Part of Your World
Abby Jimenez, 2022
An ER doctor from a family of surgeons falls for a younger carpenter in a small town—and has to decide whose expectations she's living for.
Feels like wonder and hope. About love, identity and society.
A page from the book
What a penguin offers instead of a diamond, and why it's enough.
Have you ever heard of penguin love stones?” “What?” “A penguin love stone. When a male likes a female, he finds a perfect stone and he brings it to her. If she likes it, she puts it in her nest and that’s it. They’re paired for life.” Brian watched Liz taking an order at another table but talked to us. “And your point?” “My point is, the penguin’s not picking her mate because he’s the one who has the best rock. It might look that way, but she’s not. She’s taking the rock because the male she wants the most is offering it. Sometimes what you have to give is enough. Even if it’s a rock instead of a diamond. Abby Jimenez.Abby Jimenez owns Nadia Cakes in Minnesota and won Food Network's Cupcake Wars before becoming a bestselling romance novelist.
Books that feel like this
More by Abby Jimenez
The Happy Ever After Playlist
Abby Jimenez, 2020
A grieving woman and a man who keeps appearing in her life: a warm, funny romance about letting joy back in without betraying what came before.
The Night We Met
Abby Jimenez, 2025
A love so consuming it feels dangerous, and the quieter question underneath: can you build a life with someone who changes the weather in you?
Just for the Summer
Abby Jimenez, 2024
Two people who each believe they curse everyone they date. A summer of borrowed families, honest questions, and the messes we inherit from the people who raised us.
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Questions readers ask
- What is Part of Your World like?
- Feels like wonder and hope. About love, identity and society.
- What should I read after Part of Your World?
- If you liked Part of Your World, try The Dead Romantics (Ashley Poston), First-Time Caller (B.K. Borison) and Love, Theoretically (Ali Hazelwood).
A taste of the feed
The case for ghost stories as love stories with bad timing.
Because ghost stories were just love stories about here and then and now and when, about pockets of happiness and moments that resonated in places long after their era. They were stories that taught you that love was never a matter of time, but a matter of timing.
The Dead Romantics · Ashley Poston
The strange joy of watching someone you almost lost be happy again.
They keep sending me pictures of themselves in front of various state signs. Beaming on the beach in Delaware, wrapped in parkas. Matching threadbare baseball caps in New York. My mom clutching a bag of gummy worms to her chest in front of a half-bent sign in New Jersey, a knit beanie over the hair that’s just started to regrow. Their faces lined with untethered joy.
First-Time Caller · B.K. Borison
How a doctorate turns into a side hustle you never put on the CV.
Not that there would be anything wrong: sex work is legitimate work, and people who engage in it are just as deserving of respect as ballerinas, or firefighters, or hedge fund managers. But ten months ago, when I graduated with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Northeastern, I figured that by now I’d have a reasonably remunerated academic position. I did not imagine that at twenty-seven I’d be paying my water bill by helping adult men pretend that they have dating lives. And yet here I am, fake-girlfriending my way through my student loans.
Love, Theoretically · Ali Hazelwood
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