Pretend You’re Mine was a very mixed bag for me.

On the one hand, the banter would make me smile so big, and the small town charm was perfectly on point, and there were some emotional twists that had my heart twisting and aching and fluttering like crazy. I really liked Harper and her indomitable spirit. I loved her approach to potentially difficult/uncomfortable encounters. I was afraid, at first, that she was going to be too quirky/flighty for me – but that wasn’t the case at all. She had a big, pure heart and an innate goodness that made her impossible not to love.

And so, it felt wrong to see her settle for the crumbs Luke had to give her for so much of the book. This guy. While I loved the whole growly alpha protective thing (because I always love the growly alpha protective thing) I did not love how he had one foot out the door for most of their romance. I did not love how he went 2/3 of the way in while Harper went all-in. It wasn’t good enough for Harper and I wasn’t sure how I felt about her willingness to be okay with the crumbs.

I also felt like the explanation for their connection relied, heavily, on their physical connection. There are a lot of spicy scenes. And my personal opinion is that I could have done without about 1/3 of them in favor of some…swoon. Some real, solid, emotional connection. So while I loved parts of this story, overall – it didn’t offer what I wanted it to offer me.

This was a big story. Like, there was a LOT packed into it and it maybe could have been pared down a little to give more focus on the connection between Harper and Luke. In the end, it was entertaining, and showed hints of greatness, it just was an okay read for me.

Thank you NetGalley for letting me read this arc! This is my 4th Lucy score book and even though it wasn't my favorite it was enjoyable. I found Luke's indecisiveness to be annoying but I understand where he's coming from. Harpers chaotic mess was a fun treat! I thought the foster dad twist could have been left out and their relationship be the main focus of the book. As a military spouse I really felt and understood their dynamic in that regard. Def would recommend!

Another incredible book by Lucy Score!!!

After hastily leaving her cheating boyfriend, Harper finds herself in small town Benevolence. Being the fierce woman she is, she springs into action to defend Gloria who is in a physical altercation with her boyfriend in the parking lot of a bar. After taking a rough punch from Glenn she is taken into the bar to be nursed back to health by the Garrison crew. With no gas, money or place to stay for the night Harper needs to figure out how to get back on her feet.

Luke Garrison hasn't been on a date in many years and now has his mother meddling in his love life. His sister Sophie comes up with the idea for Luke and Harper to start fake dating to get his mom off of his back. This quickly go from fake to real but with Luke's upcoming deployment (and secret from his past) both he and Harper know this cant get to serious. Both Luke and Harper have to figure out who they are and what they want from life and each other.

I loved this book, it made me laugh, it made me cry. If you loved things we never got over then this book will be a winner for you.

Trope: Small town romance, Fake Dating, Forced Proximity

ARC provided by NetGalley and Bloom Books in exchange for an honest review.

I loved reading things we never got over, things we hide from the light, by a thread, and forever never by Lucy Score. I was screaming in excitement when I got an ARC for Pretend You're Mine and and Finally Mine from NetGalley. Harper and Luke love story is one to be known, I was reading this while waiting at the airport and it had me giggling, crying, and screaming because it was that good. I loved that we didn't get to know what Luke story was till the end, I loved that he got a second shot at love despite what happened to him. I loved that Harper didn't give up and was head strong on what she wanted. This was such a beautiful book and a fast pace reading at the airport.

Thank you NetGalley for the arc of this rerelease! I love Lucy Scores writing and how she has you not only rooting for Luke and Harper, but for the whole town. Super excited to read her other books!

This small town romance book gave me mixed feelings as Luke was not my favorite main character Lucy had written. Harper was a saint and I loved her growth throughout the book. Some parts I felt could have been cut/not so dragged out while others felt rushed.

All in all this was a good read but not one of my favorites by the author

okay, as always, gotta start my review with a little disclaimer – i'm here for a good time, not a long time, and i can only become so impassioned about so many things in life. i definitely see and understand why some people would absolutely hate this book, but i feel like in most small town settings, you're getting some insular, scratch-your-head-wtf-ery, no? that's just to be expected with a small town setting, imo, so i'm fine with it.

i haven't read this previously (the original publishing date is 2015), but enjoyed my first time through! did the fmc depend on the mmc in like five seconds? were there a bunch of side characters with interwoven stories? lots of small town tropes? yes to all of those but i truly don't care, i liked it as a whole! solid 3.5 stars for me.

I want to preface this by saying that I love Lucy Score. But this book was full of contradictions for me. The heroine was likable and strong as a person/friend at the same time she wasn't strong enough in the relationship. She made some questionable decisions and actions that were honestly quite annoying.

