Yours Truly

What's inside (8 sections)

1. A rough start in the ER
2. Letters and the sob closet
3. The favor and the family act
4. Benny and the kidney question
5. What drags and what shines
6. Where it lands
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I picked up Yours Truly because a friend would not stop talking about the letters. She said the hero writes actual letters, on paper, and that it was never a gimmick. That sounded odd for a hospital romance, so I gave it a try. Abby Jimenez published it with Forever in 2023, and the trade paperback runs 416 pages. It is the second book in the Part of Your World series, set around the same Minneapolis hospital as the first book, but you can read it on its own. I finished it in three nights, mostly because I wanted to see how Jimenez would handle the kidney plot without turning the whole thing into a lecture.

Briana Ortiz is having the kind of year where everything goes thin at once. Her divorce is almost final. She is an ER doctor, good at her job, tired in a way sleep does not fix. She wants a promotion to a leadership spot in the department. She has a younger brother, Benny, who has kidney disease and is running out of time to find a donor. Benny is on dialysis and trying to stay upbeat, which makes Briana feel worse because she cannot fix it. Their family is close and loud, the kind that shows up with food and opinions.

Then Jacob Maddox starts at the hospital. He is the new ER doctor, quiet and awkward and immediately on Briana's nerves. Their first meetings are bad. He seems stiff. He says the wrong thing. Briana is convinced he was brought in to take the promotion she wants, and she puts him at something like eighty seven on her personal pain scale. First impressions in this book are the point. Jimenez wants you to judge him, then sit with how wrong that judgment was.

What Briana does not know at first is that Jacob lives with clinical anxiety. He is not cold. He is braced. New places, new people, small talk in the break room, all of it spikes his heart rate and locks up his words. He takes medication. He goes to therapy. He has systems for getting through a shift without falling apart. Jimenez writes this from close inside his head in his chapters, and it felt true to me. It is the grinding kind where you rehearse a simple introduction six times and still fumble it.

Jacob knows he blew it with Briana. So he writes her a letter. A real apology letter, thoughtful and funny, explaining that he is terrible at first impressions and that he is not after her job. Briana reads it and is thrown, because the man on the page is warm and sharp and self aware, nothing like the stiff guy in the trauma bay.

That letter changes the temperature. Briana writes back. Soon they are trading letters regularly, tucked into lockers and scrub pockets. They talk about work and family and small things, like freakishly tiny horses and whether certain hospital snacks count as meals. The letters let Jacob be himself without the pressure of face to face patter. They let Briana be softer than she allows herself to be on shift.

At work they develop a second ritual. Briana has a supply closet she calls her sob closet, a cramped spot where she goes to cry for a minute or reset after a bad case. Jacob learns about it and respects it. Sometimes they eat lunch nearby and talk through the day. Sometimes they just sit. The hospital setting works here because Jimenez knows the rhythm of it. Long stretches of waiting cut by sudden rushes, gallows humor, charting, colleagues who notice everything.

A rough start in the ER

Briana starts guarded for reasons that make sense. Her ex checked out of the marriage, then blamed her for focusing on work and family stress. The divorce papers are still moving when the story opens. She is technically married and emotionally done. She tells herself she does not have time to date, which is true, and also that she does not want to need anyone, which is less true.

Jacob arrives at the worst moment for her. The department is short staffed. The promotion process is murky. Briana has been acting like a leader already, covering gaps and mentoring nurses, and she assumes the new guy is competition. She is short with him. He freezes, which reads as rudeness. Their early shifts are full of crossed wires.

What I liked is that Jimenez does not let Briana stay righteous about it. Pretty early, Jacob takes himself out of the running for the promotion. He tells her plainly that he does not want the admin role. He likes patient care and hates politics. Briana has to sit with the fact that she misread him, and that her stress about Benny and the divorce bled into work.

Jacob's anxiety gets page time without taking over the plot. He worries about being a burden. He has a routine with his therapist, practical tools rather than magic cures. He sometimes needs to step away and breathe. Briana, once she knows, does not try to fix him. She gives him room, then teases him a little when he is ready for it. Their banter loosens as trust builds.

