This Time Next Year

September 21, 2020
Destiny has a hand in Cousens’s touching debut. Minnie Cooper and Quinn Hamilton were born in the same hospital on January 1, 1990, but while Quinn, whose family bagged the cash prize for having the first baby born in the ’90s, has always loved his birthday, Minnie’s New Year’s celebrations have always gone horribly and she believes the holiday is jinxed. New Year’s Eve 2019 is no different: she’s dragged to her boyfriend’s work friend’s party, someone vomits on her shirt, and she manages to lock herself in the washroom while trying to clean it up. She isn’t rescued until the next morning—by Quinn. The days after go from bad to worse for Minnie as her catering business approaches the brink of ruin and her landlord evicts her from her apartment. Surprisingly, Quinn swoops in to save the day again, proving himself unworthy of the hatred Minnie’s carried for him all these years for claiming the money her family desperately needed. Flashbacks to New Year’s past and subplots about both Quinn and Minnie’s families add depth, while hilarious secondary characters inject levity in just the right places. The romance is slow to sizzle, but Cousens’s debut is ripe with both emotional vulnerability and zaniness.

January 1, 2021
British babies born in the same hospital in the first minutes of New Years' Day 1990 meet again on their 30th birthdays. "Look, Shaylene, I'm sure you've seen Sleepless in Seattle? You know that bit where Meg Ryan is supposed to meet Tom Hanks at the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day? Well I'm in a situation a bit like that," pleads the likable but self-defeating pie entrepreneur Minnie Cooper during the climax of Cousens' debut. Yes, she certainly is, having struggled for more than 300 pages through every rom-com trope in the book. Her story begins on New Years' Eve 1989, when her mother, Connie, goes through labor with a waifish but well-heeled wardmate named Tara Hamilton. One of them will win a cash prize for giving birth to the first baby of 1990, and wouldn't you know, it's the rich lady who doesn't need the money. Not only that, she steals the lucky name Connie has chosen for her child: Quinn. Furious, the Coopers decide instead on Minnie, not realizing that this will subject their daughter to a lifetime of self-esteem-crushing car jokes. On the other hand, Minnie needs her self-esteem crushed so that when she runs into the rich, handsome, mensch-y Quinn Hamilton on their shared birthday 30 years later she can spend a year spontaneously generating one mistaken impression after another so the two don't just accept what fate so clearly intends for them. While Quinn and Minnie don't stray far from type, they are surrounded by an entertaining supporting cast--Minnie's irritating punster boyfriend; her amateur horologist dad; her employees at the not-for-profit pie bakery, particularly a platinum blond wastrel named Fleur. Mother Connie is a bit of a problem, though. Seething with resentment about the stolen name and other injustices, she's a cold and negative mother who passes the chip on her shoulder to her daughter--until something happens offstage and she turns into a completely different person. Not sure what movie this comes from, but it doesn't work. A cozy quilt of recycled rom-com tropes.

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