it might not be a great idea and how she doesn't really think they should be doing it was a hard read and not fun for me at all. The sex does get better though.

4.5 stars rounded up.

Such a slow burn in the best way possible. I loved every minute of this book. It was a slow start for me at first. Ari is an emotionally unavailable unapologetically herself kinda gal. Josh starts as a snarky head up his bum chef. Yet somehow no matter what happens, they find each other again and again. It's like an enemies to friends to lovers/soulmates. No matter how much they fight it, the chemistry and draw to one another is undeniable. I loved the banter in the book. Ari was such a spit fire. You couldn't help but giggle at her authenticity. Josh, while initially stuck up, quickly became a character I couldn't help but love. He so badly wants to love and be loved. No matter how hard he tried before, it was like he was never enough. The most unlikely pair that becomes nothing short of extraordinary.

You will laugh, your heart will feel all types of ways, you will grin ear to ear and you will want to shake some sense into each and every character at one point or another.

If there is one thing that I love most about this book, it's the freaking character development. So many complex and diverse characters. It's fabulous!

Thank you so much NetGalley, Kate Goldbeck and Random House Publishing for the incredible opportunity to review the ARC of You, Again.

Review is live on Goodreads.
Review will be posted to Amazon on Pub Day.
Review run date on instagram will be no later than Wednesday September 06, 2023 due to holiday weekend.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group.

This is probably the hardest review I had to right and most likely not for the reason you think. I usually know exactly how I feel about the book by the time I’m done with it. This one was not the case.

I am just gonna say this once. I LOVE When Harry Met Sally. And I see how this was the inspiration but I refuse to compare the two because I most definitely did not love this book.

First, I absolutely HATED Ari. Nothing about her character spoke to me or made me relate to her. She was so emotionally immature and ridiculous for most of this by the time things went badly between her and Josh, I wanted them to stay apart. They were just not healthy for each other.

Josh was very annoying and clingy. But at least I liked him a bit more than Ari. For someone who’s an adult he sure has lots of unresolved issues.

One thing I’ll give this book, the smut scenes were very good.

I can see how some people might like it but I just wasn’t one of those people.
Not all the characters who are opposites attract

you, again is a "when harry met sally" inspired romcom featuring our two main characters, ari and josh, who first meet and realize they've been sleeping with the same woman. over the course of a few years, they continue to run into each other before deciding to forge a friendship as they are both going through it: ari is in the middle of a divorce and josh doesn't know what he's doing career wise.

oh man, this book was a bit all over the place for me. the time jumps were major, im talking 5-8 years major. you would think that during these time jumps that these characters would change, mature, figure out what they want - no. that isn't the case at all. at least for ari anyways. she was pretty unlikable by the end of the book and doesn't redeem herself in my eyes. very emotionally stunted and doesn't realize the affect that has on other people, especially people who are trying to be there for her. both characters are flawed in their own ways, which i did really appreciate earlier on, but it got boring really fast watching the two of them run circles around each other.

while the writing is good and pretty entertaining at points with the banter between ari/josh, its hard to enjoy a book fully when you don't really like the characters and aren't rooting for them to get together. i was hoping for the opposite by the time i finished. this sadly missed the mark for me.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Random House Publishing, and Kate Goldbeck for allowing me to review this cute romance for my honest feedback. This is such a cute romance. I love that the two main characters first meet when dating the same girl. Somehow they manage to become friends over time which is a really unique and cute twist to the enemies to friends to lovers trope. This book certainly pays homage to When Harry Met Sally, so fans of that movie will love this book as well. I also think this book is great for readers who love banter and writers such as Christina Lauren, Emily Henry, and Ali Hazelwood. I loved this book so much and can’t wait to read more from this author. Thank you again.

There were some things that worked for me in this book and a bunch of things that did not. So, lets break it down.

First of all, this book is clearly a novelization of the well-known romcom, When Harry Met Sally which poses the question, can a man and a woman truly just be strictly platonic friends? We all know how that movie plays out but let me add in here for the sake of full disclosure that I'm very meh on that movie and it does not hold a special place in my heart the way it does for so many other people. Perhaps then, I'm inherently unsuited to read and enjoy a book that is very much a novelization of that particular movie but let's set that part aside for now.

New Yorkers Ari and Josh's first meeting results in the realization that they happen to both be sleeping with the same woman. Awkward. Sparks fly even as they bicker their way through a tense first meeting. (Chef Josh arrives at Ari and her roommate's apartment, intending to cook dinner for his girlfriend, leading Ari to question the accuracy of that particular label given that she's also sleeping with her).

Cut to 3 years later and Ari, an aspiring comedian, arrives at the restaurant her current roomie and best friend works at, and turns out Josh is the head chef there. Her opinion of Josh only gets worse when he publicly humiliates the roommate and ends up firing her over undercooked duck.

