8 Thoughts While Reading We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Hey there!

I wanted to try something different today. I wrote three posts for today but wasn’t feeling like posting them, so I thought of just posting my thoughts on We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This. I’ll be reviewing it someday, but today, I wanted to write something else. 

Also, I’ll be announcing a change in schedule in my wrap-up post on Monday, so look forward to it.

With that being said, let’s start this post.

About the Book

Title: We Can’t Keep Meeting Like This • By: Rachel Lynn Solomon 

Published on: June 8th 2021  • By:  Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readersm

Pace: Medium • Pages:331 • Age: 15+

Standalone • Genre: YA Romance

Song: Sea of Love by Cat Power

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. 

ADD TO GOODREADS

Rep: Jewish MC (with OCD), Egyptian MC (with eczema), Jewish and Egytptian (SCs), Black Queer Character SC (with social Anxiety), Queer Friend, Gay and Lesbian couple (SCs)

➼ Ugh, I’m hungry for some mug cake and Jewish pastries 😦

Every time I read a book with tons of food in it, I’m hangry. I need to eat something delicious or maybe just want to teleport into the book and grab a bite of every food mentioned there so that I’m not worried about my growling stomach and can peacefully focus on the story. Quinn’s love for mug cake was so adorable. She’d hide these microwavable chocolate mug cakes in her bedroom so that no one would eat them. When Tarek learns that she loves mug cakes, he makes one for her, which was a sweet moment in the book.

➼ We are Family!

Why does no one in Quinn’s family notice how hard she’s trying to put up a front?! The fact that she lived a double life spoke volumes of how much she wanted to stop working for B+B (her parents’ wedding planning business). They should have sat down and addressed the “almost-break-up” issue back when she and her sister were kids and not let it snowball for so long as it did.

➼ Zalabya 🤔 Where have I heard this before?

The description for Zalabya was similar to Gulab Jamun. I googled it, and the images seem similar too. I’d have to try it and see if they are the same taste-wise.

➼ Pinterest stop showing me more wedding pics.

I was constantly opening my Pinterest app and adding pins whenever I read something that was pin-worthy. I ended up adding wedding pins that weren’t even related to this book. While I was scrolling for more pins, my mind started humming Thousand Years automatically. I don’t even like that song, but I had to force myself to stop humming it and get back to the book to finish reading it.

➼ Love me, Love me not.

Quinn’s parents and B+B had turned her into a cynic. She wasn’t a romantic and hated romantic gestures, a complete contrast to Tarek. She went hot and cold on Tarek, which left me confused. She wanted to be in a relationship with him but not as friends or lovers. As long as Tarek wasn’t pushing her to name whatever they had, she was fine with him. But when he wanted to put a label on their relationship, she went cold on him. It wasn’t fair to Tarek, and she had to realize that she was holding him back.

➼ Hit very close to home

There were a lot of things I could relate to Quinn. I’m a cynic like Quinn. I can’t stand cheesy or romantic gestures in real life. There were other family issues that I could relate to. It hit too close to home, so I understood why she couldn’t be in a relationship. But, I still didn’t like her hot-and-cold behavior but other than that, she was great.

➼ Those floral and animal printed dresses were hella cute!

I like when characters have a quirky dressing style. Quinn usually wore formal and boring dresses while she worked with her parents. But when she was with her friend or Tarek or had a family breakfast, she wore these cute dresses that fit her personality well.

➼ Don’t let Tarek take the lead

Once when Tarek and Quinn were dancing at a wedding, she had to take the lead from him before they could fall or make a scene. He was a terrible dancer. He should take dance lessons from Quinn because she could waltz and dance without breaking a leg or stumbling often.

When you’re in love, whether that love is platonic or romantic, you get to be the fullest version of yourself, uncertainties and mistakes and all. You get to be that version of yourself—because it’s a privilege, really, to open up that much, even when it’s challenging.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

TW // Panic Attacks, Clinical Depression, Generalised Anxiety Disorder mentioned

About the Author

Rachel Lynn Solomon is the bestselling author of The Ex Talk, Today Tonight Tomorrow, Weather Girl, and more. Her romantic comedies for teens and adults have received praise from The New York Times, NPR, and Entertainment Weekly, as well as starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal.

In high school, Rachel sang and played keyboard in an all-girl band, and she was once part of a group of people who broke a Guinness World Record for the most natural redheads in one place. After graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in journalism, she worked for Northwest media outlets such as The Seattle Times and KUOW Public Radio.

Originally from Seattle, she’s currently navigating expat life with her husband in Amsterdam, where she’s on a mission to try as many Dutch sweets as possible.

Website

Have you read this novel or is it on your TBR? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”

― James A. Baldwin