ARC Review: We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon

We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon is a fun, upper YA, post HS, summer before college romance, and I really think you will enjoy this book! If you are a fan of Rachel Lynn Solomon’s previous work keep an eye on the character’s names, as you may find some old friends! Check out my full thoughts below, and pick up We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This on Tuesday!

Many thanks to Simon Teen for providing me with an advance reader copy, and in no way does that influence my thoughts below.

We Can't Keep Meeting Like This

by Rachel Lynn Solomon
Published by: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
on June 8, 2021
Genres: Contemporary, Contemporary Romance, Young Adult
Audible
Goodreads

A wedding harpist disillusioned with love and a hopeless romantic cater-waiter flirt and fight their way through a summer of weddings in this effervescent romantic comedy from the acclaimed author of Today Tonight Tomorrow.

Quinn Berkowitz and Tarek Mansour’s families have been in business together for years: Quinn’s parents are wedding planners, and Tarek’s own a catering company. At the end of last summer, Quinn confessed her crush on him in the form of a rambling email—and then he left for college without a response.

Quinn has been dreading seeing him again almost as much as she dreads another summer playing the harp for her parents’ weddings. When he shows up at the first wedding of the summer, looking cuter than ever after a year apart, they clash immediately. Tarek’s always loved the grand gestures in weddings—the flashier, the better—while Quinn can’t see them as anything but fake. Even as they can’t seem to have one civil conversation, Quinn’s thrown together with Tarek wedding after wedding, from performing a daring cake rescue to filling in for a missing bridesmaid and groomsman.

Quinn can’t deny her feelings for him are still there, especially after she learns the truth about his silence, opens up about her own fears, and begins learning the art of harp-making from an enigmatic teacher.

Maybe love isn’t the enemy after all—and maybe allowing herself to fall is the most honest thing Quinn’s ever done.

Review

We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This is an upper YA romance, as Quinn just graduated high school and Tarek just finished his freshman year in college, so the book does have older themes and an older feel to it. But the real tension is when they both return to working together during this summer after Tarek never acknowledge Quinn’s email professing she had a crush on him. It’s been a year and now…Quinn is determined to hate him, instead of love him.

Quinn’s family is in the wedding business and expects her to continue on with them during and post-college. Although this does give her a connection with her family (and Tarek’s family, who are caterers), it’s totally understandable that she would look to see what else is out there in the world. Weddings are supposed to be fun (maybe magical) experiences for people who go to weddings to celebrate their closest friends and relatives, but for someone working in the field, it’s just another day at work. Especially, for a teen who has been spending all her evenings and weekends at her family wedding planning business. So maybe not so fun and magical? 

I loved that Quinn dove into learning about the harp. It shows that something you love can be pushed aside for all the little or big things in your life that are “more important.” But if you are able to start fresh and really see whatever it was that got pushed aside again for what it once was, it can become that super special piece of your life again. I also just really enjoyed learning about the harp from Quinn in these pages.

Then there’s Tarek, who is a bit of a hopeless romantic, and works as a catering server for events. These two just make their work events so much more bearable when they are together. The romance between Tarek and Quinn killed me! As someone who grew up around weddings, Quinn is so done with romantic things, which doesn’t jive with Tarek’s over-the-top social media PDA. Tarek was just the cutest and I just kept waiting for Quinn to see it. I mean, she saw that he was cute physically, but to see that maybe not everyone is a statistic. Maybe it’s that she needed to see that she built connections with people even when she didn’t want to and all she did was hurt herself. 

This was a fun, second chances, friends to lovers, romance, that just screams summer beach read!