Letters and the sob closet

Jacob's first apology note is long and specific. He owns his awkwardness. He explains that meeting new people is hard for him because of anxiety, and that he wishes he had done better. He does not ask for pity. He asks for a fresh start. Briana answers because she is fair minded, and because the letter is genuinely good.

After that, the habit sticks. Jacob tells stories about his family back in California, big and loving and a little overwhelming. Briana tells him about Benny's dialysis schedule and her mother's cooking and the glitter bomb revenge she once plotted against her ex. That glitter story is funny on the page, petty in a way that feels human rather than cruel. The letters get flirty slowly. More like two tired people finding one bright spot.

There is a parrot, too. A foul mouthed rescue bird that belongs to someone in their circle, and it steals every scene it is in. It swears at the worst moment. It repeats things people wish it would forget.

The sob closet lunches run alongside the letters. One afternoon they end up shoulder to shoulder, laughing about tiny horses, and Briana realizes she looks forward to seeing him. That shift is quiet, which suited the book. Just comfort becoming attraction.

Jimenez alternates point of view, so we get Jacob's side. His chapters show how hard he works to appear steady at work. He counts breaths. He plans conversations. He replays mistakes at night. When Briana pulls back, he assumes he did something wrong and spirals. You want to tell him to ask instead of assume. That pattern matters later, when miscommunication nearly costs them.

The favor and the family act

The fake dating part starts as a favor. Jacob's family loves him fiercely and worries about him constantly. He is flying home for a family event and dreads the concern and the questions. He asks Briana if she will pretend to be his girlfriend for a bit, just enough to show them he is doing okay.

Briana says yes for mixed reasons. She likes him. She owes him kindness after their start. She also could use a buffer herself, since her family is pressing her about dating. They set rules. Keep it simple. Tell few people at work. Anyone who reads romance knows how this goes, and Jimenez knows you know.

Meeting Jacob's family is one of the best stretches. They are warm, noisy, affectionate, and unconvinced by boundaries. His mother hugs Briana like she is already family. His siblings tease Jacob and watch Briana closely. Briana, who came in expecting to act, finds herself relaxing. Jacob with his family is softer and funnier. She sees the man from the letters in person at last.

The act starts to slip. A hand held a little too long after the audience is gone. A late night talk where the script drops and they speak plainly about fear. Jacob admits how much he hates feeling like a project. Briana admits how tired she is of being the strong one. Those scenes are intimate without much physical detail, and that restraint helped. The tension builds from care and attention.

Back in Minneapolis, keeping the story straight gets harder. Alexis, Briana's close friend from the first book, appears with her husband Daniel. Alexis can tell something shifted. Briana insists it is fake. I liked that Jimenez brought back prior characters without letting them take over. They feel like friends dropping in.

The trouble here is not jealousy or a rival. Both people use the arrangement to avoid saying what they want. Jacob will not admit he asked for more than a performance. Briana will not admit she is falling for someone while her life is still messy. So they keep calling it pretend even as they remember small details about each other.

Benny and the kidney question

Benny is the heart of the book outside the romance. He is funny and stubborn, dealing with kidney failure and dialysis while trying to keep his family from orbiting him completely. Briana wants to donate herself but she is not a match. That helplessness eats at her. She is a doctor who saves strangers and cannot save her brother.

Jacob learns all this in pieces. He does not make grand speeches. He listens, then quietly looks into what it would mean to get tested himself. Without telling Briana, he goes through the early steps to see if he could be a living donor for Benny. When he learns he is a possible match, he has to decide what to do with that knowledge.

The broad shape is public knowledge from the jacket copy. Jacob offers an extraordinary gift. A kidney for her brother. It is generous and complicated and almost too much. Briana is stunned, grateful, and unsettled. A gift that large changes the balance between two people, especially when they are still figuring out what they are. She wonders if she can accept it without feeling indebted forever.

