Say You’ll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez (2025)
When Samantha Diaz brings a stray kitten to the neighborhood vet, she is shocked to be told it needs expensive surgery and should be put to sleep. Annoyed with the unfairly handsome vet, she vows to raise the $10,000, which she does on social media.
She returns to the vet and he asks her out, embarrassed by his previous grumpiness. They have a memorable date but she is leaving the next morning to move back to Los Angeles, where her mother is suffering from Alzheimer’s.
Xavier Rush can’t believe he has fallen for someone who is leaving town. He overcame an abusive upbringing to establish his own veterinary practice and has no discretionary funds but makes several trips to visit Samantha and is able to handle her complicated family situation. However, he takes on so much extra work to pay for trips to visit her that he collapses. Jimenez creates two very appealing characters with realistic complications – Samantha and her siblings want to keep their mother at home but the difficulties are not whitewashed, while Xavier is trying to keep his practice afloat (endearingly, his staff feed him or he would probably starve) and maintain a long-distance relationship. Some might say there was too much angst in this story but it was refreshing to read a contemporary romance with no stupid misunderstandings, just two people trying to work out a way to be together. B+
Hot Desk by Laura Dickerman (2025)
I can never resist a book with a publishing setting so I put this on My Top Ten Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the Second Half of 2025 list. As we all know (well, you should know), publishing has low profit margins so now that staff are hybrid, Leesen, the parent company of Avenue and Hawk Mills, has consolidated the office space and moved to an open floor plan. Editor Rebecca Blume is annoyed she has lost her office and has to share a desk with some unknown guy from Hawk Mills. She gets it Monday and Tuesday while Ben Heath gets it Wednesday and Thursday (back when I was in publishing, a lot of editors never came in on Fridays, even before the pandemic, which annoyed me back in the day because I was in sales and we always came in.) Ben is actually quite nice – he is a recent grad of UVM who is thrilled to be working in publishing in NYC but is appalled by his low salary so is bartending on the side to feed himself and his dog.
In addition to sniping back and forth about their shared desk, Rebecca and Ben – although they don’t know it yet – are in competition for an unpublished novel by a legendary author, Edward David Adams, who is newly deceased. Rebecca is requested by the writer’s widow while Ben wrote his thesis on this author and developed an acquaintance with Adams’ son. It turns out that Rebecca’s mother, Jane, and Rose Adams were friends when they were single in the early 80s but Jane left NYC abruptly, never to return. If Rebecca weren’t so self-absorbed, maybe she’d have known this! When Ben meets Rose, he is flustered:
Xavier Rush can’t believe he has fallen for someone who is leaving town. He overcame an abusive upbringing to establish his own veterinary practice and has no discretionary funds but makes several trips to visit Samantha and is able to handle her complicated family situation. However, he takes on so much extra work to pay for trips to visit her that he collapses. Jimenez creates two very appealing characters with realistic complications – Samantha and her siblings want to keep their mother at home but the difficulties are not whitewashed, while Xavier is trying to keep his practice afloat (endearingly, his staff feed him or he would probably starve) and maintain a long-distance relationship. Some might say there was too much angst in this story but it was refreshing to read a contemporary romance with no stupid misunderstandings, just two people trying to work out a way to be together. B+
Hot Desk by Laura Dickerman (2025)
I can never resist a book with a publishing setting so I put this on My Top Ten Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the Second Half of 2025 list. As we all know (well, you should know), publishing has low profit margins so now that staff are hybrid, Leesen, the parent company of Avenue and Hawk Mills, has consolidated the office space and moved to an open floor plan. Editor Rebecca Blume is annoyed she has lost her office and has to share a desk with some unknown guy from Hawk Mills. She gets it Monday and Tuesday while Ben Heath gets it Wednesday and Thursday (back when I was in publishing, a lot of editors never came in on Fridays, even before the pandemic, which annoyed me back in the day because I was in sales and we always came in.) Ben is actually quite nice – he is a recent grad of UVM who is thrilled to be working in publishing in NYC but is appalled by his low salary so is bartending on the side to feed himself and his dog.
“No!” Ben put his hand over his heart as if to pledge allegiance. He was not an agent! “I’m not. I didn’t. And I’m not just somebody. I mean, not just anyone. Wait. What I mean is that I love your husband. I love his writing. I’m a fan. But not a stalker fan! I’m an editor. I work at Hawk Mills. I … I can show you if you want?” Ben thought better of reaching for his phone in case Mrs. Adams felt threatened and pulled out a handgun. “I’m reading out of love.” “Reading out of love”? Pull yourself together, man, he chastised himself.I found this book entertaining but the characters didn’t really do it for me and it wasn’t as amusing as I had hoped. Moreover, I felt the author could have done much more with the shared desk concept than have the characters trade post-it notes about a cactus that belonged to neither. Rebecca was unnecessarily rude to her shared-deskmate and just not very likeable as a character, although she redeems herself by supporting her mother once she learns her mother's story. However, the plot involving the legendary author and his manuscript was unconvincing, not to mention Ben should have been laboring as a lowly editorial assistant, not allowed to pursue legendary authors without supervision. B-
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