The Night We Met

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The Night We Met
A novel by Abby Jimenez
Author	Abby Jimenez
Series	Say You'll Remember Me, Book 2
Genre	Contemporary romance
Publisher	Forever / Hachette Book Group
Publication date	March 24, 2026
ISBN (standard)	978-1-5387-8079-4
ISBN (deluxe)	978-1-5387-5922-6
Preceded by	Say You'll Remember Me (2025)

The Night We Met is a contemporary romance novel by Abby Jimenez', published on March 24, 2026 by Forever, an imprint of Hachette Book Group. It is the second book in the Say You'll Remember Me series and follows Larissa, a woman juggling financial hardship and multiple side hustles, and Chris, the quiet, deeply principled best friend of her boyfriend. Built on slow-burn tension and genuine emotional intimacy, the novel explores friendship, forbidden feeling, loyalty, and the consequences of a single split-second decision. It received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and was named one of Publishers Weeklys Top 10 Romance Releases for Spring 2026. Jimenez has noted that the novel took two years to write, making it one of the most carefully developed works of her career.

Background

The Night We Met is set within the same interconnected fictional universe as Jimenez's earlier standalones, and readers familiar with her previous novels will encounter returning characters in supporting roles. The book is the second in the Say You'll Remember Me series, following a duology structure in which each volume centres a new central couple while maintaining continuity of world and community.

Jimenez has described the novel as a departure from the more overtly comedic tone of some earlier works, though her characteristic humour is present throughout. The two-year writing timeline she has publicly referenced reflects the structural challenge at the novel's core: constructing a love triangle in which the reader roots wholeheartedly for the central couple without losing sympathy for the third party — a balance that required significant narrative care.

Plot

After a night out at a concert, Larissa finds herself needing a ride home. Given the choice between two men in the same group of friends, she picks Mike — friendly, outgoing, easy to talk to — rather than his quieter, seemingly standoffish best friend Chris. That single decision sets the course of her life. Mike becomes her boyfriend. Chris becomes, over time, something she cannot quite name.

Their friendship begins accidentally. When Mike is unavailable to drive Larissa to her mother's early morning surgery, he sends Chris in his place. Spending hours together at the hospital, Larissa discovers that she and Chris have far more in common than she had assumed. A subsequent series of circumstances — including Chris adopting a stray rescue Yorkie that Larissa volunteers to walk — gives the two a recurring reason to spend time together, and a genuine friendship develops.

Larissa is financially stretched, managing several side hustles simultaneously just to cover her bills. Chris, unable to simply watch someone he cares about struggle, begins quietly working behind the scenes — suggesting to Mike thoughtful gestures and gifts that would actually help Larissa — without ever taking credit. As time passes, Chris comes to recognise that what he feels for Larissa goes well beyond friendship. But he refuses to act on it. Mike is his closest friend, and Chris is aware that Mike is privately battling struggles he has not disclosed to Larissa. Betrayal is not something Chris is capable of, even at cost to himself.

Larissa, meanwhile, finds herself increasingly unable to ignore the contrast between what she has with Mike and what she feels in Chris's company — and unable to stop wondering what her life might have looked like if she had chosen differently on the night they met.

Characters

• Larissa — The novel's female lead; a warm, resourceful woman facing genuine financial precarity who manages her difficulties with practicality and dry humour. She volunteers walking dogs and holds multiple jobs. Her relationship with Mike is real but quietly mismatched in ways she only begins to see through her friendship with Chris.
• Chris — The male lead; initially read as reserved and faintly unfriendly, he is in fact deeply principled, attentive, and emotionally intelligent. He is Mike's closest friend and considers loyalty to be a non-negotiable part of his character. He also carries a grief he has not fully processed, which runs as a secondary current beneath the novel's central conflict.
• Mike — Larissa's boyfriend and Chris's best friend. Jimenez renders him as a person of genuine warmth and likability rather than a convenient obstacle, which is central to the ethical complexity the novel sustains. He is privately struggling with alcoholism, a secret that Chris holds and that shapes the choices both men make.
• The Yorkie — The rescue dog Chris adopts and Larissa helps care for; described throughout as slightly unhinged and serving as both comic relief and the structural mechanism for Chris and Larissa's growing closeness.

