I haven’t read any Abby Jimenez before, but I’ve heard so much about her heartfelt, cozy romances. “Say You’ll Remember Me” just dropped last week, and it was basically a siren call for me. Considering I was on the lookout for something warm and fuzzy, I couldn’t resist the contemporary romance package wrapped in a bow of what is clearly a nod to one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs.
I didn’t know what to expect, though. Having been burned by popular BookTok books and hyped authors before, I approached this one with caution. But I was pleasantly surprised. With its heavy themes wrapped in the story of a couple fighting against all odds, “Say You’ll Remember Me” is raw, realistic, and delivers a gut punch of romance you definitely need to get your hands on.
Read my complete “Say You’ll Remember Me” recap and review below.
This post contains spoilers.
Say You’ll Remember Me
Description
There might be no such a thing as a perfect guy, but Xavier Rush comes disastrously close. A gorgeous veterinarian giving Greek god vibes—all while cuddling a tiny kitten? Immediately yes. That is until Xavier opens his mouth and proves that even sculpted gods can say the absolute wrong thing. Like, really wrong. Of course, there’s nothing Samantha loves more than proving an asshole wrong…
. . . unless, of course, he can admit he made a mistake. But after one incredible and seemingly endless date—possibly the best in living history—Samantha is forced to admit the truth, that her family is in crisis and any kind of relationship would be impossible. Samantha begs Xavier to forget her. To remember their night together as a perfect moment, as crushing as that may be.
Only no amount of distance or time is nearly enough to forget that something between them. And the only thing better than one single perfect memory is to make a life—and even a love—worth remembering.
Quick Facts About Say You’ll Remember Me
Is Say You’ll Remember Me Part of Series?
No, Say You’ll Remember Me is a standalone book.
Trigger Warnings
There are couple of trigger warnings in Say You’ll Remember Me including but not limited to:
- Dementia
- Cheating partner
- Mention of childhood abuse, physical and mental
- Mention of animal abuse, cruelty and neglect
- Character death
I want to especially flag animal abuse portion here for those of us who are a bit more sensitive to this content. I felt like at times the trigger warning didn’t do justice to the events on the page, the animal abuse is mentioned but it’s usually a hard limit to me and I was taken aback by how descriptive it was that occasionally made this challenging for me to read. It is however, not a prominent theme but I wanted to point that out since it caught me off guard.
How spicy is it?
I rated this 2🌶️🌶️, there is a lot of romance but not a lot of spice. Characters do get physical however it’s mostly fade to black.
Summary
Dr. Xavier Rush is a veterinarian just out of college who has opened his own practice. Deeply affected by how his parents treated both him and their family dog, Xavier is determined to prove himself as a veterinarian and save as many animals as possible. He has cut contact with his parents, volunteers for rescues whenever he can, and tries to help one animal at a time. Stoic and reserved, Xavier doesn’t smile much or take compliments well, but his fierce loyalty and deep care for those around him make him genuinely admirable.
One morning, his day starts off on the wrong foot when a patient asks him to get rid of her perfectly healthy dog. Xavier claims he’s done as she asked, charges her extra, and then adopts the dog himself. He’s understandably in a bad mood when his next patient arrives—a beautiful woman named Samantha, who has brought in an abandoned kitten.
Samantha found the kitten alone and has decided to adopt it. However, during the examination, Xavier discovers that the kitten doesn’t have a butthole—a condition that would require costly surgery. In his foul mood from the previous encounter, Xavier suggests euthanasia, which leads to a clash between him and Samantha. She accuses him of poor bedside manner and insists she can raise the money to save the kitten.
Using her experience as a mustard brand’s social media manager, Samantha sets up a GoFundMe and successfully raises the necessary funds, with Xavier himself donating the final amount, admitting she was right. The kitten, now named Pooter, undergoes surgery and recovers well. When Samantha returns to the clinic for Pooter’s post-op checkup and some sedatives for their upcoming flight to California, Xavier surprises her by asking her out.
