{"id":7663,"date":"2024-06-10T09:27:26","date_gmt":"2024-06-10T07:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/?p=7663"},"modified":"2024-06-10T09:27:30","modified_gmt":"2024-06-10T07:27:30","slug":"the-friend-zone-by-abby-jimenez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/the-friend-zone-by-abby-jimenez\/","title":{"rendered":"The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"673\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/readwithstefani.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/41945163.jpg?resize=673%2C1024&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7664\" style=\"width:208px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/readwithstefani.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/41945163.jpg?resize=673%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 673w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/readwithstefani.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/41945163.jpg?resize=197%2C300&amp;ssl=1 197w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/readwithstefani.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/41945163.jpg?resize=768%2C1168&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/readwithstefani.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/41945163.jpg?resize=1010%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 1010w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/readwithstefani.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/41945163.jpg?resize=1347%2C2048&amp;ssl=1 1347w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/readwithstefani.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/41945163.jpg?resize=8%2C12&amp;ssl=1 8w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/readwithstefani.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/41945163.jpg?w=1576&amp;ssl=1 1576w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 673px) 100vw, 673px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"\">This book was a bit of a mess. Let&#8217;s unpack it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">The main characters are Kristen (owner of a small business making accessories for dogs) and Josh (firefighter that also goes on medical calls, this is not a thing where I live, but I&#8217;m guessing it is in the USA) who met in a very cringey first chapter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Turns out Josh is a colleague of Kristen&#8217;s friend Brandon, so they meet up socially almost immediately after and Kristen offers him a side gig building dog stairs for her. Basically, things went from nothing to working together (or working from Kristen&#8217;s garage) in less than a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">They are obviously attracted to each but Kristen firmly friend zones Josh as she&#8217;s in a long-distance relationship with a deployed marine. Kristen goes out of her way to look what&#8217;s described as &#8216;homeless chic&#8217; attempting to look less attractive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">The writing is not as good as Jimenez&#8217;s other series, or, so it seems to me. I&#8217;m not sure of the publication order of each novel, but this one is definitely less developed or thought through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Here are the issues I&#8217;m seeing with this story: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li class=\"\">one character is in a relationship yet allows the other to sleep over in the guest room being afraid from vandals visiting her backyard at night<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\">undisclosed medical condition<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\">severe lack of open communication<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\">death of a side character to move the plot forward and partially resolve a conflict<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\">infertility that is miraculously resolved, no viable explanation provided<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\">cringe language (female says she want&#8217;s to make the male&#8217;s body part her screensaver being one example)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li class=\"\">very alpha protective male, pulling a gun out and everything to protect his beloved.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">So, there&#8217;s a lot included in a relatively short novel and not all handled very well. While I did go into this with expectations of reading a romance, I didn&#8217;t expect quite so many things to be thrown into the mix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">A somewhat redeeming moment is Kristen&#8217;s friendship with Sloan, but wasn&#8217;t enough to raise my rating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">After this reading experience, I&#8217;m not sure if I want to read any more Abby Jimenez. If you&#8217;ve read any of her other books, let me know if things get better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Happy reading. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This book was a bit of a mess. Let&#8217;s unpack it. The main characters are Kristen (owner of a small business making accessories for dogs) and Josh (firefighter that also goes on medical calls,&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1210,352,1275],"class_list":["post-7663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-abby-jimenez","tag-book-review","tag-the-friend-zone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/readwithstefani.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/41945163.jpg?fit=1576%2C2397&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7666,"href":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7663\/revisions\/7666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readwithstefani.com\/mk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}