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Yes, I love Abby Jimenez’s books. Me and a million other readers. They can be laugh-out-loud funny, sweet, romantic (of course), and serious. Her characters usually have some heavy issues to deal with. My favorite is still Just for the Summer, which really made me laugh often. But the main character is dealing with the fallout from having been raised by a neglectful mother.
In Say You’ll Remember Me, our protagonist is dealing with the heartbreaking and exhausting slow loss of her mother to dementia. At the start of the book, Samantha is just about to move back home to California after a few years living in Minnesota. And then she meets an amazing man. Xavier Rush is a gorgeous veterinarian who says absolutely the wrong thing to her, forcing her (in her mind) to prove him wrong. But then he admits he was wrong, takes her out for a date, and the two have a night to remember. Unfortunately, the next day she is leaving for good.
Samantha tells Xavier he has to forget her. There is basically no way they can be together, because neither can possibly move to where the other is.
But even as they are separated by 2,000 miles, Samantha and Xavier can’t forget each other. What are two people so perfect for each other to do in their situations? Figure it out, somehow.
Say You’ll Remember Me is such a sweet romance, and it truly feels that it’s impossible for the two characters to be together. For basically the entire book, I was wondering how in the world it would happen. Interestingly, I thought it may not, in part because so much of the story is about Samantha’s family. There are sections where it seemed like the primary focus of the book was really the struggle and heartache of a loving family handling the early dementia of the mother. Jimenez explores a lot of tough situations and decisions faced by Samantha, her father, her grandmother, and her two siblings as they care for a once-vibrant and accomplished 54-year-old woman at home.
So the romance felt like it took a back seat to the family story, which was interesting. But it all came together and worked. I didn’t find Say You’ll Remember Me to have as much of the humor as Just for the Summer, but it still has a great deal of heart.
Rated: High. Profanity includes 36 uses of strong language, around 40 instances of moderate profanity, about a dozen uses of mild language, and 30 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes some talk about sex and several “spicy,” “open-door” scenes. There are several allusions made that the main male character had emotionally and sometimes physically abusive parents.
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