Stephanie and Jamie meet one weekend in 2006, and have a connection. Trouble is, they’re both with other people, and reasonably content in their relationships. Stephanie doesn’t believe in fate, true love or living happily ever after. She’s content enough being engaged to Matt. Jamie is happily married to his childhood sweetheart Helen and believes in everything Stephanie doesn’t. So why does he have such a strong connection with Stephanie?
Roxie Cooper’s new book The Day We Met is all about the years that go by, the choices we make, and the relationships we have.
Stephanie and Jamie can’t forget each other. Choice and circumstance keeps bringing them together, and they have to decide whether they can live apart. As Stephanie’s therapist asks her after ten years of lamenting time without Jamie, why settle for being happy on just one day a year?
They justify their occasional and continued seeing of each other because it never gets physical. This opens up questions as to what counts as cheating and the moral transgression of emotional infidelity.
There’s obviously echoes of the trope from David Nicholls’ One Day, but it works well and doesn’t feel forced or ripped off. Music plays a key part in the novel – so much so that Cooper has created a playlist to accompany it.
Published on Ebury Press on 7 March 2019.
And So She Thinks 