I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
We Met Like This: A Novel by Kasie West Also by this author: The Fill-In Boyfriend, The Distance Between Us, Lucky in Love, Stranger Things Have Happened: A Novel
Published by Saturday Books on September 16, 2025
Genres: Romance
Pages: 363 •Format: E-ARC •Source: NetGalley
Goodreads
Margot Hart is a hopeless romantic. That’s why she wants to be a literary agent—to help bring romance books to the world. It’s also why she hates dating apps with all her romance loving soul. She wants her own love story to be just as much fun as the books she reads—a mixed up coffee order, a mistaken identity. She’s not going to tell the story that she swiped right on future husband’s shirtless pic for the rest of her life.
The problem is that her most consistent relationship over the last several years is with Oliver, a guy she keeps rematching with on the apps. They’ve only been on one date and it was a disaster…well, until the make out session in the car before parting ways. But, she keeps reminding herself, a make out session does not a relationship make. And so there will not be a date two regardless of how witty their app banter is.
When Margot gets fired from her job on the same day she meets Oliver again, her life becomes a veritable shit show. Her dream career is dying right before her eyes, and Oliver thinks she’s interested in only one thing: a repeat of the hot make out session they had three years ago so she can get him out of her system. And maybe that is all she wants from him, because she and Oliver are definitely not compatible—he doesn’t hit the snooze button, he runs five miles every morning, he reads nonfiction, and worst of all, she didn’t meet him in cute way! But in her scramble to keep her dream career alive, by opening her own agency, Oliver is there with his golden retriever energy, more steady and helpful than any man she’s ever dated. Just when she thinks she’s overcome her app bias, she realizes that maybe it’s not her who’s holding back, but him. And his reasons are more than she bargained for.
I think this book has single-handedly restored my faith in contemporary romance. Seriously! The past year or two I’ve stayed away from most contemporary romance because I just felt bored by it and found it hard to get invested in the characters, especially since many are stand-alones or if they are series follow a different couple each book. I’m so glad I gave this one a shot though because it proved that a capable author can still write a fun, engaging, refreshing yet still predictably HEA (in a good way!) contemporary romance novel.
The story follows protagonist Margot who is in her late-twenties and desperately holding out hope for the perfect “meet cute.” As she goes on and off the dating apps over the years, she keeps matching with Oliver, whom she shared one disastrous date with many years ago, but they always match with each other as a running gag and message on and off. Margot ends up having an exceptionally bad day where she runs into Oliver again IRL and loses her job which sets off a chain reaction of life changes and brings Oliver into her orbit more often and her dreams within reach (if she dares to pursue them).
This book had a lot of heart. It wasn’t just about the romance (which was good!) but about Margot’s family, friends, and career too. It built an entire world for the romance to play out in which made me all the more interested and invested. I especially loved reading about Margot’s career- an aspiring literary agent, she’s been stuck in a dead-end assistant job (with a VERY icky boss) and ends up striking out on her own. I was really intrigued to learn more about the book acquisition process, watch how agents navigate their author’s pitches and ideas, negotiate and bargain, etc. Margot’s career felt like an authentic part of her character that made her who she was, rather than a random detail thrown in to flesh out the story.
Her family and friends played a rather large role as well. Her roommate Sloane was hilarious and often kept her (and Oliver) in check. Her parents were adorable boomers. Her sister rubbed me the wrong way but you can tell she meant well (in her head, anyways). There was a whole orbit of characters outside of the romance that Oliver had to integrate into and I appreciated seeing how those relationships impacted Margot’s life and dating choices.
Oliver was a pretty good MMC! He was a tech guy who could sometimes struggle with getting his emotions out (see: their first date) but he was actually low key hilarious and I loved their banter via their DMs (although the formatting of DMs, and later texts, was hard to distinguish from the actual prose but I’m wondering if that was just a formatting issue with my ARC, as I was often confused as to what was Margot’s own internal monologue and what were excerpts from her DMs). He was just a nice, sweet, normal guy who made some mistakes.
Overall: I know Kasie has long been a staple in the YA genre, but I love her adult debut even more! I think there’s something to be said about seasoned writers dipping their toes into adult romance and their expertise and experience shows. I cannot wait to see what else Kasie writes in the adult romance space!
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