61 pages • 2 hours read
Abby JimenezThe Friend Zone
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Abby Jimenez’s Interwoven World-Building
Across Abby Jimenez’s six novels, she has created a world in which her characters all have connections to each other, and the narratives also contain deliberate references to Jimenez’s personal life. While each novel can easily stand alone, reading the novels in the order of publication will reveal multiple references and connections that might not otherwise be apparent. For example, Josh Copeland of The Friend Zone is cousins with Adrian Copeland in Life’s Too Short. The main characters in each novel habitually make appearances in other books; often, Jimenez introduces them briefly in one novel, then follows up with a narrative that focuses on these initially minor characters’ own lives and love stories.
Jimenez also uses the setting to engineer specificity and continuity across her interconnected narratives. All six novels take place in either California or in midwestern states such as Minnesota and South Dakota, and the characters sometimes travel between these locations. Significantly, Jimenez draws upon her own life experience to make these settings authentic, for she has lived and owned bakeries in several of these areas. Additionally, all of Jimenez’s novels mention the bakery called Nadia Cakes, which is Jimenez’s own real-world bakery. The author owns and operates locations in both Los Angeles and Minneapolis. In addition to serving as a clever form of advertising, this recurring element adds a touch of realism to the novels.
Literary Context: Common Conventions of the Romance Genre
The romance genre is so broad that the novels under this umbrella must necessarily be divided into a wide range of subgenres, some of which are historical romance, romantic suspense, romantasy, and dark romance. The Friend Zone falls into the subgenre of contemporary romance. Stories in this category take place in modern, real-world settings and eschew the more fanciful tropes of fantasy and romantasy.
The vast majority of romance narratives conform to specific plot patterns and trends, the most prominent of which requires the two main characters to form a stable relationship and experience a “happily ever after” conclusion—or at the very least, a “happy for now” situation. The Romance Writers of America specifically state that every romance novel must include “a central love story” and “an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.” By this logic, if the book focuses on other elements or keeps the lovers apart due to the consequences of war, catastrophe, or other occurrences, then the book may be a drama with romantic elements, but it cannot be called a romance. Usually, the central characters of romance novels must overcome internal and external obstacles before they can finally form a lasting relationship. In many romance novels, the main characters must navigate personal and professional issues alongside the conflicts that keep them from fully embracing their love interest.
The romance genre contains a multitude of tropes: common themes, plot devices, or character types that reappear in many different romance novels and set the tone of the various subgenres. Although this aspect of the genre causes a great deal of predictability across narratives, many authors continue to experiment with these tropes in order to subvert expectations. One such trope is the “meet cute,” in which the two protagonists meet for the first time in a silly, dramatic, or improbable way. In The Friend Zone, Josh and Kristen meet when he rear-ends her car, and later that same day, they meet again and realize that they are the best man and the maid of honor in an upcoming wedding.
Other tropes focus on the evolution of the characters’ interpersonal dynamics. The “friends-to-lovers” trope refers to a plotline in which the two romantic leads begin as friends and become increasingly attracted to one another, until their relationship finally blossoms into a full-blown romance. In The Friend Zone, Jimenez employs this trope when Josh and Kristen are both immediately attracted to each other, but Kristen forces them to remain “just friends” for the first half of the novel. The Friend Zone also employs the trope of “forced proximity,” in which the author engineers situations that compel the characters to be physically near each other. In The Friend Zone, for example, Kristen and Josh are thrown together for a series of wedding-related events, and these scenes intensify their mutual romantic interest.
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