Romance, Heart, and Surprises in Wakan

Author Spotlight: Abby Jimenez & The Part of Your World Series

If you haven’t yet experienced the magic of Abby Jimenez’s Part of Your World series, it’s time to add these books to your reading list. Jimenez has a way of crafting heartfelt, funny, and deeply emotional stories that linger long after the final page. Set against the backdrop of small-town Minnesota, each book in this series is connected in subtle and surprising ways, making for an incredibly satisfying reading experience.

Part of Your World – Where It All Begins

The series starts with Part of Your World, introducing us to Wakan, a charming yet tight-knit town that plays a vital role throughout the entire series. Here, we meet Alexis Montgomery, an accomplished ER doctor from a prestigious medical family, and Daniel Grant, a younger small-town carpenter with a heart of gold. Their romance is unexpected and complicated—Alexis is caught between the life she’s always known and the one Daniel offers, filled with warmth, community, and true belonging.

Jimenez masterfully builds the world of Wakan, making it feel like a place we’d all want to visit. This fictitious small town becomes a character, and its presence is felt throughout the series as different characters find their way there—or back to it again and again.

Yours Truly – A Heartfelt Love Letter

Next comes Yours Truly, a profoundly touching and refreshingly emotional friends-to-lovers romance. Dr. Briana Ortiz, Alexis’s best friend from Part of Your World, is struggling. Enter Jacob Maddox, a socially anxious yet incredibly kind doctor who takes fake dating to another level when he agrees to help Bri navigate a complicated situation. What starts as an arrangement blossoms into one of the most endearing love stories Jimenez has written, with love letters, shared anxieties, and an intimacy built on true understanding.

What makes this book shine is Jimenez’s ability to balance heavy themes with humor and hope. She doesn’t shy away from topics like mental health, grief, and the pressures of family expectations, but she always finds a way to bring light to the darkness.

Just for the Summer – The Connection You Won’t See Coming

With Just for the Summer, Jimenez delivers one of the most shocking surprises of the series, tying this book directly back to Part of Your World in a way that will leave readers stunned. This story follows Justin and Emma, two people cursed with terrible dating luck, who break their streaks by spending the summer together without strings attached. But what starts as a casual arrangement quickly turns into something real, proving that fate—and Jimenez’s storytelling—is full of surprises.

This story gives us two reveals that tie Justin and Emma’s story back to Alexis and Daniel’s. One is ever-so-satisfying, and the other is one of the most jaw-dropping moments in the series. Jimenez effortlessly threads connections between books, making each installment feel richer and more meaningful as the world of Wakan and its people continue to grow.

The Situationship – A Short Story with a Big Impact

Rounding out the series is The Situationship, a short but impactful story that ties up loose ends and brings even more heart to this world. It’s a reminder that Jimenez doesn’t just write love stories—she writes about real people, with flaws, dreams, and struggles that feel deeply authentic.

Jimenez’s Signature Style: Heartfelt, Funny, and Inclusive

One of the many reasons Jimenez’s books resonate so deeply is her writing style. It’s simple yet vivid, full of humor, warmth, and some of the best banter in contemporary romance. She has an incredible way of making Minnesota feel alive—from the small-town charm of Wakan to the real-life mention of her bakery, Nadia Cakes, which adds a personal touch that longtime fans adore.

While Jimenez primarily writes rom-coms, she seamlessly integrates serious themes into her stories, giving them emotional depth beyond the typical lighthearted romance. In this series, she tackles domestic psychological abuse, anxiety disorder, issues of abandonment, and even positive animal welfare, showing her commitment to portraying real-life struggles alongside heartwarming love stories. Her ability to balance humor and heaviness makes her books engaging and impactful.

Beyond her skillful storytelling, Jimenez also makes room for inclusivity in her world-building. While the primary romances in this series are straight, she includes LGBTQ+ characters throughout her stories, seamlessly weaving them into the world of Wakan and beyond. While they may be tertiary characters, their presence matters, showing a world that reflects the diversity of real life, and that’s important to readers like me who long for representation.

Couldn’t Put Them Down

If you love contemporary romance with depth, humor, and characters who feel like real people, Abby Jimenez’s Part of Your World series is a must-read. Each book stands beautifully on its own, but when read together, they create a tapestry of interconnected lives, small-town charm, and love stories that feel epic and intimate.

Jimenez repeatedly proves that romance is about more than just falling in love—it’s about growth, self-discovery, and finding a place to belong. And if that place happens to be Wakan, Minnesota? Even better.