Their date—a sunset cruise for animal adoption—goes exceptionally well. The chemistry between them is undeniable, and they follow it up with mini-golf, where Samantha meets Xavier’s friends and makes a great impression. Not wanting the night to end, they visit an escape room at midnight, only to be accidentally locked in for hours. During their unexpected confinement, they open up to each other, forging a deeper connection.
However, when they finally get out and return to Samantha’s apartment, Xavier realizes she has no furniture. Samantha reveals that she’s moving to California in a few hours to help care for her mother, Lisa, who has dementia. Heartbroken at the timing, Xavier tries to convince her to stay, but Samantha asks him to forget about her.
In California, Samantha’s family dynamics are complicated. Her sister, Jeneva, a single mom, and her brother, Tristan, are also moving in to help care for their mother, while their father is struggling with burnout. Despite trying to move on, Xavier can’t forget Samantha and eventually visits her, spending a weekend with her family. He handles Lisa’s dementia episode calmly, earning the family’s approval.
Although they can’t see a practical way to be together—Xavier’s new clinic ties him to Minnesota, and Samantha can’t leave her family—they attempt a long-distance relationship. Xavier works himself to exhaustion, taking extra shifts to afford visits. Samantha also makes trips to Minnesota.
As caregiving takes a toll on Samantha’s family, tension mounts, especially when their grandmother passes away and their father admits to seeing other people to cope. Samantha loses her job and becomes the primary caregiver, leading to isolation and depression. Concerned, Tristan sends her to Minnesota, where she finds Xavier sick with double pneumonia from overworking. They agree to focus on quality visits over quantity.
Eventually, Samantha gets a new job offer and calls a family meeting, stressing that they need a sustainable caregiving plan. Hank, an elderly veterinarian who has become a mentor to Xavier, advises him that love is worth more than financial stability. Inspired, Xavier decides to move to California to be with Samantha, proposing to her on the anniversary of their meeting.
Eleven months later, Samantha’s family has adapted to their new caregiving routine, and she and Xavier are happily married, finding a balance between love and life’s challenges. Hank and other retired vets help manage Xavier’s clinic, allowing him to start a new practice in California.
Review
Overall Impressions 🥰
I had never read Abby Jimenez before, but I knew she was popular. I liked the fact that she tends to use pop culture references in her titles – it’s a cute gimmick that definitely pulls people in. However, I’ve been burned by TikTok so much lately that I’m a bit wary of overly popular authors right now, so I’m cautious when I start these books.
Say You’ll Remember Me ended up being a solid 3-star read for me, but it’s not perfect by any means. Still, I can get past some of the things that bothered me because the good far outweighed the not-so-good. As a popular author, I’d say this book actually exceeded my expectations, thanks to its raw, realistic depiction of characters who are just going through it all.
The ending was exactly what you’d expect – it’s a romcom, so of course, we got the grand gesture and the sappy HEA. But what I didn’t expect, despite it being a bit cheesy, was how it turned out to be the best kind of cheesy. It honestly made me tear up because, even with the classic romcom flair, the characters felt so realistic and grounded.
Characters 🌟
I loved the cast in this book.
First of all, Xavier is my favorite type of romcom MMC – loyal, hardworking, unrealistically handsome (duh). He’s cranky but a cinnamon roll when it comes to the FMC, and my favorite trait – he’s so pathetically down bad for her that the sap practically drips off the pages. Combine these traits with my ultimate weakness in book characters – a man who’s good with animals (I deeply relate as a fellow human who prefers her dog’s company over pretty much everyone else’s) – and he becomes practically perfect.
