By the end of this book, I felt disgusted, pissed off, used, & thoroughly abused. This book cemented itself in my top 10 list of most hated books. If you don't want spoilers, stop after the preview.

Preview:

• Male Mc you will hate.
• Female Mc you will not have an ounce of respect or empathy toward.
• Fluff that takes up 50%.
• A romance that's impossible to root for because the MC spends 90% obsessively, adamantly in love with another woman that the female MC doesn't have a chance in hell at fighting against for his whole heart.

MC's

Meet Harper...

She's that girl that leaps headlong into shit, but that's cute, honest, endearing, and witty enough that you'll initially overlook her obvious TSTL mentality.

So, you meet her as she's run off with no money, no cell, & no gas headed to possibly sleep on a friend's couch and re-sort her f'd up life. Stupid? Yes!

She runs out of gas in a bar parking lot, where she sees a girl being mistreated by a brawny mfer. Our girl here runs and jumps the dude and ends up getting her ass kicked. Stupid? Yes!

As Luke points out, it's a wonder the girl "barely controlled chaos" is
still alive.

Meet Luke...

He's the hero of the moment ^. The all-American military virile male complete with abs and tats. Of course, he is detached and scorned from romance for reasons to be determined MUCH later, but that are so blatantly obvious; standoffish personality vs ready-injectable hero; & has a perfectly nuclear family that loves him too much and is overly concerned with finding him a girl.

From there you have:

Her....





To his...








As the story progresses...

Luke transitions from your typical grieving, scorned male that refuses to emotionally feel anything for a woman, but that readers sympathetically root for to get his head out of his ass ~ to ~an absolute, and I do mean AbsoFUCKINGlutely , asshole who you'll just wish would lock himself in his room and be left to cry the rest of the book in solitude.

He will go down as one of the most infuriating, selfish, cowardly, asinine, idiotic, woe is me mfing characters I've ever read.

I hated him. I'm not talking love to hate him. No, I'm talking absolutely want to nutpunch him and stomp his dickbits.



Sure he is honest with her; he flat out tells her he will never love her.

But, he asks her to stay even though he will never love her. He allows and even encourages her to carve a place in his life as a live-in girlfriend and does things that are contradictory to his declaration that he will never love her.

He says the most hurtful, cringeworthy things to Harper over and over. He says he wants to push her away for her own good, but then pulls her back to use her for his own carnal desires. He is a self-absorbed coward. He physically hurts her during sex, acknowledges this, and even asks her why she keeps letting her use her.



And, this brings us to her part in this fucked up relationship. No way can I even feel bad for her plight. She allows, welcomes, and excuses all the above. She apologizes constantly for basically being a human vs an emotionally devoid robot. She pours her heart and soul into him, his being okay, his sanity, his happiness, his comfort, his pleasure, his pain, etc all while he constantly discards her and her feelings yesterday's trash.




She is desperate. She's an emotional outhouse for him. And, it's sickening to see it unfold.

Storyline



^Clearly^



Even if you're a reader that can excuse his behavior to his pain and love for his dead wife, <<<?that in itself should moot the current romance you're f'ing reading here between Luke and Harper. The obsessive level of his visceral feelings for his dead wife and the fact that readers must read them AND him saying he will NEVER love anyone but his dead wife over and over for 90% of the book LEAVE NO MFING ROOM FOR HARPER IN THIS BOOK.

Her being okay with being underneath some dead woman on a pedestal of fucking perfection in his heart left me feeling disgusted. Not an ounce of romance in this for me, unless you count the romance between the mc and his dead wife.



My reaction to him deciding that he can love both his dead wife and Harper in the last 5% of the book~





Could This Shit Be Stretched Any Further?




It's not bad enough that the main storyline itself is what it is. No, hell no! The author has to swamp this book with a separation deployment that lasts at least 25% of the book.



