Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez Review: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 10/5 Stars Because Apparently I Have No Standards When I’m in Love
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 10/5 stars
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Author: Abby Jimenez
Sometimes, with romance books, it’s really just about the romance.
Give me your predictable, saccharine, emotionally manipulative love story. Give me handwritten letters. Give me fake dating. Give me a painfully sweet man who is obviously in love before the woman figures it out. Give me a kidney donation so inevitable that I saw it coming approximately 14 seconds after the rare blood type was mentioned.
I will gobble it all up with happy tears in my eyes. 😭💕
And that is exactly what happened with Yours Truly.
Did I know where this was going? Absolutely.
Did I care?
Not even a little.
⚠️ Trigger Warnings for Yours Truly
Anxiety and panic attacks
Infidelity
Divorce
Miscarriage and pregnancy loss
Pregnancy
Kidney failure and organ transplantation
Hospital/medical situations
Abandonment and relationship trauma
Death of a parent
🚨 Spoiler Warning
FULL SPOILERS AHEAD. This review discusses the entire plot of Yours Truly, including Jacob's kidney donation, Briana's pregnancy, and the ending.
If you haven't read it yet and don't want to know exactly what happens, flee now. 🏃♀️💨
💌 Yours Truly Review: Sometimes Predictable Is Exactly What I Want
Briana Ortiz is an ER doctor whose life is currently one giant dumpster fire. Her divorce is about to become official after her husband cheated on her, her brother Benny is seriously ill with kidney failure, and the promotion she's been expecting suddenly isn't guaranteed because the hospital has hired Dr. Jacob Maddox.
And Jacob's first impression is...not great.
Everyone thinks he's rude and standoffish. Briana assumes he's after her job. The hospital staff basically decides they hate him before he gets a chance to unpack his emotional-support anxiety.
Except Jacob isn't an asshole. He's just extremely anxious, especially in unfamiliar social situations, and once Briana sees him interacting gently with a frightened child, she starts to realize she may have gotten him completely wrong.
She suggests he make peace with the staff by bringing cupcakes.
So he does.
And he includes a letter for Briana.
And thus begins one of my favorite parts of the entire book: the letters. 💌
Jacob explains himself. Briana writes back. Soon they're exchanging letters constantly, then talking outside work, then becoming actual friends. Briana understands Jacob's anxiety in a way that very few people do, and Jacob gives Briana a safe place to be herself while her entire life is falling apart.
It's adorable.
Meanwhile, Benny desperately needs a kidney transplant, but his rare blood type makes finding a donor difficult.
And the second this was mentioned, I thought:
Oh.
OH.
Jacob is going to give this man a kidney, isn't he?
😂😂😂
OF COURSE HE IS.
Jacob learns about Benny, quietly gets tested, discovers he's a match, and agrees to donate his kidney.
Was I surprised?
Please.
Was I crying?
Obviously.
This is what I mean when I say sometimes I do not need romance to outsmart me. I don't need to gasp, WHAT A TWIST! Sometimes I want to know exactly what's coming and then happily watch it happen.
And Abby Jimenez delivers.
💕 Fake Dating, Because We Deserve Nice Things
Jacob has his own romantic disaster happening. His ex-girlfriend Amy is marrying his brother Jeremiah, which is exactly the kind of family situation that makes you want to fake your own death and relocate to Iceland.
Instead, Jacob asks Briana to pretend to be his girlfriend during the wedding festivities so his family won't worry about him.
Naturally, this goes extremely well.
Meaning: terribly.
Meaning: romantically.
Briana meets Jacob's family, learns how to help him through overwhelming social situations, and becomes increasingly protective of him. When Amy questions whether Jacob could really have moved on so quickly, Briana gets irritated and announces that she and Jacob are moving in together.
They were not moving in together.
Now they are. 😂
Unfortunately, Briana believes Jacob is still in love with Amy. She even overhears an argument between them and completely misunderstands what it means. So when Jacob tries to turn their relationship into something real, Briana refuses because her cheating ex-husband has left her absolutely terrified of ever being someone's second choice again.
Eventually, Briana and Jacob end up visiting Alexis—yes, Alexis and Daniel from Part of Your World! ❤️—where they accidentally get locked in a bedroom together overnight.
They drink. They talk. Briana tells Jacob about filling her ex-husband's house with five gallons of glitter after leaving him, which is both deranged and inspirational.
She also tells Jacob she loves him.
Except Jacob thinks she means it platonically.
SIR.
😭
They eventually move in together for real—or fake-real—and Briana sleeps on an air mattress because apparently these two have decided to personally test the patience of every romance reader alive.
🔥 Jacob Maddox, You Sweet Anxious Man
Eventually, jealousy enters the chat.
Jacob thinks Briana is texting another man and has a panic attack during Jeremiah's bachelor party. Briana assumes he's upset because Amy has announced she's pregnant.
She follows him into the basement to comfort him.
And, well.
