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Review
“I chose living – because anything else was just waiting to die.”
5 stars
A smart, funny, emotional and heartfelt story with incredible characters and a gorgeous romance, I love this book so much!
This is the third book by Abby Jimenez, and they have all been 5-star reads for me. I just love the way she writes! Her characters are always smart, funny, witty and likeable, she writes the BEST banter, and the chemistry is amazing. This book is no different.
Vanessa is a bright and bubbly 28 year old woman who turned her life upside down to travel the world and follow her dreams. After watching her mother and sister battle a hereditary, terminal, neurodegenerative disease, she quit her life to live a life of no regrets, enjoying every day like it was her last, and surprisingly became a hugely popular travel vlogger. Her life has now taken another turn, as she has become the full-time guardian to her newborn niece and she’s back home in the US trying to pull her family together.
“I don’t pretend to be happy. I just refuse to be sad.”
Adrian lives next door to Vanessa. A logical and ordered attorney, he is Vanessa’s complete opposite, but when he offers his help in the middle of the night while Vanessa is wrestling a screaming infant, she eagerly accepts, and the two of them form a fast friendship.
Though their lives could not be more different, they discover that they actually have a lot in common, and over shared meals, Netflix binges and childcare duties, they become a huge part of each other’s lives.
I liked that she didn’t feel the need to impress me and I didn’t feel the need to impress her. There was something comforting about it, about just being you in whatever state you happened to be in.
Adrian and Vanessa are perfection together – their friendship is easy, fun and honest, and the attraction between them develops so naturally. It’s one of those situations where they fall into a relationship before they even acknowledge it, and I love the life that they create for themselves. Neither of them are looking for love, but when their attraction becomes impossible to ignore, they don’t hold back, throwing themselves into what is essentially just an extension of what they already have, and it was so, so gorgeous to see.
I didn’t want Vanessa to kiss me just because we were standing under mistletoe. I didn’t want her to kiss me because it was midnight on New Year’s. I didn’t want a one-night stand or to be friends with benefits. I wanted all of her. I wanted it the right way. I wanted her to want me back.
There’s a great cast of side characters who bring so much to the story – little baby Grace, Adrian’s hilarious assistant and his geriatric dog, and there’s family drama which is realistic, and so well written into the story, and which shows the wonderful support that Adrian and Grace give to each other. But Vanessa’s future is uncertain, and there are gutwrenching moments which bought the feels as these two amazing characters figure out what they want, and what they are able to have.
“You’re my soulmate. I’ll find you in the next life. Like I found you in this one.”
There are so many amazing and profound statements in this book. Vanessa’s strength and positivity as she faces her own mortality, and the way she chooses to live her life, is inspiring. There are so many important messages, and I so admire the way that Jimenez wrote Vanessa as such a positive and upbeat character determined to live her life on her own terms. She’s vulnerable, and she understandably has her moments where it all becomes too much for her, but she powers on, and she does what makes her happy, and I love that!
“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly, that just to be alive, is a grand thing.”
What begins as a light and bright read with epic banter and dialogue becomes intense and emotional, and my heart was pounding as it all played out, but the end of the book delivers romance reader heaven, and I was in a world of swoon. And there’s an epilogue which provides great closure for the story.
“You are the flood, Vanessa. You pour into me, washing away everything that I used to think mattered and then filling me up to the top until I’m drowned in nothing but you.”
I read this as an audiobook narrated by Zachary Webber and Christina Lakin. Webber is perfection whatever he is reading, and both of these narrators do an amazing job bringing this story to life.
I absolutely loved this one – 5 huge stars!