yet another commercial romance that has committed grave crimes against my taste. i genuinely can't believe there are people out there who consider abby jimenez "upmarket." this is contemporary slop badly in need of a second editor.

anyway i waited far too long to review this, so here are some rapid-fire reactions based on my ebook highlights:

"But he's so cute fluffy!" Tina said.

pick one adjective. one (1).

—

"You're not walking to your car with your keys through your fingers like wolverine..."

wolverine is a REAL superhero and therefore a proper noun. capitalize the W. like c'mon, man.

—

"What did he look like?" she asked.

"Like if Rhysand from the ACOTAR series were a real person," I said, putting my straw between my teeth.

no. NO. NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i am adding sarah j. "i'm proud of my grandmother who volunteers for the IDF" maas to my IF YOU INCLUDE THIS IN YOUR ROMANCE BOOK, I AM DOCKING AN IMMEDIATE STAR FROM MY RATING list, which also includes hall of fame contenders like taylor swift, the MCU, and internet acronyms a la OMG/FML/LOL/etc.

this isn't even the only ACOTAR reference in say you'll remember me. there are several more. in addition to the above, we get some really phenomenal physical descriptions of our mmc like, "'cold and handsome and dangerous looking,'" and, "'alpha-male vampire,'" and, "'you're out here on this beach looking like paparazzi photos of chris hemsworth,'" and also, "'you are very tall, and you don't smile very much,'" as well as, "'you can come off a little grumpy. i think you are a little grumpy, actually,'" and can't forget, "sort of brooding. extremely, alarmingly handsome," and there's also, "'you give me john wick vibes, xavier. dexter, but for pets,'" (chris hemsworth AND john wick? pick a LANE) and, "'i also think you're very handsome,'" and, "you know damn well you can't make it work with some hot italian man in milan," and, "also, he's really tall and he frowns a lot. not sure anyone would mess with him," (another past/present tense mix-up!).

i mean, wow. xavier's singular character trait is really starting to come through for me!

—

another sign that abby jimenez's editors are sleeping on the job: she's prone to repeating phrases/ideas multiple times on the same page. example:

"Fine." Then to Mom, "I'm making you dinner. We're having pasta. No, you don't need to help, I got it."

[...]

"We're having pasta, Mom," Jeneva said. "Yes, I'm making you dinner. No, just sit, you don't need to help, I got it."

—

there are a ton of tense mix-ups throughout say you'll remember me. it's a novel narrated in the paste tense, but we sometimes get present-tense interjections during internal monologues like, "he must know it brings out his eyes," and, "do i tell him who she used to be?" and, "you know how when someone dies, all anyone cares about is how?" (nice repeated use of "how") and also, "because she's more than that and she always will be."

editors............your job is to catch this shit. i am so sick of having to self-edit as i read along to these stupid ass romance books.

—

He was tan, brawny, and handsome, like the AI-generated version of a football player.

???????????????????

what do you mean "THE"? is there one singular AI-generated photo of a football player we should all be aware of? genuinely god-awful prose.

—

mmc: shares deepest childhood trauma with fmc after one (1) date.
also mmc:

I didn't talk about my childhood. To anyone. Ever.

look at our ""brooding"" hero, dawg, we're going straight to insta-love purgatory.

—

I dumped out my water bottle and put the succulent he gave me inside it, pot and all, and I screwed on the lid.

how big is your water bottle???????? THE HELL?

—

Last night was a core memory.

and also:

The spaceship [date] had altered my DNA.

millennials, look at me. put down tiktok and instagram reels. work on lowering your screentime hours, then come back to your word doc. this internet language has no business bleeding into the books you pump out every year or so (sometimes multiple times in a year, as with jimenez). i'm trying not to be ageist and you guys making it really hard for me......

—

"You open the air vent down at your feet for ventilation," [my grandma] said. "It's on the passenger side, it gets a nice breeze. And it's pretty. It'll get the men to talk to you."

I made a face. "Ewww, I don't want men to talk to me."

"Well, you should. If you don't use it your vagina will shrivel up."

I laughed. "No it won't."

I was going to google this though.

?!?!?!@?#@!?@!?>?!@#?>!@?#3/1413as.fkmglksdfgj NSDGLJFGSDLJKFGSDFNG

IMMEDIATELY DOCKING A STAR. i am so sick of the "DITZY BUT ALSO FOUL-MOUTHED AND/OR DIRTY" FMC TREND OH MY GOD. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE GOOGLING YOUR GRANDMA'S DERANGED, MISOGYNISTIC WIVE'S TALE ABOUT YOUR GENITALS SHRIVELING UP? IDC IF YOU'RE TRYING TO BE FUNNY OR CUTE. NOT FUNNY. DIDN'T LAUGH. AND NOW I'M MAD AS FUCK. STUPID ASS ""ROMCOM"" MY GODSFDKLGJD

—

[Xavier] pulled me to his other side to put his body between me and a bedraggled man heading toward us, muttering to himself. Then [Xavier] took my hand, giving everyone the flat, sort of scary expression that was his signature look.

i know expecting anything more than "milquetoast neoliberal" from a romance book's politics is asking a lot, but holy shit is this low-hanging fruit in service of a fuckass ship—and a fuckass ship featuring an MMC YOU'VE ALREADY ESTABLISHED HAS ONE (1) DEFAULT FACIAL EXPRESSION AND NO VOCAL RANGE OUTSIDE OF "BATMAN DONS THE MASK"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS DIDN'T EVEN ADD ANYTHING NEW TO HIS CHARACTERIZATION!

—

I followed the crying to the blackest part of the backyard and found Mom thrashing and tangled in the decrepit piñata hanging from the avocado tree. [...] She flailed against the tattered whatever it used to be and I grabbed her arms and tried to keep her from getting more entwined in the rope.

so it's a "decrepit piñata" but also a "whatever" but also a "rope." wow. this is some excellent descriptive skill we're seeing at work. i mean, really. the prose doesn't get any stronger than this (ANY stronger......i mean it....this is the absolute technical ceiling of an abby jimenez book...).

—

He'd made chorizo ravioli last night.

turning off the abolitionist part of my brain so i can yell into a megaphone: JAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

give me your mexican card rn—hang on. i just googled abby jimenez and learned she is fully italian. her surname comes from her (latine) partner. everything is staring to make sense now.........

—

I couldn't leave my family for some bs reason...

this is an internal monologue. just type the word "bullshit" out, HOLY FUCK.

—

suffice to say, this is my first and last jimenez novel. i will not be putting myself through this a second time. one and a half miserable stars for a miserable slog through "instantly in love with the MOST BORING gary stu of all time, whose singular perceived flaw is his tendency to furrow his eyebrows and whose 'asshole status' is immediately resolved by the narrative and therefore does nothing to counteract the nonexistent personality" territory. none of this was funny or compelling. i hated the marketing subplot. all the pop culture references made me want to forsake the genre for the next decade, at least. i am still in search of one (1) romance book published in the last two years (outside of the fantasy and historical subgenres) that doesn't prompt angry keyboard smashing from me.