Let’s Talk About “The Friend Zone” by Abby Jimenez…
Book Recap: When Kristen and Josh’s worlds collide they seem like the perfect match, expect for one major thing: having children. Kristen can’t have them. Josh wants an entire baseball team. As their feelings for each other grow, Kristen attempts to keep Josh safely in “The Friend Zone” to prevent an inevitable heartbreak.
Top Tropes:
🚒 Firefighter Romance
👫Friends-to-Lovers
🏥 Health Issues
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ (several open door scenes, but not the focus of the book)
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ (3 stars)
Let’s Talk About It…
Abby Jimenez books are never for the faint of heart. Despite the cute covers, her books often cover difficult, real-world topics and this one is no exception. The Friend Zone covers things like infertility, medical trauma, unexcepted loss, and obsessive compulsive disorder. I wish I could say it covers all of these topics well but I, personally, don’t think it does. I have some spoiler-filled thoughts below, but if you are thinking of picking up this book, just be aware that infertility and medical trauma are huge pieces of the plot and may difficult for some readers to consume. Also, if the miscommunication troupe isn’t for you, this book has it in full force so it may be best to pick up another Abby books instead. Overall, this book did entertain me and I did enjoy it, but there were several issues I struggled to overlook when reading which brought it down to a 3 star read. However, given that this book sets up the next one in the series, I am willing to give the next book a chance as I am interested to know where that character’s story takes her. She deserves a wonderful happily ever after.
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YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE SPOILER ZONE
Let’s start by talking about the infertility issues the FMC was facing. At the beginning of this book, I really thought it was great that there was a FMC whose infertility issues were going to be addressed and that her worth wasn’t going to be tied to her uterus. Unfortunately, this story took a different turn by introducing a spontaneous pregnancy right at the end of the book. While Abby addresses that this storyline was based on the experience of a friend, it was still disheartening to read. The MMC had done the work to find them other options and I think it would have been a nice change of pace from other books to see one of those options help them grow their family, such as having Josh’s sister be a surrogate.
Now, to address the medical trauma. Wow, did this come out of nowhere. I truly didn’t expect such a heavy trauma in this book. I found some of the medical pieces inaccurate (it was extremely unlikely that Brandon had a shockable rhythm after the wreck) and hard to read. I am assuming this plot point was designed to set up Sloan’s story in the second book, but it felt unnecessary for Kristen and Josh’s story. Abby has said she won’t kill the dog in her books, but I guess best friends are firmly still on the table…
Lastly, we need to talk about the OCD (or lack there of) that the female main character experiences. At the beginning of the book we read that the FMC feels the need to clean due to her anxiety as she awaits Tyler’s return. There are a few other small instances of cleaning mentioned throughout, but as we near the end of the book, the talk of Kristen’s “OCD” ramps up, but doesn’t truly appear to be OCD at all. OCD is obsessive compulsive disorder. People living with OCD experience recurrent, intrusive thoughts that are tied to a repeated behavior or action. While some of these thoughts can be linked to fear of germs or contamination, which lead to cleaning based compulsions, OCD can present in many other ways. Considering we never get any of Kristen’s “intrusive thoughts” during her chapters, I think it can be said that Kristen doesn’t have OCD, but uses cleaning as a distraction or coping mechanism when anxious.
I do appreciate that these topics are being discussed and I have enjoyed them when written into other books, but in this case I felt like the story missed the mark.
