Kate Spencer's debut novel, In a New York Minute, is a heartfelt love letter to New York City, friendship and love itself tucked into an effervescent rom-com envelope. Franny meets Hayes on one of the worst days of her life. She has just been laid off from her job at a design start-up, and as she heads back to her apartment with the sad box of things from her desk, disaster strikes. The back of her dress is caught in the doors of the packed Q train she's boarded, and it rips all the way down. Hayes would be the first to say he's not a hero, but he comes to Franny's rescue by giving her his suit jacket and sparing her the horror of a walk home half naked. Unfortunately, a fellow passenger with a smartphone captures the whole thing and soon the "Subway QTs" have gone viral.
This story is familiar by now: two people are having an interaction that someone else deems romantic and, thanks to the sensationalist nature of social media, their words, body language and personal lives are soon dissected for mass consumption. Spencer tells In a New York Minute in alternating points of view and takes care to depict the range of Franny and Hayes's emotions and the impacts this attention has on their mental health and careers. She doesn't linger on the humiliation, however, choosing instead to give her characters warm, loving friendships--Franny's best friends support her through her job loss, helping her turn her Internet humiliation into an opportunity to launch her own interior design business. Hayes is similarly blessed with a business partner and a cousin who force him out of the routine he's fallen into since a divorce several years earlier.
Spencer balances the story with several subplots that range from silly to heart wrenching. Franny and her friends decide to use at-home DNA testing kits, prompting a connection with relatives of the father she never knew. Hayes's environmental finance company is expanding into a new office space and Franny ends up designing it for them. Their closest friends start dating. Franny and Hayes have distinct character arcs of their own, and Spencer builds the romantic arc in parallel, somehow ending up with a Happily Ever After that feels unlikely but inevitable.
In true rom-com style, Franny and Hayes meet in a series of chance encounters--and some not-so-secretly arranged by their friends--but In a New York Minute is self-aware enough that readers will be laughing with the characters and not at the plot devices. Spencer's references to the city and to romance classics never feel heavy-handed but are seamlessly woven into conversation. She invites readers to love New York City, but the way she writes about connecting with a place, with the smells and sounds, the small joys and irritations and of finding wonder again by experiencing that place with a new person, is universal:
"God, I love this stupid city." I leaned my head back, connecting to him with the smallest touch, though it felt like plugging into a socket.
"Same," he said with a nod.
"Are we doing that thing?" I asked him, pulling my knees into my chest. "Are we being tourists in our own city?"
"I mean, sure," he mused. "But I think it's good to look up and not take all this for granted once in a while." He gestured with his free hand, waving it like a magician at the city and the river and the skyline stretching out in front of us. I knew exactly what he meant--New York could be overwhelming and all-encompassing, but sometimes--often--you moved through it without really seeing it.
Spencer employs several classic rom-com tropes and subverts others. Franny is introduced to readers and to her future love interest on a day so awful it's funny, and her next meeting with Hayes, on a morning talk show to discuss the Subway QTs video, is a stilted disaster full of awkward moments and unintentional slights. There's physical humor, longing glances and late nights at work. But there's also a plot in which Hayes goes on a few dates with another woman; Spencer refreshingly chooses not to portray her negatively. That short-lived relationship is a great example of the careful character work Spencer employs--the pair decide after a couple of dates that it's not working and they respectfully move on. Both of them are decent people and there's no need for jealousy or theatrics to provide the conflict necessary to the novel's central romantic arc.
In a New York Minute reads like a classic Nora Ephron romantic comedy, updated for 2022. Readers looking for a joyful read in which two lost, big-hearted people find each other will finish this book with the warm, hopeful feeling a great romance novel delivers. --Suzanne Krohn