Themes

The Night We Met engages with several interlocking themes:

• Forbidden love and loyalty — The novel's emotional engine is the tension between genuine feeling and an equally genuine commitment to a friend. Chris's refusal to act on his feelings, even as they become impossible to deny, is framed not as weakness but as integrity — one of the qualities that makes him the right person for Larissa in the first place.
• The weight of a single decision — The premise is rooted in the butterfly-effect logic of a split-second choice: which man to accept a ride from after a concert. The novel returns to this moment as a structural and emotional touchstone throughout, exploring how much of a life can hinge on an instant of chance.
• Financial hardship and class — Larissa's economic precarity is treated with specificity and empathy. Her multiple side hustles, her difficulty accepting help, and the particular exhaustion of constant financial management are rendered without either romanticisation or condescension.
• Grief — Chris carries an unresolved loss that the novel circles but does not overexpose, using it to explain certain dimensions of his guardedness and the intensity of his protectiveness toward those he lets close.
• Friendship as intimacy — Much of the novel's tension derives from the fact that Chris and Larissa's friendship is itself a form of profound connection, making the ethical dimension of any romantic development all the more fraught.

Style

The Night We Met is written in the alternating dual-perspective style characteristic of Jimenez's recent work, moving between Larissa's and Chris's points of view. This structure allows the reader to experience both the longing each character suppresses in the other's presence and the full context of the choices each makes. The pacing is deliberate — reviewers consistently noted the novel as a slow burn — with Jimenez building tension through the accumulation of small, charged moments rather than dramatic incident. Her characteristic comedy is woven through the novel via the Yorkie's chaotic behaviour and the couple's shared deadpan humour, providing tonal relief against heavier material.

Reception

The Night We Met was received warmly by critics and readers. Kirkus Reviews awarded it a starred review, describing it as "a compulsively readable slow-burn romance full of grown-up worries and plenty of pining." Publishers Weekly noted that the novel's "palpable yearning and slow-burning sexual tension keep the pages flying," and Booklist praised Jimenez's "rare flair for love and laughter" in what it called a "radiantly rewarding romance." Publishers Weekly also named it one of its Top 10 Romance Releases for Spring 2026.

Reader response echoed the critical consensus, with particular praise for the moral complexity of the love triangle — specifically for Jimenez's handling of Mike as a character the reader can genuinely like while still rooting against his relationship with Larissa — and for the emotional restraint of the central connection. The audiobook edition, narrated by Teresa Palmer and Zachary Webber in dual narration, was also highly praised, with reviewers noting that Webber's performance in particular deepened the emotional impact of the material.

Some readers expressed a desire for deeper exploration of Chris's grief arc, feeling it had the potential to be developed further than the novel ultimately pursued.

Publication

The Night We Met was published on March 24, 2026, by Forever, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, in standard paperback (ISBN 978-1-5387-8079-4) and a deluxe hardcover edition (ISBN 978-1-5387-5922-6) featuring designed sprayed edges and color endpapers, available for a limited print run only. A Barnes & Noble exclusive edition was also released. The audiobook edition is narrated by Teresa Palmer and Zachary Webber.

About the author

Abby Jimenez is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of contemporary romance fiction whose novels have sold over 1.5 million copies and been translated into 28 languages. Before her writing career she was a Food Network champion and founder of Nadia Cakes, a bakery she founded out of her home kitchen in 2007 that went on to win numerous Food Network competitions and develop an international following. Her books have earned a Good Morning America Book Club selection, a Book of the Month Book of the Year Award, and the Minnesota Book Award. She lives near Minneapolis with her husband, three daughters, and several dogs.

See also

• Abby Jimenez
• Say You'll Remember Me (novel)
• Contemporary romance
• Forever (imprint)

External links

• The Night We Met at Goodreads
• Publisher page at Hachette Book Group
• Review at Kirkus Reviews