Samantha as an FMC is decent – she’s pretty, empathetic, and kind to her family, and her inner monologue is relatable. She doesn’t give off the “pick me” vibes like other romcom heroines sometimes do. However, my one bone to pick with her is that, honestly, she’s just not funny. Xavier spends his time reading Samantha’s mustard campaigns on Instagram, which are just bad puns at best. Maybe it’s a clever writing technique that Samantha isn’t particularly funny, but since we’re seeing her through Xavier’s perspective, he’s clearly got some rose-colored glasses on.
Family is a big theme in this book. I liked Jeneva, Tristan, the dad, and the grandmother. They made up a great supporting cast that dropped some solid zingers. Sometimes they verged on cliché territory (I think we could’ve done without the sassy gay brother trope), but in romcoms, they mainly function as outlets for the main characters, so it didn’t bother me too much.
I’d be remiss not to mention the character dynamics, though. Their primary characteristics weren’t super relevant to the story itself, but how the family rallied together to take care of their mother was beautifully done. The father’s burnout, the grandmother’s concern about not becoming a burden, Tristan’s combativeness as his only way to cope with frustration, and Jeneva’s exhaustion as a single mom were all developed wonderfully. It felt realistic, grounded, and made me feel like I was watching a real family navigate the harsh realities of life. I couldn’t stop rooting for them.
Plot 🌸
The story flowed so freely. I feel like so many romcoms treat the actual plot as a side note, focusing mainly on the romance, but this book was special in the sense that the plot was seamlessly woven into the romance. Here’s this family doing everything they can to take care of their loved one in need, and here’s this man who’s working so hard to get past his trauma – and through it all, we have two people making it work together no matter what.
Sure, the whole “works-for-free old vet” trope is cliché and would never happen in real life, but the rest of the family’s struggles are so well thought out that I was honestly glad the characters got the break they so thoroughly deserved. Real life can be so depressing and doesn’t often work out that way, so I appreciated the sense of escape and the (even if a bit unrealistic) proof that things can work out for people.
One thing I was worried about with this book was that the main characters got together within the first three chapters. I was a bit worried about the lack of tension and also about an unexpected third-act breakup “for their own good”. Thankfully, the tension was balanced with the distance between them. There wasn’t a lot of angst (which is my preferred flavor of romance), but there was plenty of longing, and it was nice to read about two people actively trying to make their relationship work.
I liked every moment Xavier got to display his love language – acts of service. He was so pathetically down bad that he’d stop whatever he was doing just to be with Samantha. I especially loved when he took care of Samantha’s family after her grandma’s passing. On the flip side, I adored how Samantha consistently fought for Xavier to take some time for himself. The frank conversations among the family and the sibling bickering that felt so genuine had me grinning from ear to ear.
Aside from the bailout from Hank, the story felt grounded and well thought out, almost as if Abby Jimenez had either gone through or witnessed someone go through this disease and the care that comes with it. I thought it was handled respectfully and realistically, capturing both the unpredictability of the disease and the family’s raw reactions to it. Caregiver burnout is all too real, and I think it was brave to put it on the page for readers to see this family work through it.
Writing Style ✍️
One of my main gripes with this book was the writing style. Although I appreciate the conversational tone, there were a lot of short, descriptive sentences chained together – “I did this. I felt that. He did this as a response. The wind followed up like this.” I’m not expecting some intense fantasy prose, and I appreciate the lower entry barrier of contemporary writing, but I wouldn’t have minded a bit more sentence variety – though that’s probably just me being a bit pretentious.
But that doesn’t even compare to the main ick I had with this book – its meta references. I get that we’re all reading a lot of popular books right now, but I thought it was a bit too meta to keep comparing Xavier to Rhys from ACOTAR. I couldn’t tell if it was meant to be meta commentary on how so many books keep writing Rhysand in different coats – if so, that’s actually super clever – or if it was just another one of those books doing the same thing.
Then there were the one-liners sprinkled throughout the book that I’ve seen all over social media for months now. I’ve seen both “My toxic trait is thinking I can change him” and “If I was a worm, would you still love me?” bit SO MUCH, and it was insufferable when I saw it on social media – and just as insufferable while reading it. I liked that the characters felt like they could be from my world, but I just wish they’d done it without relying on all the basic bits.
