We Can't Keep Meeting Like This

April 15, 2021
A week after graduating from high school, Quinn Berkowitz is unsure what to do with her life. Quinn's Jewish family runs a wedding planning business in Seattle called Borrowed + Blue, and they assume that, after earning a business degree in college, she will join them. For years, Quinn has gone along with this, partly because she wonders whether leaving the business would mean losing her connection to her parents and her sister, Asher, who sometimes feel more like colleagues than family. But her future career isn't the only thing Quinn is confused about. Working at weddings all summer means that she will be in constant contact with Tarek Mansour, the Egyptian American son of her parents' favorite caterers. Before he left for college, Quinn sent Tarek an email confessing that she had a crush on him--an email he never answered. Although Quinn tells herself that they were never meant to be--Tarek is a hopeless romantic whereas she doesn't believe in love--her feelings won't go away. As the summer progresses, Quinn must make some tough choices about her future, her family, and a boy who might very well be her first love. Quinn's narratorial voice is engaging and clever, deftly balancing humor and sincerity, and her OCD is woven naturally into a story with characters who are layered enough to keep readers interested. An entertaining romance that explores deeper themes of trust and expectations. (Romance. 12-18)

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April 26, 2021
Having grown up with her family’s wedding planning business, Borrowed + Blue, Quinn Berkowitz knows the ropes, including sanding the bridal party’s shoes and how to play the harp. Too bad she doesn’t know how to tell her folks that she’s not interested in joining their business, or that her parents’ six-month separation—and subsequent failure to talk about it—has made her doubt marriage, and love, altogether. In the summer after her senior year, white, Jewish Quinn, who has generalized anxiety disorder and OCD, also faces the return of a childhood friend, Egyptian American Tarek Mansour, whose family caters many of the weddings that hers plans. They haven’t spoken since he left for college a year ago, after Quinn confessed her crush on him and then never heard back. The two eventually restart their friendship—and more—navigating food poisoning, wedding crises, and tension about whether a huge romantic like Tarek and a commitment-phobe like Quinn can make things work. Solomon (Today, Tonight, Tomorrow) shows how Quinn’s brain can get in her way, expertly weaving anxiety and depression with the love and the pleasures and terrors of trying to find one’s path. Ages 12–up. Agent: Laura Bradford, Bradford Literary.