Abby Jimenez - Revision history

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Abby Jimenez

2026-04-04T20:41:13Z

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<td colspan="2" style="background-color: #cee0f2; text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-size: 110%; padding: 6px;">Abby Jimenez</td>
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<td colspan="2" style="text-align: center; padding: 6px; font-style: italic; border-bottom: 1px solid #a2a9b1;">born Abigail Hales</td>
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<td style="padding: 4px 6px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top; width: 40%;">Born</td>
<td style="padding: 4px 6px;">c. 1979–1980<br/>Washington, D.C., U.S.</td>
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<td style="padding: 4px 6px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">Occupation</td>
<td style="padding: 4px 6px;">Novelist, baker, entrepreneur</td>
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<td style="padding: 4px 6px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">Nationality</td>
<td style="padding: 4px 6px;">American</td>
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<td style="padding: 4px 6px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">Genre</td>
<td style="padding: 4px 6px;">Contemporary romance</td>
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<td style="padding: 4px 6px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">Notable works</td>
<td style="padding: 4px 6px;">''The Friend Zone''; ''Just for the Summer''; ''Say You'll Remember Me''</td>
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<td style="padding: 4px 6px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">Spouse</td>
<td style="padding: 4px 6px;">Carlos Jimenez (m. 2001)</td>
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<td style="padding: 4px 6px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">Children</td>
<td style="padding: 4px 6px;">3 daughters</td>
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<td style="padding: 4px 6px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">Website</td>
<td style="padding: 4px 6px;">[https://www.authorabbyjimenez.com authorabbyjimenez.com]</td>
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'''Abby Jimenez''' (born '''Abigail Hales,''' c. 1979–1980) is an American romance novelist, baker, and entrepreneur. She is the #1 ''New York Times'' and ''USA Today'' bestselling author of three series of contemporary romance novels — the Friend Zone series (2019–2021), the Part of Your World series (2022–2024), and the Say You'll Remember Me series (2025–) — as well as the founder of Nadia Cakes, a bakery with locations in California and Minnesota. Her novels have sold over 1.5 million copies and been translated into 28 languages. She is the recipient of the 2022 Minnesota Book Award, a Goodreads Choice Award winner, and a Good Morning America Book Club selection. She lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband, three daughters, and dogs.

==Early life==

Jimenez was born Abigail Hales in Washington, D.C., to a Sicilian mother and a father of Italian descent, and was the oldest of three daughters. The family lived in Virginia until she was seven, after which they relocated to California. When she was twelve her mother left, leaving her father to raise the children as a single parent. Jimenez worked retail and restaurant jobs from a young age to save money for college, and completed her final year of high school as an independent study while working full time at Del Taco.

==Nadia Cakes==

In 2007, Jimenez was working as a retail manager when she lost her job. Looking for a way to manage the financial shortfall and lift her spirits, she enrolled in a cake decorating course at a local Michaels craft store. What began as a temporary distraction became the foundation of a business: she began selling cupcakes from her home kitchen, naming the enterprise Nadia Cakes after her middle daughter. For two years she baked and sold from home while caring for her three young children, developing carpal tunnel in both hands severe enough to require surgery on her right hand.

In 2009 she opened the first brick-and-mortar Nadia Cakes location in Palmdale, California, to immediate demand. The success of the bakery led to television appearances — first on TLC's ''Fabulous Cakes'' and then on ''Food Network'''s competitive baking series ''Cupcake Wars,'' which Jimenez won in 2013 with a Rose Bowl–inspired cupcake display, earning $10,000. Her husband Carlos left his own career as a retail manager to join the business as CFO. Additional Nadia Cakes locations subsequently opened in Maple Grove and Woodbury, Minnesota, alongside the original Palmdale shop.

In 2018, a pink rock candy cake sold by the bakery went viral on social media owing to its unintentional resemblance to female genitalia, bringing Nadia Cakes a new wave of international attention.

==Writing career==

===Path to publication===

Jimenez began writing fiction during a camping trip to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, where she improvised a story for her children that she later attempted to develop into a young adult novel. She ultimately discarded the manuscript but continued writing, finding her way to contemporary romance. She submitted work to literary agents and, after a period of rejection, was signed. She spent nine months on submission to publishers — long enough to draft a second novel, ''The Friend Zone'' — before receiving a three-book deal; two offers arrived on the same day.

