The Friend Zone (The Friend Zone, 1) Paperback – June 11, 2019

I get it now… why readers rave about Abby Jimenez’s writing. I’ve read her newer stuff and the only one I truly loved was Part of Your World. But now.. after reading this, I am just astounded by how incredible her writing is.I was not prepared for how emotional and heavy this book was. This book was hilarious and also an absolute emotional roller coaster. I feel like nobody can write banter and dialogue like she can. Josh is probably the sweetest, sexy, most cinnamon roll hero I’ve ever read about. -And Kristen, she might be the most frustrating and infuriating heroine I’ve ever read—but God how I loved her. She was so hilarious and witty. Her chemistry and banter with Josh was superb. For most of this book though—-I wanted to shake her and at the same time I understood where she was coming from. Her stubbornness made me ragey—especially towards the end. Normally that would make me hate the book—but this story had me so emotionally invested. I cared so much about these characters. The last few chapters were so tragic—they were actually hard to get through. —And I had just about had it with Kristen at this point. But the ending was absolutely incredible . The payoff was so worth all the anguish.I read the second book in this series before this one and I loved it, but now I’m going reread it because I feel like it will mean so much more. I’m also going to go buy the physical copies of this series now because I loved it that much.

I enjoyed this book a lot. There are a LOT of F-bombs, but having been raised with brothers who cursed a lot, I found that the abundance of the F-bombs almost made them more muted. I don't like cussing, but my brain tuned it out. My biggest beef of the book was how you spend half of the book wanting to shake the female lead and just tell the guy her "big issue". The surprise was that there was an unexpected loss in the story. Usually, rom-coms don't go quite this deep with heavy topics and events, but I found it was handled well.Disclaimer: Open Door Romance

I’ve been in a reading slump & having withdrawals. I NEEDED a good book. The cover unfortunately didn’t look too promising, but it had lots of stars. I never read a preview. This book was just what I needed! I love the characters & could NOT pit this book down! READ IT! O think you’ll love it, too. Oh, & I’m hoping beyond hope that this will be a series!!!

I want to start off by saying I LOVE Abby’s books and this particular piece really shows how much she has grown as a writer. Normally I read her books in a few days and I’m 100% invested. This one was a bit harder for me.Abby has an incredible ability of creating complex and three dimensional characters that you can’t help but love. This book didn’t show that ability the same way. I found Josh a bit sophomoric and almost annoyingly stereotypical macho straight man. His character lacked depth and he felt like your typical small town jock that lacked substance. And of course he “had a huge dick.”On the other hand, I found Kristen extremely annoying and quite frankly emotionally abusive in a way that made me uncomfortable at times. Trauma is hard and manifests differently in everyone. I empathize with what she was going through, but it angered me the way she treated Josh. Nobody has the right to be so horrible to someone and play emotional mind games with them AND have it dragged out for nearly 400 pages. And then all of a sudden it’s fine and everyone lived happily ever after.On top of that, Kristin’s struggle with OCD was an underdeveloped aspect of her character that was dropped on the reader in the last 60 pages and makes no sense considering the rest of the story. And this is coming from someone clinically diagnosed with OCD. It shows that this piece was clearly written before the author started consulting psychological professionals and doctors to help write her stories.All in all, it was an okay read, but it felt a bit hallmark to me and not typical Abby Jimenez. I’m glad I read it, but it took some effort to get through it. She’s a very talented writer, but this one simply wasn’t as good as the others.

Honestly, Josh pissed me off a lot on this book. He dated/wanted two different women who told him from the beginning what their wants/expectations were but he STILL went after them thinking he could change their mind. Other than that, I really enjoyed the story, definitely had me ugly crying.

I loved the FMC I suffered from the pos and fibroids, I also had hysterectomy to solve it. Abby captured the feelings that go along with the process of having a hysterectomy especially when you want to have children.

This book was amazing. I loved every bit of it. Spoiler.... beware the last 80 pages or so was a little devastating. But then she gave as happy of an ending as she could.

Oof. That was a bit rough (emotionally) but so good. I got a little frustrated with the amount of time it took for Kristen and Josh to end up together as they were obviously going to. I always enjoy everything from Abby Jimenez.