Chick Lit

After a wild bet, gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich, and cuddle with a baby goat, Alexis Montgomery has had her world turned upside down. The cause: Daniel Grant, a ridiculously hot carpenter who’s ten years younger than her and as casual as they come—the complete opposite of sophisticated city-girl Alexis. And yet their chemistry is undeniable.

While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere” ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important.

Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.

Bringing Daniel into her world is impossible, and yet she can’t just give up the joy she’s found with him either. With so many differences between them, how can Alexis possibly choose between her world and his?

My first Abby Jimenez book and it was a solid, solid offering (oh, thank god) that dragged me in from the afternoon and way past my bedtime.

More than an age-gap romance, ‘Part of Your World’ is exactly what the title says it is and also much more than an older woman who accidentally breezes into a town that’s in the middle of nowhere and gets caught up with a much younger man who wears multiple hats in that place–and is refreshingly unashamed of who he is and his own lot in life.

What I love however, is how Jimenez writes of parallels and “mirrorings” that tie the whole cast of characters together. The number 125 takes on certain significance for Alexis and Daniel just as the cycle of abuse gets perpetrated on several levels and ways and the brokenness that results from it that can’t easily be waved away by weeks spent in therapy. The age-gap isn’t made too much a big deal of, but rather, it’s the mile-long gap between their social status and social circles from which Jimenez draws the friction.

What stuck however, by the end of it all, was that I simply liked how easy Alexis and Daniel are together–without too many angsty, wishy-washy shenanigans and how they always manage to laugh, learn with and support each other.

I’d wished of course, that Alexis has a little more courage to overturn that ordered life earlier, but also constantly marvelled constantly at Daniel’s steadfastness in his pursuit of the relationship. Grounded way beyond his years while retaining a little bit of that youthful sense of idealism, I felt so sorry for him that he got the short end of the stick quite a fair bit up until the point where Alexis finally, finally stood on her own two feet and went for the life she really wanted.

In short, there’s a little bit of everything I do like in a rom-com, from the smattering of humour to some bit of angst, even if the identity struggles so feel a little too youngish at this stage in life for Alexis with some bitchy-shallow-girlfriend-clichés too overly done. Still, ‘Part of Your World’ has that feel-good sensation after I’d finished the book al bleary-eyed and unable to sleep, so maybe there was still that bit of Wakan-fairy-dust left sprinkled in its pages.