Worst Wingman Ever Novel Beat Sheet Analysis

Why We Chose to Do a Save a Cat! Beat Sheet Analysis of Worst Wingman Ever

Need a light, quick, feel-good read? With nearly 37K ratings to date and a 4.2 star average on Amazon (as well as over 126K reader ratings on Goodreads), Abby Jimenez’s Amazon Original Story, Worst Wingman Ever from The Improbable Meet-Cute Collection, is a huge hit. A thoughtful friend recommended this New York Times bestselling author to me recently, and I’ve had the pleasure of reading several of her books in the past few months. I’ve enjoyed them all! However, this short but very sweet tale truly captured my heart.

Worst Wingman Ever

Author: Abby Jimenez

Publisher: Amazon Publishing/Original Stories

Pages: 60 pages (ebook)

Genre: Buddy Love

From the Publisher:

Holly is dealing with the impending death of her grandmother and still reeling from a bad breakup. One bright spot: a Valentine’s Day card on Holly’s windshield—even if it wasn’t meant for her. An amusing mistake soon turns into a lovely exchange of anonymous notes, little acts of kindness, and a growing affection between two strangers. What happens when one of them has to say goodbye?

Abby Jimenez’s Worst Wingman Ever is part of The Improbable Meet-Cute, irresistibly romantic stories about finding love when and where you least expect it.

Save the Cat! Beat Sheet Analysis for Worst Wingman Ever

Opening Image (pp. 3-5)

On Valentine’s Day, hospice nurse Holly finds an envelope taped to the windshield of her white Honda. Afraid to read it in the dark and potentially dangerous parking garage, she drives to a safer location, then she calls her sister for moral support before grabbing the card and opening it.

Her sister, Jillian, wonders if the note is from Holly’s ex-boyfriend, but the card is addressed to somebody named “Andrea.” Not someone Holly even knows. Most perplexing of all, there’s a sex coupon included in it. Definitely not for her!

Set-Up (pp. 5-9)

The parking garage Holly just left is attached to the condo complex where her grandmother lives. Although Holly is a naturally compassionate woman—and her work as an end-of-life nurse has always been rewarding—this time, her job is exponentially harder because she’s taking care of her beloved grandma in her final days.

Holly and Jillian are close, and both of them are working with their mom and their great-aunt Lucy to make Grandma’s last weeks as comfortable as possible. But this is also a hard time for Holly romantically. She had a recent breakup with a guy who’d cheated on her. It’s difficult for her to believe she’ll ever find love again.

Meanwhile, John is a handyman who lives across town. He had a tough breakup, too, about a year ago, and he still hasn’t recovered from the heartbreak. He has a great relationship with his brother, Frank, and is currently helping to fix up the condo Frank recently bought, which happens to be in the same building as Holly’s grandmother.

Frank had asked John to put a Valentine’s Day card on his girlfriend Andrea’s white Honda, but it’s a pretty common car type, and John accidentally placed it on the wrong vehicle. Whoops! Frank is displeased by the mistake, but so is John. His brother should deliver his own sex coupons from now on. What must that poor stranger, who’d inadvertently received the card, be thinking?

Theme Stated (p. 44)

There are several nuggets of wisdom sprinkled throughout this tale that have underlying elements thematically. Early on (p. 6), Holly muses about the shortness of life: “Time is such a precious thing. How you spend it, how you waste it. And it becomes even more valuable as the hourglass runs out, because you will never get more of it.”

And then, when Holly is reflecting on John’s helpfulness to a stranger—in this case, her (p. 35), she thinks: “That’s the thing about kindness. You never know how big the ripple is. How one little selfless gesture can make all the difference for the person who receives it.”

Both of these are notable in the book, but the most significant theme, and the one that has the greatest resonance for both Holly and John, comes nearer the end (p. 44), when Grandma tells Holly, “Take responsibility for your own unhappiness….If you don’t love your life, change it.”

Catalyst (pp. 9-10)

John spots the white Honda—the one that isn’t Andrea’s car—in the parking garage (it has low air in the back tire, so he recognizes it from the other day), and he scribbles a note of apology on the back of his lunch receipt. He tells the car owner about his valentine delivery mix up and expresses his hope that the card didn’t cause any problems with their significant other.

He signs the card “the worst wingman ever,” which makes Holly laugh when she finds and reads this new note on her windshield.

Debate (pp. 11-12)

At last, Holly understands what had happened and is both amused and relieved by the stranger’s story. Even so, she has a dilemma. She doesn’t know what to do with the original Valentine’s Day card. After some thought, she makes a decision to engage with the “worst wingman.”

Break into 2 (p. 12)

Holly writes her own note, thanking him for the explanation and telling him she doesn’t have a boyfriend, so his mistake caused no harm. She puts her message, along with the misplaced valentine for Andrea, into a Ziploc bag under her windshield wiper. She hopes the Wingman will find it in the few hours she’s planning to be in Grandma’s building.

Happily, when she gets into her car to leave, the Ziploc bag is gone and, in its place, is another message from the Wingman. Their relationship via correspondence begins.

B Story (pp. 12-13)

This is about Holly’s and her dying grandmother. Readers are given a hint that Grandma’s past might just be a little more complicated than most of her family ever knew, Holly included.

Fun and Games (pp. 13-35)

Both with regard to Holly’s interactions with John—so many cute car notes!—and her conversations with her grandma, we get to enjoy the lighter side of Holly’s dear relative in her final days. Unbeknownst to both John and Holly, his brother and her grandmother aren’t only in the same building, they’re actually neighbors.