During the rejection period, Jimenez received consistent industry feedback that publishers were seeking "lighter" fiction. She has described her resistance to that framing as central to her identity as a writer, arguing that romance takes place within the texture of real life and cannot be separated from the serious things that happen to people who fall in love.

===The Friend Zone series (2019–2021)===

Jimenez's debut novel, ''[[The Friend Zone]]'' (2019), follows Kristen, who is hiding a life-changing medical secret from everyone around her while falling for her best friend's best man. The novel became a ''USA Today'' bestseller, won the Goodreads Choice Awards for both Best Debut Novel and Best Romance, was named book of the year by ''O, The Oprah Magazine,'' ''Booklist,'' and ''SheReads,'' and was a bestseller in Poland, where it won an Empik Award in 2020.

''[[The Happy Ever After Playlist]]'' (2020), the second book in the series, follows Sloan, a young woman still grieving the loss of her fiancé two years earlier, who finds an unexpected connection with a rising music star through a stray dog that belongs to him. The novel appeared on numerous best-of lists, including those from Amazon, ''Oprah Mag,'' and BuzzFeed. It was optioned for a feature film adaptation by Thruline Entertainment in 2021, with the screenplay by writer Marisa Coughlan and direction by two-time Primetime Emmy winner Gail Mancuso.

''[[Life's Too Short]]'' (2021) centres on a free-spirited influencer who unexpectedly becomes primary caretaker to her sister's infant child and finds an unlikely connection with her reserved next-door neighbour. The novel debuted as a ''New York Times'' and ''USA Today'' bestseller and won the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in the Genre Fiction category.

===Part of Your World series (2022–2024)===

''[[Part of Your World (novel)|Part of Your World]]'' (2022) follows Alexis, a wealthy emergency room physician, and Daniel, a blue-collar carpenter a decade her junior, whose relationship is complicated by her family's expectations and the incompatibility of their worlds. It became a ''New York Times'' and ''USA Today'' bestseller.

''[[Yours Truly (novel)|Yours Truly]]'' (2023) follows hospital rivals Briana and Dr. Jacob Maddox, whose antagonism begins to dissolve through a series of letters and shared lunches — and when Jacob offers Briana's brother one of his kidneys. The novel was the first romance novel in the history of the Book of the Month club to win the Dolly Award for Book of the Year.

''[[Just for the Summer]]'' (2024) follows Alexis's friend Justin and Emma, who agree to date each other temporarily to break a shared dating curse. The novel reached #1 on the ''New York Times'' Best Seller list and was selected as the Good Morning America Book Club pick for April 2024.

===Say You'll Remember Me series (2025–)===

''[[Say You'll Remember Me (novel)|Say You'll Remember Me]]'' (2025) follows veterinarian Xavier Rush and Samantha after what might be the best date in living history is cut short by a family crisis. The novel debuted at #1 on the ''New York Times'' Best Seller list in both the Combined Print and E-Book Fiction and Hardcover Fiction categories.

''[[The Night We Met]]'' (2026), the second book in the series, is a slow-burn forbidden romance between Larissa and Chris, the best friend of her boyfriend. The novel received a starred review from ''Kirkus Reviews'' and was named one of the Top 10 Romance Releases for Spring 2026 by ''Publishers Weekly.'' Jimenez has noted that it took two years to write, making it the most labour-intensive project of her career. A third novel is planned to complete the series.

==Personal life==

Jimenez met her husband, Carlos Jimenez — a first-generation American of Salvadoran descent — at an airport in 2001; both were working as retail managers for the clothing company Express and were living in Palmdale, California. They have three daughters.

In the early 2020s Jimenez was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease caused by Sjögren's disease. In 2023 she announced publicly that she had been undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Her willingness to incorporate serious health themes — infertility, chronic illness, grief, anxiety — into romantic fiction is widely understood to draw on personal experience.

==Writing style and themes==

Jimenez's novels are set primarily in Minnesota, and the ''Minnesota Star Tribune'' has described her as a "one-woman booster for state tourism." Each novel is written as a standalone but shares characters, settings, and Easter-egg continuity with others in her catalogue, rewarding readers who follow her work in publication order without requiring it. Her male and female leads are consistently rendered as fully formed adults navigating real-world pressures — financial hardship, career conflict, family obligation, illness — alongside the emotional development of a central relationship.

