Part of Your World

Abby Jimenez's Part of Your World, published in 2022, begins with Alexis Montgomery, an emergency doctor who comes from a family of celebrated surgeons. Her parents, who are extremely wealthy, expect her to continue the family's line of celebrated surgeons, and they regard her own career as a lesser version of the one they had in mind; Alexis is content where she is. After a wild bet, a gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich and a cuddle with a baby goat, she meets Daniel Grant, a carpenter ten years younger than her who lives in a tight-knit small town and takes life as it comes.

Daniel is the opposite of the sophisticated city life Alexis was raised in, and the time the two of them spend together is meant to be brief. It is not, and the closer she gets to the town and the people in it, the more clearly the choice in front of her comes into focus: for the relationship to become anything lasting, she would have to walk away from her family and from the chance to help thousands of people, while asking Daniel to fit into her own world is not something she can manage either.

Part of Your World was published in 2022 and is set between the city where Alexis works and the small town where Daniel lives, with the difference between the two worlds as the problem the novel sets out for them.