Abby Jimenez is a familiar name in these parts: the writer of some of the most emotionally compelling romance books I’ve read in the last five or so years. I still get jitters thinking of the confession scene from Yours Truly, and I related so very painfully to the protagonist of Part of Your World. So imagine my delight when I received a copy of her latest read, Say You’ll Remember Me. I started this book back in March or April, and only now am I finally getting around to reviewing it. I’ll explain the lengthy reading period below.
When Samantha brings a lost kitten to the vet, she makes a surprise connection with Xavier, the vet running the clinic. They go on a date together, and the fireworks begin from the moment Xavier jumps into the lake to save Samantha’s phone, to when they get trapped inside a UFO-themed escape room. They want to keep exploring their relationship, but there’s a problem: Samantha needs to stay in California to help care for her mother who’s sick with early-onset dementia, and Xavier needs to stay in Minnesota to keep running his vet clinic. Thus begins a tiring series of flights and lost chances while the two try desperately to make this long-distance relationship work…
I was ready to love this book the way I loved her previously-mentioned books, but I’ll be frank, Say You’ll Remember Me is much, much weaker. The family drama with Samantha’s family crumbling under caring for her sick mother is engrossing, but also very depressing. But the biggest problem is that I don’t even find the central relationship between Samantha and Xavier very interesting at all.
This book proves why the insta-love trope is not that interesting. I like to spend some time watching the characters open up to each other and feel out the waters before they start obsessing about each other’s attractiveness. Honestly, the only interesting thing about them was watching them get accidentally left inside a UFO-themed escape room.
And my goodness, I don’t know how many times they mention the fact that “Come on Eileen” is their song, but it makes me not want to listen to that song ever again.
Even worse than that, the amount of times that someone compares Xavier to Rhysand from A Court of Thorns and Roses made me remember that this is a BookTok book and I wanted to throw the book across the room. I’m not a fan of romantasy, and to be reminded yet again that ACOTAR is a thing made me grind my teeth.
Xavier is not a character. He is a construct of everything that women want in a man packaged in a flawless six-pack with dark tousled hair and crystal-blue eyes. He will leap into a lake to get a phone for a woman he doesn’t even know. He will work himself endlessly to rescue animals and help in an ER to feed an obsessive need to see Samantha. He will even fly across the country twice with double pneumonia and, by some miracle, will still have enough energy to be talkative, caring, and attentive to an entire family.
I’m not kidding.
Samantha’s family suffers an awful tragedy, and Xavier, despite working over eighty hours a week, flies in to help them out. He buys food, prepares meals, looks after Samantha’s mom, helps with the funeral procession, looks after Samantha’s nephews, and somehow, after all that, still manages to engage with everyone like normal. And on top of that, he buys Samantha a new pair of headphones (she swallowed one in a sleep-deprived haze), paired them with her phone, and even created a new playlist.
How the fuck did Xavier have the energy and time to do all those activities when he is sleep-deprived, over-worked, and sick?
Xavier is the ultimate man, the one who will drop everything to fly across the country, who bends to the needs of everyone with perfect timing, energy, and grace. He has no needs of his own that compare to the needs of anyone in his life. And, of course, he is so drop-dead gorgeous that when he bends into a hot car to rescue a pug, someone videotapes his six-pack and it goes viral on social media.
Again, I’m not kidding.
The only real flaw Xavier has is his determination to prove to his abusive parents (yes, he comes with that backstory as part of the handsome romantic hunk package) that he is more than they thought he could be. But I also think he overcompensates for their behavior by being overly nice and caring to everyone. He never says or does anything as a result of being so tired or sick. Again, he felt less like a real person, and more like a construct of everything that BookTok finds attractive these days, and God forbid a romantic lead have flaws other than the occasional misogynistic jab at the female lead.
I didn’t find Samantha that interesting either. I think it was because her and Xavier’s perspectives sounded so similar to each other that they began to meld together after a while. Even she didn’t feel that real, because she was so good at her marketing job that every three or fourth social media post went viral. Yes, some of them were funny, but I can’t imagine someone being that good in the ever-growing social media jungle.
This story is relentless at punching our main characters in the gut. They keep trying to make their relationship work, only for something worse to happen to Samantha’s mom. While her family crumbling under the pressure of caring for her is well-done, it would have been more interesting if Samantha and Xavier’s reaction to it was more realistic. It’d be one thing for Xavier to swing in and save everyone, but another for him to faint or snap in frustration or do something to show he has truly gone too far and needs an intervention.
I kind of wish someone would have slapped Xavier across the face or yelled at him to snap out of it. Maybe that would have snapped him back to dealing with his parents, and that would have caused him to shut down or snap back, and really viscerally show how they still affect him. Even someone as good as Xavier can still get genuinely upset, do or say something hurtful in a heightened emotional state, and then recognize how he needs to change. That at least would have made him seem more real. No person is that perfectly composed all the time.
Speaking of, there is only one big interaction between Xavier and his parents. Maybe it sounds terrible of me, but it almost felt like Abby Jimenez was going off a checklist of what abusive parents sound like and checking off every single point just to drive home how truly terrible these people were. It did make them sound horrible, but again, like constructs, and not like real threats to Xavier’s ultimate happiness. If they truly affect Xavier that badly, motivating him to work and volunteer to the point of obsession, then maybe we need more conversations or flashbacks to showcase their cruelty. As it is, they feel like only a footnote in Xavier’s journey. If he is not talking about how clinic, he is talking endlessly about how sexy and wonderful he thinks Samantha is.
Abby Jimenez is at her finest when her characters have truly visceral reactions to their situations. Again, going back to when Bri and Jacob confess their love through snot and tears in Yours Truly, or Alexis trying relentlessly to connect with her father in Part of Your World. These characters felt like real people with very relatable problems that went through a lot of shit to get their reward. Neither Xavier nor Samantha have truly visceral reactions that catapult them into their rewards, and that is not satisfying at all.
In the end, none of the characters felt real enough to connect to. The insta-love romance was not my cup of tea, and the emotional payoff felt weak. I’ll keep going back to Abby Jimenez since her other books are still truly impressive, but I’ll be perfectly okay leaving this one behind.
The Library Key 