by Abby Jimenez
My Ratings
Plot – ★★★★★
Character Development – ★★★★★
World Building – ★★★★★
Editing – ★★★★☆
Enjoyment – ★★★★★
Summary
Vanessa lives life on her own terms — one day at a time, every day to its fullest. She isn’t willing to waste a moment or miss out on an experience when she has no idea whether she shares the same fatal genetic condition as her mother. Besides, she has way too much to do, traveling the globe and showing her millions of YouTube followers the joy in seizing every moment.
But after her half-sister suddenly leaves Vanessa in custody of her infant daughter, she is housebound, on mommy duty for the foreseeable future, and feeling totally out of her element.
The last person she expects to show up offering help is the unbelievably hot lawyer who lives next door, Adrian Copeland. After all, she barely knows him. But as they get closer, Vanessa realizes that her carefree ways and his need for a structured plan could never be compatible for the long term. Then again, she should know better than anyone that life’s too short to fear taking the biggest risk of all. . .
The Review
Vanessa Price is a famous jet-setting YouTuber. Millions of followers watch her every move as she travels the globe each year.
Outwardly, she is a saint, an influencer who uses her platform to campaign and raise millions of dollars for ALS research – a neurological disease that stole most of her closest female relatives from her before they could reach their 30th birthday.
Behind the scenes, her life is chaos. She is stuck paying for, and thus enabling, her family members and their lives of sheer mania. A hoarder dad whose condition gets worse with life triggers, a jobless brother who rejects conventional employment opportunities and a drug-addled thief for a sister means this book is full of frustrating, heartbreaking, and funny moments.
Vanessa finds herself a temporary guardian of her niece, Grace, when her sister ditches the child on her doorstep to go and “run an errand,” one that she never returns from, preferring to spend her days with friends and opiates.
Now, stuck at home looking after a baby, and living a much less than glamorous lifestyle, all while dwelling on the future, her own mortality, and Grace’s well-being, Vanessa finds herself having a run-in with the super-hot guy next door.
Adrian Copeland is a workaholic. He doesn’t need to be, but his own fixer and caretaker nature keeps him glued to his office desk day after day as a criminal defence lawyer.
He is the epitome of orderly, to the point of being almost clinical with his surroundings, his life, and his hobbies.
You’re not hard to figure out, Adrian Copeland. Even your hobbies are planned. You are a creature of habit. A control freak. Your dang junk drawer is organized. I was not prepared to see that!
Vanessa
Yet, under it all, he is a sweet, kind-natured, and caring man with his own familial problems. His mother’s new husband, and subsequent move away to Nebraska, means he’s also lost his ailing grandmother. It’s a giant thorn in Adrian’s side, one of which he cannot exorcise unless he caves to his mother or she backs down instead. To add to his troubles, Adrian finds that his girlfriend of 8 months was not honest with him.
Newly single, he adopts a snarling, gummy yet biting, elderly Chihuahua and begins to spend his spare moments with the “breath of fresh air” that is his neighbour, Vanessa.
Bonding over a love of expensive wines, episodes of The Office, and laughing about baby AND doggie diapers, they enjoy the others company while helping each other navigate the pitfalls of family. As friends. Obviously…
I’d had a good time. A great time. I couldn’t remember when I’d ever enjoyed a date so much – not that it had been a date. It wasn’t, of course.
Adrian
To say I loved this book would be an injustice. It was more than I could have imagined. I laughed, cried, and cheered for Vanessa and Adrian over the half a day it took me to devour this.
Usually, contemporary romances are too cookie-cutter for me, but I’m beginning to change my mind about it. Authors like Abby Jimenez breathe life back into a well-played out trope. It follows the recipe – boy meets girl, gets closer, something happens, and they need to make up. But it doesn’t feel forced or contrived in this instance. Their relationship isn’t superficial – they talk, laugh, and genuinely enjoy each other’s company which makes the hiccup moment very true to real life.
This is book 3 in ‘The Friend Zone’ series, and I was entirely unaware of the others, yet I will be going back and reading the other two. Each novel is a stand-alone. The characters appear in each book for a hot minute to make you salivate enough to want to sink your teeth into their stories.
I found myself, several times, saying to my partner that the writing was just spectacular. I highlighted so many passages – from friendly banter, outright flirting to heart-tugging declarations.
Sometimes I feel like I’m spinning. Like I’m in a tornado and I can’t ever stop moving and the only time I feel still is when I’m with you.
Vanessa
Vanessa’s character is sure to cheer anyone in a slump up; she is an effervescent individual, full of clichéd ‘live for the moment’ sayings but with her own sunshine-filled twist on them.
Adrian is everything you could ever wish for in a partner, both in and out of a book.
Where to buy
Book Depository | Amazon | Waterstones
It can be purchased digitally in the Kindle Store, or in paperback.
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