When Ari and Josh first meet, the wrong kind of sparks fly. They hate each other. Instantly.

A free-spirited, struggling comedian who likes to keep things casual, Ari sublets, takes gigs, and she never sleeps over after hooking up. Born-and-bred Manhattanite Josh has ambitious plans: Take the culinary world by storm, find The One, and make her breakfast in his spotless kitchen. They have absolutely nothing in common . . . except that they happen to be sleeping with the same woman.

Ari and Josh never expect their paths to cross again. But years later, as they’re both reeling from ego-bruising breakups, a chance encounter leads to a surprising connection: friendship. Turns out, spending time with your former nemesis is fun when you’re too sad to hate each other—and too sad for hate sex.

As friends-without-benefits, they find comfort in late-night Netflix binges, swiping through each other’s online dating profiles, and bickering across boroughs. It's better than romance. Until one night, the unspoken boundaries of their platonic relationship begin to blur . . .

Kate Goldbeck’s You, Again starts out with a classic rom-com bang: our two leads meet on an epically bad foot but then can’t seem to stay out of each other’s way. As their lives continue to intersect, annoyance turns to loathing turns to friendship turns to romance in this delicious slow burn, sex positive love story.

But as much as we appreciate and find comfort in tropes, this is where we leave classic rom-com conventions behind. While You, Again offers up all the laughs and butterflies we’ve come to expect from the genre, rarely does a debut novel also give characters with such depth. People in real life can be messy and flawed, and sometimes we love them because of those things, not despite them. To capture those layers on the page and let the reader see through to what’s underneath takes real mastery. Ari and Josh are their own worst enemy at times and each a little broken, but as years pass, we watch them grow and reconnect and build a genuine friendship that evolves into much more.

Under Goldbeck’s careful hand we see two people realizing that sometimes the right person comes at the wrong time, and that the stumbles that make life hard are necessary and make the ending that much sweeter. Funny, timely, full of banter and steam with the right amount of heart-clenching angst to keep you reading long into the night.