Spoiler warning: this article discusses the main plot of Life’s Too Short by Abby Jimenez. It also touches on serious subject matter, including a hereditary illness.
Setup
Life’s Too Short was published in 2021 and is a romantic comedy with a heavy emotional core. Vanessa Price is a travel YouTuber who quit her job to see the world and live each day fully. She has a reason for that mindset: the women in her family have died young, and she does not want to take time for granted.
Her neighbour is Adrian Copeland, a workaholic lawyer who appeared in earlier books by the same author.
Key plot points
- The meet-cute. Adrian hears a baby crying through the wall one night and ends up next door. He finds a worn-out, vomit-covered Vanessa and a screaming infant. He offers to hold the baby so she can shower, and it turns out he is surprisingly good at settling her.
- Grace. The baby is Vanessa’s half sister’s daughter, and Vanessa is caring for her while her sister deals with addiction. This disrupts Vanessa’s carefree travelling life.
- Growing closeness. Adrian keeps helping, and the two grow close, with a lot of banter and humour along the way, including his elderly dog.
- The family illness. ALS runs in Vanessa’s family, and reviewers say she has a 50 percent chance of having inherited the gene. She has chosen not to be tested, preferring not to know. This choice drives much of the book’s tension and her reluctance to let herself fall in love.
Themes
- Living fully when the future is uncertain
- The question of whether you would want to know a hard truth
- Found family and unexpected caregiving
- Humour used alongside grief
About the ending
Reviewers consistently describe the book as emotional, with many saying it left them in tears. We have chosen not to summarise the final chapters here rather than risk stating the resolution inaccurately. If you want to know exactly how it ends before reading, read a few full spoiler reviews from different sources and compare them.
Content warnings
The topics include a hereditary, fatal illness, a family member’s addiction, early death and grief. If these are difficult subjects for you, check a content-warning resource first. For more on checking content, see our guide to how spicy a book is, which also covers where to look up content notes.
Is Life’s Too Short a series?
It is part of Abby Jimenez’s Friend Zone series, listed as the third book after The Friend Zone and The Happy Ever After Playlist. Each book follows a different couple, and Adrian is a character readers may recognise from earlier books, so it can mostly be read on its own.
Related questions
Is Tiny Beautiful Things connected to this book? No. Tiny Beautiful Things is a collection of advice columns by Cheryl Strayed and is a separate book from a different genre.
Do Alexis and Daniel end up together in Part of Your World? That question is about a different Abby Jimenez novel. For that, look for a spoiler guide specific to that book.
If you enjoy emotional romance, you might also be interested in our look at whether Heart Bones is worth reading, or our summary of Final Offer.