Another couple of years later, Josh, now in a long distance relationship, meets Ari once more at a New Years Eve party his sister drags him to. He runs into Ari...and her wife, this despite Ari's earlier protestations about relationships and marriage.

And finally, a three years after that, they run into each other at a high end sex shop, both single and depressed (Ari from her wife leaving her for another woman, Josh from his restaurant failure) and a tentative friendship begins. The entire basis of the friendship, as Ari defends it to Radhya, her onetime roommate turned bestie who Josh fired many years ago, is that they're both metaphorically treading water.

Here's where things gets a little wonky. He goes to IKEA and helps her shop for and build furniture for her now empty apartment. She saves him for disastrous first dates. They both spend inordinate amounts of time texting each other or watching movies together or sharing meals or going to museums...in a word, they're friends who inadvertently have started dating without either of them realizing it. Yet, Ari is mired in depression from the failure of her marriage and unable to truly move on (she still sends nude selfies to her ex wife!) and Josh is mired in self-pity from destroying his father's legacy. There's brief mentions of therapy but both of these sad sack souls are determined to stay true to their chosen paths of sadness and despair and frequently getting in their own way of doing the right and obvious.

Ultimately though, there's a shared kiss and Ari backing away and then a big dramatic fight and then Ari and Josh having hot sex and then Ari running away....all the way to Washington D.C. with a new job that Josh's mom of all people helped her land.

I will say I found the latter half of the book, when Ari and Josh had gone their separate ways after their friendship/relationship imploded to be much more riveting. Not that I minded the development of their friendship but it did drag on for a bit and after a while, it was ridiculous that these two fairly intelligent people couldn't see what was happening right in front of them. Also, people don't act the way these two do (Ari "saving" Josh from a bad first date by crashing his date and pretending to be his wife is a particular standout). But I'm glad there were months of them being separated and sort of learning how to be alone because for much of their friendship, the two seemed to use each other as an emotional crutch which seemed like an unhealthy, codependent relationship.

I liked the ending much better than the first half though I will say that I didn't love the last chapter, it seemed unnecessarily schmaltzy and cheesy. All in all, there was potential here and I liked her style of writing, there were moments when I laughed out loud but the pacing was not great, at least for me, and the novelization of a romcom that I'm already meh about was never going to make this a favorite. Also, while Josh has a family, Ari seems to exist in a vacuum. No explanation is given for her lack of family, no backstory, it's like her life starts when she meets Josh. We never get a true sense of who she is aside from her heartbreak and grief over the end of her marriage. That's a weird basis for character development. Or rather, if that's all there is to her character, it feels incomplete and not fleshed out well enough. Josh seemed to have a better character arc and I wish Ari had gotten that same treatment. And then she spends much of the book mired in her depression, alienating her friends and using Josh as a crutch only to cast him aside when the feelings get too real. And beyond her divorce, there was no other context for that.

This is a sharper, modern take on When Harry Met Sally, and I absolutely loved it! Smart, witty, heartwarming, and unique- one of my favorite reads of the year so far. Out September 12- be sure to add this one to your fall reading list!

I have mixed feelings about this one. I think I hyped it up in my head after reading the first couple chapters, prepared for a five star read. My biggest qualm is the writing style. The time jumps really messed with me. Each time I started to get into it, time jump! Three years later. Two years later. Three years later again. Those are significant gaps, and much of the "present" moment was spent dissecting the past two or three years that we skipped over. I felt like the main characters, Ari and Josh, were surface-level because I couldn't spend enough time getting to know them in that moment. I constantly felt held at a distance, sort of detached. There was a revolving door of side characters that appeared then disappeared. This might be why I never felt the sparks (even the wrong kind) between Ari and Josh. I liked their initial meet cute (meet ugly?). I think I would have liked it more if time progressed naturally after this moment, or maybe just fewer time jumps. I know the point of the time jumps is to show that the universe keeps bringing them back together, because they keep meeting again by chance in random places (NYC is huge, so what are the odds?).

It is written in third person dual-POV, but it switches POVs far too often. I wanted to get to know the main characters' inner workings, but each time I started to get into it, (guess what?) perspective shift! Also, the perspectives weren't labeled, so when Josh and Ari were together/in the same place, I sometimes got confused whose perspective it was.

I liked that Ari was the commitment-phobe and Josh was the hopeless romantic; however, Josh never felt like a romantic to me, more just somebody who liked steady, safe, reliable relationships and fulfilling his "obligations." I liked that Ari was a free-spirited, chaotic bisexual.

IT HAD SO MUCH POTENTIAL. I'm in denial. Which is probably why I'm not able to rate this lower! I've never seen When Harry Met Sally, but apparently if you liked that, you might like this.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest, voluntary review.

this was so good! i enjoyed so much the fact that it wasn’t like every other romance novel! definitely would recommend to everyone