I received this book from Little, Brown Book Group UK, Piatkus via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Title: Life’s Too Short
Series: The Friend Zone #3
Author: Abby Jimenez
Genre: Romance
Edition/Pages: Ebook, 384 pages
Release Date: 6th April 2021
Goodreads / Amazon / Waterstones
Summary
When Vanessa Price quit her job to pursue her dream of traveling the globe, she wasn’t expecting to gain millions of YouTube followers who shared her joy of seizing every moment. For her, living each day to its fullest isn’t just a motto. Her mother and sister never saw the age of 30, and Vanessa doesn’t want to take anything for granted.
But after her half-sister suddenly leaves Vanessa in custody of her baby daughter, life goes from ‘daily adventure’ to ‘hourly nappy change’. The last person Vanessa expects to show up offering help is the hot lawyer next door, Adrian Copeland. After all, she barely knows him. No one warned her that he was the Secret Baby Tamer or that she’d be spending a whole lot of time with him and his geriatric Chihuahua.
Now she’s feeling things she’s vowed not to feel. Because the only thing worse than falling for Adrian is finding a little hope for a future she may never see.
Overview
‣ POV: 1st dual pov
‣ Summary in Emojis: ❤️⏳👶🍼📹✈️
My Thoughts
I have such an up and down relationship with Abby Jimenez. I wasn’t keen on her debut, The Friend Zone but her second novel, The Happy Ever After Playlist is probably one of my favourite romance books of all time. I consider the hero, Jason, to be in my top 5 book boyfriends 😂
I fully went into this one expecting to love it, and I definitely enjoyed most of Life’s Too Short. The characters are wonderful and relatable, they both had real problems to overcome and I adored how they formed a friendship-first, lovers-later kind of relationship, it showed true organic growth as their feelings for each other developed. I really felt for Vanessa right from the start, her fears and worries, and her determination to overcome it all and just live her life were inspiring. It was so satisfying to see how her world view started influencing Adrian, opening him up to more than just work and letting him have fun too.
Speaking of Adrian, our hero is definite swoon-material. He’s kind, funny and very caring, always helping Vanessa whenever she needs it. I loved the scenes where he and Vanessa cared for baby Grace, although I did have some issues with how Grace was treated. Essentially she gets side-lined for a lot of the book and treated more as a prop than an actual character. I understand that it’s hard to properly integrate a baby into a romance story but it still felt a bit lazy to just keep saying ‘oh Grace is with a babysitter’.
The other thing I had a problem with is that there were far too many serious issues crammed into one book. Each of the previous novels dealt with one main problem, The Friend Zone was about infertility, The Happy Ever After Playlist was about overcoming grief. This was one has the ALS plot, drug abuse, child abandonment, mental health and a couple of others and it all just felt like too much. And then the ending pulled another Friend Zone which I’m not a fan of.
Even with those few problems regarding the plot and the epilogue though I can honestly say that I really enjoyed Life’s too Short. The romance and friendship was perfect, the characters were wonderful and I would highly recommend this to fans of romantic comedies, particularly those who like a more serious, deeper storyline.
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