The Night We Met

Bestseller Jimenez (Say You’ll Remember Me) puts a Cyrano de Bergerac twist on a friends-to-lovers relationship in this sparkling contemporary. Best friends Chris and Mike met beautiful and plucky Larissa at a concert and she and Mike started dating. Two months later, pharmacist Chris is enjoying sleeping in on his day off when Mike calls and asks for a favor: he agreed to drive Larissa and her mother to the hospital for her mother’s surgery, but he’s too hungover. Can Chris do it? This puts Chris and Larissa back into each other’s orbit, and the pair bond when they discover a miserable stray dog in the library parking lot that they rescue, name Woofarine, and agree to coparent. Larissa, who works as a barista in Mike’s mother’s café, is reeling from recently learning that her gambling addict father opened multiple credit cards in her name and anxious about her mother’s health, so she’s grateful to now have two solid guys in her life. What she doesn’t realize, however, is that Chris is the one repeatedly making Mike look good by picking out the perfect presents and making sure there’s always an EpiPen handy for Larissa’s nut allergy. It’s easy to swoon over thoughtful Chris even as he resigns himself to a life of loving Larissa from afar. The palpable yearning and slow-burning sexual tension keep the pages flying. This is a winner. (Mar.)