I didn't love the story but I didn't exactly hate it. The heroine's relationship with side characters was phenomenal but her relationship with the "hero" was just 'meh'. I like the author's writing style and all her books. THere is always a deep meaning and a good message and that's the beauty of her books.

3/5 stars

The whole my dead wife thing was beating a dead horse. Like come on we get it. The way Luke treated Harper was just disgusting and I feel so bad for her to keep going back. I just can’t with this book.

3.5⭐️ rounded up to 4!

I have loved diving into Lucy Score’s backlist, so when I saw this was being republished with Bloom I knew I wanted to read it! I enjoyed both Harper and Luke as characters. I felt like the relationship went from 0-100 and I would have liked to see more development from them platonically and romantically! I loved the humor this story was written with! The banter, the wit, the jokes were all great! One of my favorite scenes was Luke and Joni at the cemetery. I would have appreciated some more moments like this to break up the light-hearted ones, as well as some more plot development with the events from Harper’s past. I loved all the side characters, especially Gloria, Aldo, and Frank! Overall, a solid and easy read!

I love a lot of Lucy Score’s books, so I was excited to read this. This was a nice romance, but it wasn’t my favorite of hers. I think overall, it was a little too long and a lot going on. I enjoyed the first and last thirds of the book, though!

At first I really enjoyed this book, but as it kept going on I got annoyed by it. The drama seemed…dramatic. The characters (especially the guy) was so unlikeable. And yet Harper is described as an absolute angel (“…what, Harper didn’t tell you that last month she pulled three people out of a burning building???” “No, she only told me there was a small fire!” Like really? That just felt so stupid to me.) It was definitely a spicy read at some parts but even that got old. I’m also not sure why it looks like it was previously published on Goodreads but a newly published book on NetGalley.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the eARC.

Wow, this book was heart wrenching. Luke, learning to love and accept love after his tragic past. And Harper finding her friends who become her “found family”. They both are fiercely protective of each other and their family. I cried and laughed throughout, and just loved this entire book!

I'm not ashamed to say that I've happily joined the Lucy Score hype/bandwagon.

Luke Garrison may be the hometown hero but even the best of us can't get away from our parent's nagging and concerns. In comes Harper, knocking him and the small town off-kilter... almost quite literally. He's only got a few more weeks left before deploying and his scheming sister suggests he fake dates the new firecracker in town to ease his parents and hold them at bay.

If I'm honest, I think I wanted to throttle Luke more times than I can count while reading this book. He was soo in denial and it was staring him right in the face. I'm usually good at figuring out what's holding some characters back but I wasn't expecting Luke's dark past. Let alone throwing Harper's in the mix as well. The way things ended up connecting was smart and I enjoyed the way the book's timeline is so easily intertwined with the second book in the series Finally Mine.

4.5/5 stars
3/5 Twice Level
TWs: Mind to moderate mentions of domestic abuse, physical abuse, death, war, miscarriage, medical trauma, medical content, injury/injury details, car accident, blood, child death, and grief
While I have received an arc of this book, my thoughts are all my own.

When Harper finds her boyfriend cheating on her she gets in her car and takes off without her purse, wallet or any other belongings. Thinking she’s heading the right way, she runs out of gas in a small town [definitely NOT going the right way] and ends up becoming a sort of hero when she rescues a woman in the middle of a domestic dispute. This is when she meets Luke, a grumpy construction worker who also happens to be in the National Guard.

Harper ends up accepting a proposal from Luke to act like a fake girlfriend, work as an office manager at his office, and live with him for a month until he is deployed for his national guard duty. After that they agree that they will go their separate ways.

There is a lot about this book that I love. First off. Our main girl Harper is incredible. She has been through so much and yet she still has such kindness and positivity to her.

“What am I supposed to do, be all ‘woe is me’ for the rest of my life? I still get access to the same sunrises everyone else does, the same 24 hours in a day. And if I don’t take advantage of those things, it’s my own fault.”

“I can still be sad. But I don’t have to wallow or completely ignore the good that is still waiting for me. That’s careless and wasteful.”

Now for Luke. This broken and traumatized man really put Harper through the ringer at times. I went back and forth with my feelings for him - from being sympathetic and understanding of his situation and trauma to being straight up pissed off at how he handled things. Harper deserved better in my opinion, and even though he groveled well at the end, I still think he said a lot of things he should never have said.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this book for an honest review.

this series is SO GOOD! omg wow wow wow I can't say enough good things. I love the characters and the spice is perfect. it still has a plot which I love and I can't get enough!

