BOOK REVIEW: The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez

Publishers: Little Brown

Publication Date: 11th June 2019

Pages: 384

Amazon UK – Goodreads – Waterstones

---

SPOILER FREE BOOK REVIEW

A huge thank you to Little Brown for providing me with a review copy of the book.

In The Friend Zone, we follow Kristen who is a no fuss kind of girl who is about to undergo a hysterectomy for medical reasons. Her boyfriend is in the Navy and never home so helping her best friend with her wedding is pretty bittersweet. Until she meets the best man, Josh, who even her dog adores. They end up thrown together and forming a sweet friendship. Feelings may start to grown, but Josh wants a family and Kristen can never have kids so what’s the point…

The Friend Zone deals heavily with infertility and with Kristen not wanting to open up about this. While I went in expecting a lighter romance, the serious element dragged me in and got me invested. I personally can’t speak to the struggle she went through but it felt genuine and gave me some insight into how that might feel. She constantly suffered and nobody undermined this which was an important part of the book for me.

I loved the chemistry between Kristen and Josh, even though they tried to resist it. They were sassy and headstrong which is just the type of romance I like, but it also was such a wonderful friendship. I generally prefer an enemies to lovers, but this has brought me around to friends to lovers. Seeing their friendship flourish made this a great read.

The only slight issue I had with this book was the ending, but the authors note kind of cleared things up for me and I’m at peace with it.

Jimenez’s writing was funny and it hooked me straight away. You might class this as “chick lit” and think it is fluffy and light, but you couldn’t be more wrong. I hope this could be a book to bring people around to the genre so be sure to pick it up if it interests you!