Yours Truly

Yours Truly is a romance novel by Abby Jimenez. The novel tells the story of Briana Ortiz, an emergency room doctor struggling with her recent divorce and her brother’s renal failure. When Dr. Jacob Maddox transfers to her emergency room and appears to be making a play for the same job, she instantly dislikes him. However, through a series of surprising events, Briana discovers that Jacob is a kind man hidden behind a brick wall of anxiety. Yours Truly includes characters from Jimenez’s previous novel, Part of Your World, telling Briana’s story while revisiting the characters Daniel and Alexis Grant.

This guide utilizes the Kindle e-book published in 2023 by Hachette Book Group.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide refer to anxiety, panic attacks, and miscarriage.

Plot Summary

Dr. Briana Ortiz is annoyed when she learns that the new doctor, Jacob Maddox, has his eye on her potential job as the new head of emergency medicine at Royaume Northwestern Hospital. This, combined with the staff’s instant dislike of Jacob, makes Briana assume the worst of her new colleague. However, after seeing Jacob’s unusually gentle bedside manner with a child, she offers him a solution to his problem with the staff by suggesting he bring them cupcakes. A few days later, she finds a letter addressed to her attached to a custom cupcake. The letter is from Jacob, explaining why he made a bad first impression and apologizing for his anxious behavior. Briana writes back, and soon Jacob and Briana are exchanging three or four letters a day. Briana reaches out to him via social media, and they spend hours on the phone together, getting to know each other better.

Briana’s brother, Benny, has renal failure and is on the kidney transplant list, but he has a rare blood type that makes finding a donor difficult. When Jacob learns about this, he volunteers to be tested to be a donor because his mother experienced renal failure when he was a child, and he always admired the selfless act of a friend who made a directed donation to her. When Jacob learns he is a match, he immediately agrees to the surgery. Briana is grateful. Jacob asks Briana to pretend to be his girlfriend during the festivities leading up to the wedding between his ex-girlfriend, Amy, and his younger brother, Jeremiah. Jacob wants to show his family that he has moved on from the situation even though he confesses to Briana that he still loves Amy.

Jacob has an anxiety disorder, which is part of why his relationship with Amy ended. Briana, however, recognizes Jacob’s struggle and goes out of her way to make him comfortable in social situations, such as giving him a code word he can use when he needs to be alone for a few minutes. He uses this code word the first time they visit his parents’ home, and Briana gets him out of the situation.

Briana meets Amy and instantly dislikes her when she expresses doubts that Jacob is capable of entering a new relationship so quickly. As a result, Briana announces to everyone that she and Jacob are moving in together. That same night, Jacob tells his family about his plan to donate a kidney to Benny. Shortly after, Briana accidentally overhears Jacob and Amy arguing. Briana misunderstands the fight and believes it is further proof that Jacob is still in love with Amy even though the fight actually allows Jacob to see that he was never really in love with Amy. Jacob asks Briana out on a real date that night, but Briana refuses. Her marriage ended because of her husband’s infidelity, and she is determined not to be second best again.

Briana goes to visit her friend Alexis, and Jacob follows. They are accidentally locked in a guest bedroom for the night. They get drunk and confess things to each other, such as Briana’s confession that she filled her ex-husband’s house with five gallons of glitter the day she left the marital home. She also confesses that she loves Jacob, but he believes it to be a declaration of platonic love, not romantic love. They move in together a short time later to keep up the façade of their relationship, but Briana insists on sleeping in the living room on an air mattress.

The night of Jeremiah’s bachelor party, Jacob becomes jealous because he believes Briana is texting a male friend she ran into at the emergency room. He has a panic attack, which Briana attributes to Amy’s announcement that she is pregnant. Briana follows Jacob into his parents’ basement, and in her attempt to console him, they become intimate. Afterward, Briana realizes the mistake she made, and she tells Jacob they can never do it again. Jacob leaves, but Briana stays for Amy’s bachelorette party. She and Amy talk, and Amy expresses her belief that Jacob is in love with Briana.

Briana returns to Jacob’s home to get her things, determined to move out. Jacob confronts her and confesses his love for her. After a long conversation, she realizes she is in love with him too. A few weeks later, at Amy and Jeremiah’s wedding, Briana and Jacob run into Briana’s ex-husband and his new, pregnant wife. Briana is devastated by the encounter, as it causes her to realize that she is also pregnant. Due to the fact that all the important men in her life have left her at crucial moments, such as her ex-husband leaving her weeks before she miscarried their child, Briana pushes Jacob away. However, when Jacob goes into surgery to donate his kidney, he gives Briana his journals to read. In the journals, he charts the evolution of his feelings for her, and Briana, reassured that he is devoted to her, decides to stay with him. Two years later, Briana and Jacob marry in his parents’ backyard with their daughter, Ava, in attendance.