The night we met (International Edition)

THIS BOOK WAS CUTE. I know I said I don't like romance in my thrillers, but I'm loving the romance in romance!!!! My first Abby Jimenez book and I was so impressed, invested, and in awe with how much I have enjoyed these romance books I find myself reading. This is a love story. A story about what love means and how love is shown. My favorite thing about this book is it is realistic. It's not some foo-foo love story with frills. It's hard, painful, honest, and messy.

Abby Jimenez’s The Night We Met tries to juggle friendship, addiction, poverty, and forbidden love. The problem is the romance spends so much time running laps around guilt that I did not care when Chris and Larissa finally got together. Larissa and Chris have chemistry right away. Unfortunately, Larissa is dating Mike, who also happens to be Chris’s best friend. The novel traps them in an endless cycle of emotional cheating while Mike’s alcoholism spirals further out of control with every chapter. Watching Chris constantly clean up Mike’s disasters became exhausting fast. Things finally hit a breaking point when Mike nearly kills Larissa because nobody around him takes his addiction seriously enough. The book frames Chris as protective and selfless, but so much of his behavior reads as codependent instead of romantic. Larissa’s fear of relying on men financially made far more sense to me than the novel seemed willing to admit. Chris pushing help onto her after years of financial instability felt frustrating instead of swoony because she clearly wanted independence. She did not want another relationship where someone else held the power. Mike’s mother, Donna, deliberately putting nuts on the menu after learning about Larissa’s allergy just to force her out of her job after she dumped Mike for almost killing her? My jaw was on the floor. I spent most of this book wanting someone to hold Mike and his entire enabling friend group accountable instead of excusing every terrible decision in the name of friendship. The pacing dragged badly. It takes more than 350 pages for Chris and Larissa to kiss making the romance feel painfully stretched out instead of a slow burn. By the time they finally get together, the novel has repeated the same emotional conflict so many times that their romance feels rushed and underdeveloped. Mike’s apology to Chris and decision to finally seek help ended up being one of the few moments of growth that actually worked for me. I also appreciated seeing Larissa build her business and break out of survival mode. The writing itself is readable, but this easily could have been a novella. The emotional themes had potential, though the relationships felt far too unhealthy for the romance to feel satisfying. Also, Woofarine is still one of the worst dog names I have ever read. Pick this up if you enjoy messy relationship drama, painfully drawn-out slow burns, and a cast fueled almost entirely by toxicity and codependency.

💯 loved this read. Laugh out loud funny!!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I loved this book, but for some reason the ending felt a bit incomplete to me. Maybe because it was an extremely slow burn, but i still enjoyed it!

I loved this book, but for some reason the ending felt a bit incomplete to me. Maybe because it was an extremely slow burn, but i still enjoyed it.