We Can't Keep Meeting Like This

I received an ARC from Edelweiss
3.3

Quinn doesn't believe in the grandness of love, or the point in relationships. Working with her family as wedding planners should probably make her more of a romantic, but instead a front seat to the messiness of marriage made sure she never got to be idealistic about it. Not to mention the way her parents perform like the perfect couple even when she knows they aren't- that's what all these things feel like to her, a performance. Which is why her friendship with Tarek, part of a family of caterers they work with, and fan of the "grand gesture", involved so many arguments. But it's been almost a year since they talked, and a year since she sent him an email admitting her feelings- an email he never answered. She's determined to ignore him, but things don't always work out the way you expect them to. By the end of the summer she may have a different idea about love.

This is one of those books that feels like it was made to be a movie. This is a cute book full of scenes that feel sweeping enough to be perfectly at home on screen. I would love to watch this as a movie, and the descriptions Solomon writes with would make it an easy job.

This story is pretty cute. Not all the time, but there are definitely enough cute moments that tip the scales for me. It's not your bump-free, easy going romance, but it's never so messy as to feel stressful. This book straddles the line between fluff and serious/real life well. You never get stuck to long on either side of it.

With that "real life" quality- the diversity in this book is great! Not only is Quinn's family, and her sister's fiancé, Jewish, but Tarek and his family are Muslim. I've never read a YA with a relationship involving both those religions, and I loved the fact that their religions are a part of them and their lives enough for it to be brought up throughout and effect how they do their jobs and the types of relationships they have with their families. Quinn also has OCD, which is represented well in this book, and Tarek struggles with depression. Plus, Quinn's best friend is bi and in a relationship with a Black girl. It's a really nice casual kind of representation without any of it feeling like lip service!

My problem with this book was that it remained pretty surface level. There are so many issues within the text that the characters have to get past, and an invitation for it to get deeper, but the themes get repeated other and other again without it feeling like we get into new territory or to the root of any of the problems. And that repetition sets up the characters to come together, but really just makes it so that the characters really don't seem like they should be together. They don't communicate well with each other and they want such different things that without a real conversation, that isn't just an argument about grand gestures, they can't work out. So a lack of that type of conversation made it feel like nothing really got done about anything.

I also couldn't get invested in the story for the most part because of these issues. Things get repeated so often that it wore on me more than got me interested in what was going to happen next.

There's something enjoyable about this story, and light enough to keep it an easy ready and something that feels like it could easily make the transition into film. I just wish that the problems set up felt more like they were really getting explored and dealt with instead of simply being told.