The secondary romances between countless other characters, so many mundane day-to-day bullshit scenes that I could make a Pinterest board on it, the weird dead wife mama shit, a lame knife attack, and even more lame drama plot of revenge by an ex-foster dad... It just goes on and on and on.

Conclusion



529 s20 comments Bibi1,288 42

Characters: Sweet
Plot: Sweet
Angst: Bitc@y former MIL who eventually turns out to be-you guessed it- sweet
Smex scenes: HOT
Overall: Delicious

Lucy Score seems to have forgotten how not to write beautiful, heart-rending stories. Too many feels, Score, just too much. Dial it down next time cos nobody s a perfectionist! Gaaahhh. NMmomof41,613 4,388

3.5 Stars

Overall Opinion: This was a good small town romance. I really d our h. She is probably one of the strongest and able h I've read in a while. I did struggle with her accepting less than the best at times because she was so accustomed to getting the short end of the stick, but I still really d her. I think the main reason for my lower rating was that I felt I needed a little more from the H at the end to make up for some of the stupid things he did towards the end. I wasn't so easily forgiving as our saintly h was, and I never felt he fully redeemed himself. Maybe I needed more time with the couple together and happy after all the drama before it just cut off into the time jump epilogue. It was on the longer side, so I think that sort of thing could've been added and some other irrelevant parts could've been removed IMO

Storyline: This is Harper and Luke's story. Harper finds her live-in boyfriend/boss sleeping with another woman, and she gets in her car without her purse (so no phone with gps or money on her). She heads in the direction (she thinks) is towards the town her old college roommate lives, but then runs out of gas. She ends up in the parking lot at a bar in a small town which is a long way from where she was heading. After some drama goes down in the parking lot, she becomes a new town hero of sorts. She makes some new friends that offer to help her. She ends up accepting an odd proposal to act a fake girlfriend, work as an office manager at his office, and live with Luke for a month until he is deployed for his national guard duty where they will then go their separate ways. Of course things don't run as smoothly as planned, and they end up developing feelings and act out on their strong attraction for each other. To avoid ruining it - I'll just say that there is some strong feelings developed, some strong friendships made, some big secrets being revealed, and two separations (1 valid and one drama filled)...but the couple get back together and find their HEA.

POV: This alternated between focusing on Harper and Luke in third person narrative.

Overall Pace of Story: Ok. This was a relatively long story that I think some things could've been edited out, but it was still an easy read and I didn't end up skimming at any point. I don't think I would call this instalove. There was instalust and some strong feelings from Harper developed pretty quickly, but not instalove.

H rating:3 stars. Luke. I d him, but he had some past demons that he really needed to work on getting rid of so he could finally allow himself to feel for Harper the way he should. I couldn't get past the things he said to Harper when they separated towards the end. He was flat out mean, and I know that he made a grand gesture to get her to forgive him -- but it still wasn't enough for me.

h rating: 5 stars. Harper. She should be given Saint status. She didn't know anyone that wasn't a friend (even grump Frank), she had a positive outlook no matter what bad things were thrown her way, and she loved Luke fiercely.

Sadness level: Moderate. I did have to get out my tissues for this one. I especially had a hard time with their separation towards the end

Heat level: Moderate, the couple have some great chemistry when they heating things up.

Descriptive sex: Yes.

Sex scene with OW or OM: No

Cheating: No

Possible Triggers: Mentions of domestic abuse and child physical abuse, and there are some violent scenes (that I didn't think we're too bad)

Closure: This had good closure with a HEA. I would've d a little more time with the couple together before the epilogue and time jump, but i still felt as though I got sufficient closure.

Worth the $?: At the $0.99 on Amazon, I'd say yes...but it's part of my kindle unlimited, so definitely!3-5-star friends-to-lovers kindle-unlimited ...more99 s2 comments Matilda269 2,545

4.25 stars ⭐️

edit: reread + buddy read with mira. luke may be an idiot, but he's our idiot

chapter 45 is my 13th reason why
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