Book review: Yours Truly Part of our World #2 by Abby Jimenez

Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


The review is also available on my site: https://roxannacross.com/2025/01/31/b...

Yours Truly by Jimenez is a perfect fit for fans of tropes, including, but not limited to, office romance, rivals-to-lovers, fake dating, forced proximity, and miscommunication; however, the addressed topics of anxiety, depression, divorce, cheating, sibling with kidney failure doesn’t make for a light, easy, breezy read.

Briana Ortiz is hanging on by a thread; her life is in shambles. Her divorce is about to be finalized, and her brother can tick the time he has left to find a kidney donor, and the promotion she wants has been put on hold because of the new man doctor who just walked into her ER and is registering way up there on her “pain in my ass” scale, it only takes a letter to tip her world topsy-turvy where trust will need to be earned and fears conquered. Jacob Maddox’s life is structured to manage his clinical anxiety; his new job at Royaume Northwestern Hospital is a necessity to avoid being around his ex-girlfriend, now engaged to his brother. His family worries about his mental health because of this new development, and Jacob panics and tells them he’s OK and has moved on and settled with a new girlfriend. He’s in a pickle now, with his anxiety buzzing within at an all-time high, when a Dr. crashes into him in the hallway, breaking his phone, and he calls her on it. To apologize, he sends Briana a letter, turning his linear world upside down and right side up.

Jimenez’s idea of the letter exchange was sweet and well-executed. However, the inner monologues of Briana and Jacob dragged on and were repetitive, so much so readers might quickly skim paragraphs or entire pages to avoid beating the dead horse to death again and again. Tighter editing could have cut some of these out to lessen the paranoia. Briana’s trust issues, Jacob’s anxiety, the miscommunication, the fake dating, and the circling each other with suppressed desire just fed the mistrust and the angst. They made the book feel more like a YA read when the subject matters of the organ donation for her brother, dialysis, depression, the impact of her divorce, and her childhood pull the reader into serious scenes. Yet, the next minute is another self-doubt moment: “Oh no, he doesn’t like me because I’m not her,” or “Oh, she doesn’t think it’s real,” and on and on the same cyclone, which made the lack of honest, open communication sorely missed.

The biggest disappointment is Jimenez's slow-burning tension between the two to combust in one brief sex scene, so if you’re a reader looking for a spicy read, this isn’t it. The scene is so abrupt, almost like it was plugged in there as an afterthought, and the ending was another revelation that got wrapped up quickly, nearly giving the reader whiplash from the rush of it all. For a promising read, this one fell short and sits at 2.5 stars.




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