Jimenez handles the medical side better than I expected. Doctors cannot hand over organs on feeling. There are tests, committees, evaluations, waiting lists. The book simplifies for story, but it does not skip the process entirely. More vital is the emotional side. Jacob's therapist asks hard questions. Is he doing this for sound reasons. Does he feel pressure because he loves Briana. Those conversations give weight to what could have been a cheap grand gesture.

Benny does not want to be a prop. He has pride. He hates watching his sister carry guilt. The idea of taking an organ from a man his sister is dating sits badly with him at first. He jokes to cover discomfort, then gets serious. His scenes with Briana are among the strongest in the book, full of sibling shorthand and old arguments.

The kidney question forces Briana and Jacob to talk about the future in concrete terms. Donation means surgery, recovery, risk, time off work. It affects Jacob's health permanently. Briana, as a physician, knows the risks better than most partners would, which makes it harder. Their fights about it are about what love should ask for. I found those fights more moving than the romantic speeches.

What drags and what shines

This book sags in the middle third. After the family visit, there is a stretch where Briana and Jacob circle the same issue without progress. He pulls back to avoid burdening her. She reads the distance as loss of interest. Neither asks a direct question for chapters. Avoidance fits both characters, especially Jacob. But I got tired of watching two smart adults misread silences. One honest talk earlier would have saved fifty pages.

The work plot also fades. The promotion that starts as Briana's goal loses urgency once Jacob steps aside, and hospital politics never sharpen into a real threat. In story terms, it leaves a thread hanging. The ER stays as backdrop rather than pressure.

What shines makes up for a lot. Jacob is not cured by love. Coping tools help, setbacks happen, medication is part of life. Briana learns how to support him without managing him. She asks what helps. She believes his answer. She apologizes when she pushes. That dynamic felt adult in a way many romances skip.

Briana herself is a strong lead. Competent without being perfect, funny without performing, loyal to a fault. She grieves the marriage she thought she had. She slowly sees that her ex's version of events was self serving. Her growth is trusting her own read on people again after doubting herself.

The humor is steady. Glitter revenge, the parrot, tiny horses, terrible hospital coffee, awkward family photos from the fake dating trip. Jimenez lets jokes sit next to grief, which is how hospitals and families actually work. I laughed more than I expected in a book about dialysis and divorce.

Where it lands

The last hundred pages push everything together. The fake arrangement cannot hold once real stakes appear. Someone gets hurt by a secret kept too long. Expect a breakup stretch where both people have to sit with what they actually want. Briana has to decide if she can receive a gift that large without losing herself. Jacob has to decide if he can love someone without trying to earn it through self sacrifice.

Their repairs are plainspoken. They apologize specifically. They set clearer terms about work, family, health, and help. Jacob stays in therapy. Briana sets firmer limits with her family and ex. The physical side, quiet for much of the book, warms up here in a way that feels earned because trust finally catches up.

Benny's fate resolves with care rather than melodrama. Jimenez does not treat transplant as a guaranteed happy ending. There are risks, waits, and decisions that involve more than the couple. What matters is that Benny is treated as a person choosing, with pride and fear intact. His choice gives the ending its weight.

I closed the book thinking about caregiving and how rarely romance shows it this plainly. Briana spends so much energy caring for Benny and her patients that she forgets to let anyone care for her. Jacob spends so much energy managing how others see him that he forgets to ask for what he needs. Watching them trade those habits through letters and one enormous medical decision was satisfying, even when the middle dragged. Readers who like slow burn affection, workplace banter, and family noise will find a lot to hold onto here.

FAQ

When was Yours Truly published?

Forever published it on April 11, 2023. The trade paperback runs 416 pages and the ISBN is 9781538704394.

Is Yours Truly part of a series?

Yes. It is book 2 in the Part of Your World series, after Part of Your World and before Just for the Summer. Each book stands alone.

Who are the main characters in Yours Truly?

Dr. Briana Ortiz and Dr. Jacob Maddox, two ER doctors in Minneapolis, plus Briana's brother Benny, who needs a kidney transplant.