A review by andkellyreads
Life's Too Short by Abby Jimenez

2.5

I really wanted to like this book. I had enjoyed Abby’s two previous works, The Friend Zone and the Happy Ever After Playlist, and had good feelings going into this one. Life’s Too Short, however, just completely missed the mark for me, and I’m having a hard time putting into words why that is. 

The best way I can sum it up is that I didn’t have a good feeling while reading this story. Like, at all. There were a few moments that made me chuckle, and some sweet moments that I really enjoyed, but overall, this book fell kind of flat and was missing the spark I’ve come to enjoy from Abby’s writing. There were no laugh out loud moments, and maybe my expectations were too high, but I was really looking forward to whatever was going to pop out of her brain and onto the page this time. Instead I was kind of bored? And then the more I read, the more frustrated I became with the storyline overall and how the characters were behaving. I won’t go into too much detail because what frustrated me the most is probably spoiler-y, but I will say that I really do not enjoy when storylines are fueled by one simple miscommunication or some grand assumptions. I don’t expect perfect characters, not in the slightest, but I’m at least hoping for some basic communication skills. The ending of Life’s Too Short also wrapped up way too neatly for my taste. I understand romance novels have HEAs, that’s why we love them, but with the material covered in this book it was way too “okay I’m done here’s your happy ending everything is fine” and it just didn’t feel good. It was far too light of an ending for the heavy nature of this story.  

The final nail in the coffin for me, though, was the mental health rep. Look, I understand that everyone’s experience with mental health, and specifically anxiety, is different, but if someone ever minimized my feelings and how I processed emotions and information the way that the FMC did the hero, I would snap. It was insulting, it was cliche, and it was just not great to read. In fact, I think that’s what angered me the most about this story. Telling someone with anxiety to just “forget about it” and “push it to the back of your mind” while also spewing instagram captions about “living in the moment” is absolutely never helpful, and I was insulted on the MC’s behalf that the FMC chose to behave in this manner. With everything the FMC was going through, I expected a little more compassion and awareness than we received.  

I don’t know, this book just really kind of bummed me out, and the more I sit here thinking about it, the more upset I get. I could keep going, but like I said, I don’t want this review to be full of spoilers. It essentially comes down to the fact that I believe a lot of what Abby wrote about in this book could have been handled in a way that felt less like trauma porn, and more like a legitimate storyline that really does deserve the representation I know she tried to give it. It just really fell short for me and instead left me feeling really hurt and bummed out.  

I do believe I’ll try another Abby book in the future; I’m not completely done with her, but I am disappointed and really hope that the next story is less shock-factor than this one tried to be. I applaud her for trying to tackle these big topics with her stories, I honestly do. It’s nice to see an author try to be realistic, so better luck next time, I suppose. 

{Many thanks to Netgalley and Forever Publishing for my review copy!}  
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