Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

Steam rating: 🍆🍆 .5 /5

Thank you to Forever Publishing for gifting me a review copy of Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez. This is the third book in The Friend Zone series, and I don’t know how it is even possible but each book is better than the last. If you haven’t read the first two books, you absolutely should, but they do work as stand-alones. The first is The Friend Zone, and the second is The Happy Ever After Playlist.

Vanessa is a travel vlogger, and lives every day as if it is her last…because it might be. She’s lost close family members to ALS and is convinced that she will be next, so she doesn’t want to waste a minute. Her half-sister shows up on her doorstep and asks Vanessa to babysit her newborn while she does some shopping, except she doesn’t come back and suddenly Vanessa is thrust into motherhood.

Adrian Copeland is a criminal defense attorney and likes to have control over everything in his life. When the baby next door won’t stop wailing in the middle of the night he offers to help, and is thrown head-first into Vanessa’s life.

I loved both of the main characters so much. They felt real, and flawed, and nuanced and completely loveable. Vanessa’s situation kept getting messier and messier, but Adrian was there for her and managing to deal with his own baggage at the same time. The two of them were so different but complemented each other so well.

From the adorable cover you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a rom-com. While it will definitely make you smile, it will also probably make you weep, so I’d put it more in the romance / family drama / women’s fiction camp. This story broke me so many times, but don’t worry it also used Kintsugi to put me back together again at the end.

There were times when baby Grace seemed to be an afterthought in the scene or situation, and while she was apparently a very ‘easy baby’ (do those exist? I certainly didn’t get one) that felt a bit unrealistic. I wanted to feel the bond they supposedly had with her rather than just being told she was in the room or had been farmed off to a neighbor. That aside, I loved this book and I dare say Abby has done it again!

In the author’s note Jiminez mentions that the book was inspired by a real-life activist and YouTuber, Claire Wineland, who lived with cystic fibrosis. She used her own platform to inspire and educate people, and you can find a documentary about her here. Be prepared to sob for days after you watch it (just a heads-up).

Content warnings for drug abuse, parental abandonment, parental death, grief, ALS, hoarding.

Synopsis:

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. . .