While writing You, Again （on my phone, in my dystopian open-plan office）， I asked myself What would Nora Ephron write if she were telling this story in a world without paper rolodexes? The filmmakers posed the question: Can men and women ever truly be friends? But if we acknowledge that people of any gender most certainly can be friends, what questions can we ask thirty-five years later? How have our attitudes about love, romance, sex, and friendship grown more complicated? When friends-with-benefits are practically the norm, what happens when you sleep with your friend-without-benefits? Is it a death knell or a new chapter?
You, Again is based on some of my experiences dating in New York City. As someone who simultaneously navigates both a long-term relationship and the rollercoaster of app-based dating I regularly see the best and worst of modern romance. The characters are aspects of myself—Josh is my uptight, high-achieving anxiety brain that demands a super-secure relationship and perfect cherry tomatoes at the salad bar; Ari is the polyamorous avoidant who keeps people at arm’s length and can detach sex from romance very easily. （Hi, it’s also me, accompanied by my defense mechanisms!）
One of the luxuries of writing a novel as opposed to a ninety-minute film is the space to explore fully realized journeys. In You, Again, I wanted to add a strong element of evolution for both Ari and Josh.
“There’s someone staring at you in Personal Growth” is just one of Carrie Fisher’s iconic lines in When Harry Met Sally, and it’s pretty much the essence of all romantic comedies. Romcoms aren’t simply humorous stories about two people falling in love. They’re all, in essence, about people who become better versions of themselves in the course of falling in love. Two people, staring at each other from across the self-help section of an independent bookstore? Now that’s romance.
A Conversation Between Kate Goldbeck and Kate Robb
KATE GOLDBECK IS THE AUTHOR of You, Again, an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers debut about a commitment-phobe and a hopeless romantic who clash over the years—until friendship and unexpected chemistry bring them together. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she loves bantering with her partner, falling asleep to British audiobook narrators, and scratching dogs behind their ears.
Instagram: @kategoldbeck
KATE ROBB IS THE AUTHOR of This Spells Love, a whimsical friends-to-lovers debut about a young woman who tries to heal her heartbreak by casting a spell to erase her ex from her past—but she wakes up in an alternate reality where she’s lost more than she’s wished for. She lives just outside of Toronto, Canada, with her family, where she spends her free time pretending she’s not a hockey mom, and she aspires to one day be able to wear four-inch heels again.
Instagram: @kate_robb_writes
Kate Robb: So I will admit that I haven’t seen When Harry Met Sally, which inspired your novel. I feel like it’s a romance sin.
Kate Goldbeck: Wow! I actually love when people haven’t seen it.
KR: Did you always love the movie, or was this a recent thing? How did you go from the movie to writing the book?
KG: It’s actually a movie that I identify more with my parents. My mom had the VHS, so it was just something I grew up with. But I would watch it with her and think: Oh, this is dating. This is what it’s going to be like when I’m an adult and I live in New York City. So I wouldn’t say it was a touchstone for me, but it was always something that was in my head, because it was so quotable. But it wasn’t until much later in my life, when I got into Reylo fanfiction, and decided to try writing When Harry Met Sally fanfic that I read the script and watched it a bunch of times. Then I started to appreciate it as a quintessential romcom and understand how brilliant Nora Ephron was, because she was able to weave specific anxieties into this timeless story that rings true thirty years later. What about you? In reading your book, it reminded me a bit of Sliding Doors but a completely original take on that idea and the multiverse romcom. Was Sliding Doors part of the original inspiration?
KR: No, actually. The idea for this novel came from the night that I met my husband. I had been planning to go to a bar with friends, but then another friend invited me to a charity ball at the last minute. I decided, why not? I’ll get dressed up and go to this thing. It seemed like a very inconsequential decision at the time. I didn’t even think about it, not like I had thought about other questions like: Where am I going to go to school? Or What am I going to do with my life? It was just What are my Friday-night plans? I was faced with two sets of plans, and I chose one over the other. But from that choice, I ended up meeting him and eventually we got married, and we have a family now. And it definitely spiraled my life in a completely different direction than if I’d chosen the other set of plans. I don’t know if we would have met if those hadn’t been the circumstances. Perfect time. Perfect place. I think the stars just aligned. And so that was sort of the idea that this grew from: What if you had a chance to go back and do something different with your life? If you took a slightly different path, would you end up in the same spot? Or would you just be a completely different person in a completely different place? And what are the consequences of that? When I started telling people about the book, Sliding Doors was an easy example from pop culture to describe the idea of “different path, different life,” but the book is definitely a separate vibe than that movie.