I loved this story! I laughed, cried and felt the emotions as I turned page after page. Luke and Harper really resonated with me.
That being said the story will take you through secrets, fear, hopes, and dreams. In the small town of Benevolence everyone is in your business but everyone seems to care. Luke and Harper had a fire from the start that just couldn't be extinguished. It's a rare connection that they fought. With nosy family and ian diot finally seeing the light they eventually get their HEA.

Wow! That's the only way to start this review. Lucy Score was an author I found late into my reading career as I like to call it, and she doesn't disappoint with this oldy that's a goody. The first book of Lucy's that I read was "Things We Never Get Over" and to say that book wrecked me for a while and I made it my whole personality is an understatement. But I digress, this book was excellent, and it makes me happy to be able to read it as part of the re-release of this book with Bloom Books Publishing. Anyway, this book was a rollercoaster of emotion first the fact that our male main character is in the military hit home for me being a spouse of someone who was in the military. He was the definition of a military man through and through. And the back story of his heartache and the trauma that he had that made him who is today was one of the many reasons I fell in love with Luke. Now for the hardheaded female main character, you will not find another female character I fell in love with faster than Harper for the fact of what she did within the first chapter for Gloria, and that stuck with me and made me love her, even more, the further we went along to find out her past and trauma. Now for the plot in general of this story, I liked the idea of faking dating but I do not truly believe this book was faking dating trope through and through for the fact that Luke and Harper always had the chemistry between them and they want each other from the beginning and that is different from what we normally see with this trope, but they made it work to where the idea of faking dating wasn't the whole plot of the book and I applaud Lucy for that. This book had me in a chokehold the whole time waiting for something tragic to happen and this isn't to say there were no traumatic parts because there were, it just wasn't to the level I built in my head, guess I love to make myself cry and expect everything to be traumatic, but there were moments were I was worried for these characters and if they would get through it or not and that's is what you should hope to achieve as an author, in my opinion. Now for the spice of this book, this was hotter than I was expecting but no "Den of Vipers" If you get what I mean, overall I would have to rate this a 2 chili-pepper out of 5. For an overall rating, I give this book a 4.5 out of 5 because as always you get a third-act break-up because of miscommunication and we all hate that, but the day authors stop doing that we would stop reading their books. Once again I want to thank Lucy Score, Bloom Books, and Net Galley for letting me review this book before its re-release with Bloom Books Publishing.

I fell in love with Lucy Score after reading Maggie Moves On last year. Her writing is so sharp and funny, and she can write a small town so well. Some of this felt outdated and you could tell she really hadn’t figured out her balance of spice and plot lines yet. Overall, I did love the small town and will come back for more

Holy crap. This book had it ALL and Lucy Score wasted no time diving right into it. Starting right out of the gate with an only-one-bed scenario. Main character, Harper, ran away with nothing but her car keys after being cheated on. She made it to the tiny town of Benevolence where she quickly became the town hero by breaking up a fight between Gloria and her abusive BF, Glenn (look for Gloria in 𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘦). That was when she met the gorgeous, tattooed Luke.

We were literally only 10% into the book at this point when a 𝘧𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱 was proposed. Luke needed to impress his mother before she took matters into her own hands and found someone for him herself so Harper agreed to do the deed. They quickly fell for each other, adopted cute dogs and when Luke left for the National Guard he insisted that Harper stay and wait for him.

Their relationship was kind of fresh and there was so much Harper didn’t know about Luke - the biggest thing being that he was previously married to his high school sweetheart who died tragically in an accident while carrying his baby. This was a huge turning point in Harper and Luke’s relationship. Right at this point, Luke also discovered that Harper was previously abused by her foster father who was getting out of jail soon.

In typical Lucy Score fashion, Luke came to the rescue by proving Harper’s former foster father was plotting to kill her. He landed him right back in jail. Luke cared so intensely for Harper and couldn’t imagine a life that she didn’t exist in. The trauma that they both went through helped in making their bond so much stronger. They both knew loss in different ways and never wanted to experience it again. And, can we just take a minute to appreciate how cute it was that they adopted the foster kids from next door!?

The banter in this book was amazing and it easily became one of my favorite Lucy Score books. Pretend You’re Mine had it all from heartbreak and trauma to feel-good moments and HEA’s. I would recommend this book over and over and over again. Can’t wait to pick up the new cover in May!

I am a fan of Lucy Score. Overall, I really liked this book. It did run a bit long in parts for me. Lots of characters to introduce to you.
Harper arrives in Benevolence, MD without her purse or money. Her car is out of gas, and it stops in a bar parking lot. She gets out of the car and sees a man physically abusing a woman and attacks him. In comes Luke to the rescue. Luke is a Captain in the National Guard and owns his own construction business.
This is a love story between Luke & Harper with some steamy romance scenes.
Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this book for an honest review.