Her fiction balances comedy with emotional weight. She has said she cannot imagine writing a romance novel without serious underlying themes, because falling in love happens within the context of actual life, and actual life is frequently difficult. Her novels are described by her publisher as "laugh-out-loud, pull-at-your-heartstrings" romantic fiction and have earned comparison to the work of Emily Henry and Helen Hoang.

Dogs appear in nearly every novel as significant supporting presences, reflecting her well-documented love of animals. Several of her own dogs have amassed TikTok followings in their own right.

==Awards and honours==

* Goodreads Choice Award — Best Debut Novel (''The Friend Zone,'' 2019)
* Goodreads Choice Award — Best Romance (''The Friend Zone,'' 2019)
* Empik Award, Poland — Book of the Year (''The Friend Zone,'' 2020)
* Minnesota Book Award — Genre Fiction (''Life's Too Short,'' 2022)
* Book of the Month Dolly Award — Book of the Year (''Yours Truly,'' 2023)
* Good Morning America Book Club selection (''Just for the Summer,'' April 2024)

==Bibliography==

===The Friend Zone series===

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%; width: 100%;"
! Year !! Title !! Notes
|-
| 2019 || ''[[The Friend Zone]]'' || Debut novel; ''USA Today'' bestseller; Goodreads Choice Award winner
|-
| 2020 || ''[[The Happy Ever After Playlist]]'' || ''NYT'' and ''USA Today'' bestseller; film rights optioned by Thruline Entertainment
|-
| 2021 || ''[[Life's Too Short]]'' || ''NYT'' and ''USA Today'' bestseller; Minnesota Book Award 2022
|}

===Part of Your World series===

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%; width: 100%;"
! Year !! Title !! Notes
|-
| 2022 || ''[[Part of Your World (novel)|Part of Your World]]'' || ''NYT'' and ''USA Today'' bestseller
|-
| 2023 || ''[[Yours Truly (novel)|Yours Truly]]'' || ''NYT'' bestseller; Book of the Month Book of the Year (Dolly Award)
|-
| 2024 || ''[[Just for the Summer]]'' || #1 ''NYT'' bestseller; Good Morning America Book Club pick
|}

===Say You'll Remember Me series===

{| class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%; width: 100%;"
! Year !! Title !! Notes
|-
| 2025 || ''[[Say You'll Remember Me (novel)|Say You'll Remember Me]]'' || #1 ''NYT'' bestseller
|-
| 2026 || ''[[The Night We Met]]'' || ''Kirkus Reviews'' starred review; ''Publishers Weekly'' Top 10 Romance Spring 2026
|-
| TBA || Untitled third novel || Third and concluding volume of the series
|}

==Film and television==

''The Happy Ever After Playlist'' was optioned for a feature film adaptation by Thruline Entertainment in 2021. The adaptation was announced with a screenplay by Marisa Coughlan and direction by Gail Mancuso, a two-time Primetime Emmy Award winner known for her television work. No further production updates have been announced as of 2026. Jimenez has stated her intention to advocate for reader satisfaction if and when an adaptation proceeds.

==See also==

* [[The Friend Zone (novel)]]
* [[The Happy Ever After Playlist]]
* [[Just for the Summer]]
* [[Say You'll Remember Me (novel)]]
* [[The Night We Met]]
* [[Nadia Cakes]]
* [[Contemporary romance]]

==References==

{{Reflist}}

==External links==

* [https://www.authorabbyjimenez.com Official website]
* [https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18446724.Abby_Jimenez Abby Jimenez] at Goodreads
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Jimenez_(writer) Abby Jimenez] at Wikipedia

[[Category:American women novelists]]
[[Category:American romance novelists]]
[[Category:Contemporary romance authors]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:New York Times bestselling authors]]
[[Category:Minnesota Book Award winners]]
[[Category:People from Washington, D.C.]]
[[Category:People from Minneapolis]]
[[Category:American bakers]]
[[Category:American entrepreneurs]]
[[Category:21st-century American novelists]]
[[Category:21st-century American women writers]]