Even amid the laughter in Grandma’s place with Holly, Jillian, their mother, and their great-aunt Lucy (Grandma’s sister), they can still hear strange thumps against the wall, which they don’t know is the result of John helping his brother with various repairs. Likewise, John, Frank, and Andrea are unaware that the people listening to popular music and saying some loud and interesting phrases (“dick guillotine”??) are Holly and her family.

Jillian instructs her sister to go to Home Depot to look for hot guys and, specifically, to seek out only the men who buy good quality “red” tools. This conversation sparks a memory for Grandma. She asks Holly if she’s ever told her about her first husband. Neither Holly nor Jillian even knew their grandmother had been married before… so, no.

Grandma promises she’ll explain more about him later. However, it won’t be happening that day. Holly can tell her grandmother is tired and in pain. She knows their time together is running out.

John has had an unusual day, too. At the building where he works as a handyman, he found an abandoned dog, locked up in an empty apartment. He rescues him and decides to call him “Doobie.”

Then, when he goes to Frank’s condo, he notices the white Honda is in the parking garage again. The low air in the back tire hadn’t been filled, and now the tire is totally flat. He feels he should have mentioned this to the car owner. His first instinct is to help, so he fills up the tire and leaves a note for her, explaining that it’s only a temporary fix but it should give her enough air to get to a repair shop.

Though she didn’t see who filled her tire, Holly couldn’t have been more grateful. The next time she’s at her grandma’s place, she leaves him a gift card and a thank-you note by the tire. The two of them also pass by each other unknowingly near the elevators. John sees a beautiful woman who smiles at him and his dog, and Holly sees an attractive man who has red tools!

John also buys the car owner a nurse bobblehead for her dashboard, purportedly to make her vehicle more distinctive. She loves it.

Midpoint (pp. 36-39)

Not long after this, John is at his brother’s condo again, letting Doobie run around in the courtyard. He spots the pretty lady from the elevator, and she asks to pet his dog. She notices a welt on his arm (he’d gotten stung by a hornet at the place where he works), and she opens her purse to give him some medication she knows will help. They share a moment of connection and laughter. (False Victory)

Bad Guys Close In (pp. 39-42)

John likes her. She’s the first woman who’s interested him in a long time. But he knows he looks messy, and he doesn’t want to ask her out in this disheveled state. So, despite wishing he’d at least found out her name, he just lets her walk away.

Upon hearing about this, Andrea explains John’s problem to him. She says John is a “giver” who cares for others before himself. That when his girlfriend broke up with him, John had no one to love… and he didn’t know how to love himself.

John is surprised by her insight and realizes it’s finally time for him to take care of himself. Andrea is a hairstylist, and she transforms him with a hair/beard makeover that gives him a little more confidence. He hopes that if he ever sees the pretty lady from the elevator/courtyard, he’ll be able to approach her now. Unfortunately, he doesn’t see her at his brother’s complex again.

In Holly’s case, much as she enjoyed meeting the cute guy and his dog, this is an extremely difficult time for her personally. She and her family are dealing with Grandma’s quick decline. Death is now very near.

All Is Lost (p. 42)

Part of Holly’s hospice job has always been to help other people prepare for the passing of their loved ones, but she finds she can’t do this for herself. She’s grieving the loss of her grandmother already.

Dark Night of the Soul (pp. 43-45)

Holly has been praying for Grandma to have one final rally before the end, but she fears that won’t happen. She sits by her grandmother’s bedside, feeling depressed and in despair. Then, to Holly’s surprise, Grandma says her name.

Break into 3 (p. 45)

Her grandmother rallies just enough to tell her one last story and impart some much-needed advice.

Grandma has been keeping a BIG secret about her first husband—she killed him! He was abusive and, in a drunken rage, she thought he was about to murder her. So, in a preemptive act of self-defense, she clocked him on the head with a heavy pan. Her sister Lucy (Holly’s great-aunt), helped dispose of his body, and they’ve kept their silence on the subject for decades.

Then, with that mic-drop revelation, Grandma only has time to share a few words of wisdom before falling asleep. She passes away peacefully the next morning, surrounded by her loved ones.

Finale (pp. 46-52)

John, of course, doesn’t realize the hospice nurse and the pretty lady who petted his dog are one and the same. The Honda-driving nurse has left him one more gift, along with a note thanking him for his kindness (re: filling her tire) and, also, passing along her grandmother’s advice about taking responsibility for one’s own happiness. It just so happens that these are words John needed to hear, too.

At the funeral for Grandma, Holly shares their grandmother’s deathbed confession with Jillian—both of them marveling at Grandma’s and Lucy’s courage—and the sisters find themselves laughing in spite of their grief. They suspect Grandma may have actually planned to reveal her secret in this manner out of great love for her dear granddaughters, perhaps so they’d have something to take their minds off their loss when she was gone.

John continues to keep an eye out for the white Honda and, also, to look for the pretty lady he’d met in the elevator/courtyard, but he sees neither woman. He has to accept that he’d lost his chance. However, he has continued to work on himself, and he kept the nurse’s note as a reminder to deal with the things within his control.

Final Image (pp. 54-57)

Holly has plans to go with her sister to Home Depot—for paint, not necessarily to scope for men, but she’s more open now to looking for both.

Before she can leave, the maintenance man from her building knocks on the door. She’d requested help with a repair, and he’s arrived. They both recognize each other immediately, and she even remembers his dog.

Holly says she’s never seen him here, only at her late-grandma’s place. He explains that he lives on the other side of Holly’s apartment complex, and while he hasn’t seen her here either, he definitely remembers her from his brother’s condo.

Not only have they finally found the person they were mutually attracted to in the elevator and courtyard across town, but surprise! They piece together that she’s the Honda-owning nurse and that he’s the Worst Wingman.

John asks Holly out at once, and she readily agrees.