They do considerably more than talk. 👀🔥
Afterward, Briana panics and insists it can't happen again. But then Amy tells her what we've all known for approximately 200 pages:
Jacob is in love with Briana.
Finally, Jacob confesses it himself.
And Briana admits she loves him too.
HOORAY! 🎉
Surely we're done now, right?
Hahahahahahaha.
No.
Briana has more emotional self-sabotage to accomplish first.
😭 The Pregnancy, the Breakup, and Briana Testing My Last Nerve
At Amy and Jeremiah's wedding, Briana runs into her ex-husband and his pregnant new wife.
This brings all of Briana's old trauma roaring back, particularly because her husband left her shortly before she suffered a miscarriage.
And then Briana realizes she's pregnant too.
This is where I became a little annoyed with her.
I understand it. I really do. Briana has been abandoned by people she trusted, and pregnancy triggers the terror that Jacob will eventually abandon her too.
But ma'am.
This man is donating an ORGAN to your family.
We've already taken several laps around the Jacob Maddox Proves He Loves Briana Speedway. He has shown up. He has reassured her. He has chosen her repeatedly. He has given her approximately every possible reason to trust him short of removing his beating heart and handing it to her in a Tupperware container.
And Briana still panics and dumps him.
😭 GIRL.
Jacob has done nothing wrong. Nothing! He's just standing there being sweet, anxious, devoted, and one kidney lighter while Briana decides the safest way to avoid being abandoned is to abandon him first.
Do I understand the psychology?
Yes.
Was I still yelling at her?
Also yes.
🥹 Yours Truly Ending Explained: Jacob's Journals and Happily Ever After
Jacob goes ahead with the surgery to donate his kidney to Benny.
Before the operation, he gives Briana his journals.
And those journals finally give her something she desperately needs: a way to see their relationship entirely through Jacob's eyes.
She reads how his feelings for her developed and realizes that his love isn't impulsive, temporary, or conditional. Jacob has been choosing her all along.
That finally breaks through the fear.
Briana stays.
The transplant is successful, Benny gets Jacob's kidney, and Briana and Jacob get the future that the book has been marching toward from the moment those two started exchanging letters.
And honestly?
Thank God, because after everything these people put me through, I was going to need compensation if they didn't end up together.
The epilogue jumps forward two years. Briana and Jacob have a little daughter named Ava, and they get married in his parents' backyard surrounded by their family.
That's it.
That's the ending.
No shocking betrayal. No last-minute revelation that Jacob's kidney was secretly evil. No sudden appearance by an identical twin.
Just love, family, healing, and a happily ever after. 🥹💕
Exactly as it should be.
⭐ Final Thoughts on Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez
Look, I can criticize Yours Truly.
Briana's final spiral frustrated me. The kidney-donor storyline was hilariously predictable. The fake dating turns real exactly the way you expect it to. There are moments when you want to physically shove these two people together and yell, "HE LOVES YOU. YOU LOVE HIM. WE HAVE ESTABLISHED THIS."
But who am I kidding?
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. Five out of five stars.
Actually, 10 out of 5.
Because Yours Truly gave me exactly what I wanted from it.
Jacob is such a genuinely lovely romance hero, and his anxiety isn't treated as something Briana needs to fix. Instead, she learns him. She notices what makes situations difficult for him and quietly helps create exits and breathing room. And Jacob does the same thing for Briana emotionally—even when Briana is considerably more determined to fight him on it.
Their relationship isn't exciting because we're wondering whether they'll end up together.
We know they're going to end up together.
The joy is watching them slowly become the person the other one feels safest with. 🥹
Sometimes I want a romance to surprise me.
Sometimes I want it to emotionally destroy me.
And sometimes I want a sweet man to write letters, fall hopelessly in love, donate a kidney, survive an absolutely unnecessary breakup, and marry the woman we've known he belongs with since practically chapter one.
Give me all of it.
I'll be over here gobbling up every predictable, saccharine bite with happy tears in my eyes. 😭💗
📚 What to Read After Yours Truly
If Yours Truly gave you the warm, fuzzy romance high and now you need another fix:
Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez — Read Alexis and Daniel's love story and get more of the world that connects directly to Briana's.
Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez — Another emotional Jimenez romance balancing genuinely heavy baggage with humor and swoony romance.
The Happy Ever After Playlist by Abby Jimenez — Grief, healing, music, and a romance built to make you feel things. Lots of things.
The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez — A funny, emotional romance with heavier themes underneath all the banter.
Funny Story by Emily Henry — For more lovable characters, emotional baggage, forced proximity, and the delightful experience of watching two people become increasingly incapable of pretending they're not falling in love.
The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren — Fake relationship shenanigans, family drama, chemistry, and plenty of unapologetic romance.
Bottom line: Yours Truly may be predictable, but sometimes knowing exactly where a romance is headed is half the pleasure. Jacob and Briana made me laugh, made me cry, made me want to shake Briana by the shoulders, and then made me cry some more.
10/5 stars. No further questions. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐💕
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