For the last four years, Abby Jimenez’s romance novels have been my happy place. They are the books that I most often return to, I most often recommend to new romance readers, and have most palpably changed the way that I think about fiction.
You might know Jimenez as the mom of Tess and Stuntman Mike (her Pudelpointer and Yorkie dogs, respectively) on social media, or from her appearances on the Food Network, or maybe as the owner of the bakery Nadia Cakes (with locations in Minnesota and California). That said, among readers, Jimenez has been known since 2019 as a writer of romance novels that consistently grapple with themes of disability, physical and emotional distance, and familial obligation.
Her latest effort, The Night We Met (2026), follows up on the smash success of her 2025 book, Say You’ll Remember Me. All of Jimenez’s books take place in the same universe, but each can be read independently of the others.
The Night We Met is focused on Larissa, Mike, and Chris. As the book opens, the audience learns that Larissa, a young woman who lives with her mom and works hard to make ends meet, is in a relationship with Mike—resulting from her decision to have Mike, and not Chris, drive her home from a concert before she really knew either of them well. Mike and Chris are best friends—and therein lies the issue: Chris has feelings for Larissa but would never do anything to hurt Mike.
What unfolds is a layered story that dissects questions such as what does it mean to be a good friend, what constitutes an act of grace verses an instance of complicity, how does money affect relationships, and how do physical and mental disabilities change what a relationship—romantic or otherwise—demands of us.
I found Jimenez’s exploration of these questions to be artful and moving. The Night We Met is an example of what fiction has the special ability to do: Take complex issues that feel larger than life and make them less daunting and more accessible.
For this review, I wanted to look closely at three instances of this kind of investigation woven into the text.
First, Jimenez has written before about disabilities such as anxiety, memory loss, and renal failure. The Night We Met is especially successful at offering a window into what it’s like to struggle with a disability. Larissa has a severe nut allergy that hums in the background of the entire plot, and Jimenez successfully avoids creating a character that falls victim to a harmful stereotype in which her disability is her personality.
Jimenez does not write “disability focused” books per se. Instead, she writes books about earnestly human characters who arrive on the page with the flaws, struggles, and contours of people who remind us of those in our own lives. As a result, when Jimenez pulls back the curtain on what it means to love someone who is ill or has a disability, she is offering a perspective on something that statistically more of us experience than one might guess.
Second, The Night We Met asks the reader to examine how money affects a relationship. Throughout the book, Larissa hustles to stay afloat, and Chris, a pharmacist, yearns to take care of her despite her disinterest in any kind of financial help. As a result, Jimenez forces the reader to contend with a hard reality: Sometimes letting those who love us care for us is complicated, even when it seems like it should be simple. Larissa’s pride and work ethic reads as entangled with a Midwestern culture that preaches the importance of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
Jimenez is based in the Minneapolis area, as are many of her books, including this one. The way in which her characters feel so quintessentially Upper Midwestern has always been one of my favorite aspects of her writing. In this case, it provides her with a chance to delve into what it means to take care of someone and to catch them when they fall.
Third, while the book is ultimately Chris and Larissa’s story, the plot holds a lot of space for the relationship between Chris and Mike. To me, The Night We Met is Jimenez’s best book exploring friendship. Mike and Chris find themselves tangled in a mess that threatens their love for each other, their love for Larissa, and their broader group of friends. Jimenez is cutting as she forces Chris and Mike to eventually put it all on the table.
The topic of lifelong friendships is something that this genre tends to struggle with. In The Night We Met, Jimenez creates a plot that examines how the way we love our friends is entangled with the way we love our partners. It’s a brave choice and incredibly well done.
Finally, while social media voiced concerns about how little “spice” or physical romance is in the text, I would argue that this makes the book more successful. The book is earnest in a way that allows it to be a romance that does not rely on sex to convey emotional intimacy. Instead, Jimenez offers us intimacy between her characters produced by honesty, overcoming conflict, and making the seemingly impossible possible.