New Release Review | The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez

The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez
Contemporary Romance
Forever Romance | June 11, 2019

About the Book:

Kristen Petersen doesn’t do drama, will fight to the death for her friends, and has no room in her life for guys who just don’t get her. She’s also keeping a big secret: facing a medically necessary procedure that will make it impossible for her to have children.

Planning her best friend’s wedding is bittersweet for Kristen—especially when she meets the best man, Josh Copeland. He’s funny, sexy, never offended by her mile-wide streak of sarcasm, and always one chicken enchilada ahead of her hangry. Even her dog, Stuntman Mike, adores him. The only catch: Josh wants a big family someday. Kristen knows he’d be better off with someone else, but as their attraction grows, it’s harder and harder to keep him at arm’s length.

The Friend Zone will have you laughing one moment and grabbing for tissues the next as it tackles the realities of infertility and loss with wit, heart, and a lot of sass.

The Friend Zone was a book I was seriously waiting for. I struggle with infertility, so I was excited to read a romance where the main character also suffered similarly. I’ve never read a romance that surrounded the topic before, and it meant something to me.

Too bad it was SUCH a let down.

So, because the topic of infertility is one that means so much to me, I can’t review this book without spoilers. I have to speak plainly. If this is a book you plan to read, and you don’t have any strong feelings on the subject, you may want to just stop here, with this quick no spoiler spiel: The Friend Zone was really cute. I understood Kristen, and why she felt she couldn’t entertain a relationship with Josh. I was with her, all the way to the end. It was the author who pissed me off. The ending was a complete cop out, which dropped what could have been a 4.5 star book, down to a generous 3 stars. The End.

Now: ALLLLL the spoilers.

Kristen is going through something so incredibly serious. Her idea for her future has been completely altered. After coming to terms with her new life, she meets this amazing man. Josh is a man she believes could be her soulmate. Except, he tells her over and over how all he wants in life is a big giant family, full of a baseball team of children. Anytime the topic of their future comes up, Josh reminds her again how much having children means to him. So, when he finds out the truth, it’s no surprise she doesn’t believe him. Of course she feels like, even if he says he’s okay with not having children, going forward there’s no way he wouldn’t end up resenting her. Kristen isn’t reading the “Josh” chapters. She doesn’t have the insight into his mind and thought process the way we do. In her shoes, I probably would have felt the exact same way.

I thought all that was written perfectly.

It was after Josh finally convinces Kristen they can be together, and he’s happy to fight infertility with her, the story plummeted for me. Josh did all kinds of research on their options. He pulled together ways for the two of them to afford a few rounds of fertility treatments. He looked into surrogate’s, and even adoption. It was such a beautiful gesture, and it meant so much to Kristen. It meant so much to me, and probably a million women with infertility and a love for romance novels reading this book.

And then the author chose to undercut all those beautiful options for Josh and Kristen by making Kristen pregnant. Instead of writing a beautiful story with an adoption, or surragacy, we got a miracle baby and a natural birth.

I know they happen. I have a miracle baby. I’ve been pregnant twice in my life, and not to be TMI, but just like Kristen we never used protection. I have my beautiful Baby Chick, and I had one miscarriage. Obviously, I know it can happen. Yet, I still think it was a cop out. Kristen’s fertility problems were leaps and bounds worse than mine. For all the women out there who will never carry their own child, I wish Abby Jimenez hadn’t taken the easy way out. Write the hard story, but one even more miraculous. Show how Josh CAN have his full family, through other means.

It actually made me angry, and that’s why The Friend Zone was a complete let down.