Noelle is a workaholic who makes up for a lack of social life or love life with more hours at the office. Still nursing a broken heart while trying to make headway in a male-dominated profession, Noelle avoids socializing with her colleagues and prefers to stay home so she can build the nest egg that would provide some comfort from her financial anxiety. But when Noelle stops by a night market one Friday night and eats the best dumplings of her life, she wakes up on Saturday to discover that she's reliving Friday all over again. As Noelle lives that Friday over and over again, support comes from two surprising places: another woman who seems to be in the same predicament, and Cam, a brewery owner who always experiences deja vu when Noelle is around. 

This book ended up being so much more than a Groundhog Day re-do. It took the premise of reliving the same day and used it to examine how we interact with others, what we can learn from each other, and how to determine what we truly need for ourselves. 

The good news is that Noelle is a deceptively interesting character - a useful trait since you have to spend the same day with her over and over. She reads like a typical rom-com style heroine, but she's struggling with issues of identity, success, and culture. As she realizes that she can spend money in a way she would never usually do, Noelle unpacks the internalized issues she has from the way her parents spent money in her childhood. She questions how her identity as a multi-racial individual changes the way she moves through the world. And most profoundly, Noelle gains empathy for her sister's mental health struggles as Noelle experiences what its like to have people reject the truth she's trying to tell them. 

My one wish is that we spent a little more time with Cam. We get snippets of his life in the form of short chapters that are interspersed with Noelle's continuous Friday loop, but I found myself wanting more. Cam has his own issues of identity and family expectations which we primarily hear about through Noelle's interactions with him, but there seemed to be an opportunity to flesh him out even more throughout the story.

But overall, in terms of a story that kept me engaged, rooting for the central pair, and still thinking about it after the fact, Time Loops & Meet Cutes certainly hits that mark. It's charming and easy, while still tackling harder subjects in a way that's appropriate to the story. Definitely recommend.