That said, I did love Samantha’s outlook on life – the comparison between gray moments that only gain color when you have happy memories or are with your loved ones. Her insistence on making memories with Xavier (kind of like the mental picture moment of Jim and Pam from The Office at their wedding) made me feel warm and fuzzy. They kept building more and more core memories to hold onto in their gray lives, and it really hit me in the feels.
The desperation to communicate that joy in life doesn’t come from big, grand moments but rather from the small, seemingly unimportant ones really struck me. It’s the little bits of happiness, woven together over time, that truly make up the fabric of our lives – and that message felt both heartwarming and profound.
Themes and Messages 🌱
This book’s message was clear and simple to me: we can’t and shouldn’t wait for everything to be perfect before allowing ourselves to find joy and happiness. Instead, it’s about finding peace and comfort in simple moments – memorizing seemingly unimportant bits of time when we find small breaks amid the unending assault of what we call life. That’s how we discover everyday joy.
We all go through so much, every day. How many of us say, “I just need to get through this week”? Personally, I’ve been stuck in that mindset for years. This book’s message – that life is never going to be perfectly stable, so we should find joy in moments rather than waiting for an arbitrary future where everything is great – is a strong reminder to live in the present instead of waiting for that mysterious, perfect tomorrow.
Criticism and Drawbacks 🚩
I know the book attempts to address trigger warnings, but it doesn’t go far enough. There are unnecessary mentions of animal abuse in this book that did not need to be included.
Xavier decides to become a veterinarian because of how his parents treated their family dog. He finally finds help with a vet, and that’s what inspires him to pursue the profession – it could have just stopped there. We did not, and should not, need the graphic depiction of how that poor animal was treated, especially with the amount of detail provided. I felt a bit violated during those passages, as if the author was trying to exploit the shock value to make us like Xavier more and hate his parents even more. Animal abuse is a hard limit for me, and I was disappointed that the trigger warnings didn’t make it clear just how intense these scenes would be.
It’s not the only instance, either. The very first chapter begins with a negligent dog owner, followed up by Samantha having a sick pet. Statistically speaking, veterinarians have the worst mental health among professionals because of what they have to go through, and while it might have been a writing choice by the author to shed light on an unspoken issue, it either needed to be much clearer in the trigger warnings or omitted altogether. Whether it was an accident or oversight on the trigger warnings, I just wish there had been more consideration for how these depictions might come across within the context of the story.
Recommendation💌
After reading my first ever Abby Jimenez book, I’m happy to say I’ll definitely be picking up her work again. It was a cozy, warm romance that brought me joy – once I recovered from the shock of the underplayed trigger warnings.
The topics it depicts are real, the characters are relatable, the MMC is down bad from the get-go, and the whole story feels like it’s seen through rose-colored glasses of pink, orange, and soft light – just like the cover. It’s a realistic romance that covers heavier themes, so make sure to take the trigger warnings seriously.
Like I said, some themes were hard limits for me, but I’m glad I worked through them because the story was special enough to be worth it. I just wish the warnings had been more explicitly stated or the content had been omitted altogether.
🐶🐱 This book is better than even your Wildest Dreams!
Buy Say You’ll Remember Me here!
Say You’ll Remember Me left me with a mix of warmth and reflection. It wasn’t perfect, but it had enough heart and realism to leave an impact. Despite some bumps along the way, it’s a story that reminds you to find joy in the small, fleeting moments of life. I’m looking forward to exploring more of Abby Jimenez’s work – hopefully with a bit more clarity on the trigger warnings next time.
Have you read Say You’ll Remember Me? Let me know your thoughts in the comments! Did you love it, or were there parts that didn’t quite work for you? Also, don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter to get more bookish content, reviews, and recommendations straight to your inbox.
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