The Happy Ever After Playlist (The Friend Zone, #2)

by Abby Jimenez

Jason: Sometimes the hardest place to live is the one in-between.

Thank you to everyone who voted to get this book to the finals in the Goodreads Choice Awards! Your love of this story is very much appreciated. As you may know from reading my post on Goodreads, the grief in this book is based on my childhood friend. She lost her husband suddenly at a very young age and she struggled for years with the after effects. "In-between" was the best way I could describe where she was during that time. She'd moved beyond the inital deep grief of the loss, but she was lingering in this middle place where she wasn’t able to move forward. If you haven't read my post on GR or the author's note at the end (when you're done reading), I strongly recommend you do. I talk a lot about the inspiration for this book and the challenges of complicated grief.

I was a ghost, wandering the rooms of a museum of the person I used to be, and Jason was like one of the living who could somehow see me and decided to wander the place with me.

I love this so much. I added this in my final edit and it's one of my favorite passages in the book. This book went through sooooo many edits. I completely rewrote the last 35,000 words of the book. Highlighted it all and hit delete. Of all my books this one took the most time to complete, probably because I was a new writer at the time and I didn't fully know what I was doing. This book is actually the first book I wrote. I wrote The Friend Zone after finishing The Happy Ever After Playlist because I liked Kristen and wanted her love story with Josh, and I wanted us to live through the events that make Sloan who she is. I think TFZ gives so much more depth to Sloan's book. If you haven't read it, definitely do.

This was just a season, and there’s beauty in all seasons. Even if you are looking forward to the next one.

Such a Jason thing to say lol. We never get Jason's lyrics in the book, but I wanted the reader to see the way his mind works. He has a poetic way of viewing the world.

You can’t control the bad things that happen to you. All you can do is decide how much of you you’re going to let them take.

I loved this growth in Sloan so much. It was my favorite part of her development as a character.