“Because love shows up.”
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – I rarely read romance, but when I do I want romance that is cleverly written and pulls you into a warm hug. That’s Abby Jimenez all the day long. Yours Truly (Forever 2023) is only my second Jimenez novel, but I feel confident in saying I love her romcoms. Just like Part of Your World, Yours Truly is cheeky, laugh so hard you snort, with *real* characters and *real* issues. I devoured it in one sitting – much like I would a red velvet cupcake.
What makes Jimenez so brilliant, imho, is that she understands the genre and how tropes work within it, but she shifts it just a tad so that the tropes never silence her story or overwhelm it. Her novels are full of common romance tropes, and she knows it. Her presentation of the tropes and how the tropes work within her storytelling is part of why I call her work cheeky, but it’s also what makes it real. And so readable.
Yours Truly brings us back to Alexis’s hospital with one of her good friends, Dr. Briana Ortiz, and the new ER doctor, Dr. Jacob Maddox. Jacob is having a rough start of it as an alarming number of his patients have died on his first day, and he hasn’t made any favorable connections with the staff. He is socially awkward and anxious. Briana hates him. But not for long. They become friends, exchanging possibly some of the most disgustingly sweet letters that let the reader watch them fall in love with each other before they even realize it.
Briana has issues stemming from her father’s abandonment, her ex’s affair, the finalization of her divorce, and her brother’s declining health and increasing depression. Her trust issues threaten to derail this fragile and intense relationship she’s building with Jacob. Jimenez is going to give you your happily after all, but she’s going to make you and her characters work and continue to work for it. Life’s not perfect, people aren’t perfect, and asking for help is okay. How she uses journaling and therapy (and pets!) as mental health maintenance for her characters and doesn’t offer quick and immediate “fixes” is simply refreshing.
I’d likely read anything Abby Jimenez writes, including her grocery list, which I’m pretty sure I have read… ha! If you’re not following her on the socials, you should. Much like her books, she’ll hit you in the feels and make your snort milk out of your nose.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 