This was my first read from Lucy Score, and not my normal type of read but I enjoyed it! The MMC does have the trope of hero complex/pride, which kind of grinded my gears at first (I tend to dislike that in actual guys), but he works through it and shoves his pride away and is actually there for FMC, Gloria.

Gloria is a survivor of domestic abuse, and it was wonderful to see her grow and figure out who she is as a person and what it is she actually loves to do, as well as create her own family of friends. Some of it was hard to read, but for personal reasons/triggers, but it was all good. If anything, relatable, and it made watching her process even more satisfying. MMC, Aldo, is deployed in the book and also comes back with his own scars which he has to work through. The novels focuses around them healing both themselves, and each other and it was beautiful to read as they found their way.

Thank you NetGalley and Bloom Books for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Oh. My. Gosh! This book was everything! I loved that it was the same timeline as the first one, and I loved Aldo and Gloria’s story as much as Harper and Luke! Lucy Score never ceases to amaze.

This book gripped my heart and my attention from the very first page. Gloria’s struggle to find herself and become a woman she can admire after finally leaving her abusive ex tugged hard on my heart strings and evoked a few tears. Her self esteem and belief in her abilities take time to rebuild, but she does have people around her for support and encouragement. One such person also sets off sparks of attraction deep down inside of her while also setting off all sorts of alarms in her head.

Aldo is a big, handsome and gregarious guy who uses humour and charm to show Gloria that he sees her, her struggles and means her no harm. A structural engineer by trade, Aldo is also a member of the National Guard and about to be deployed for six months. He calmly lets Gloria know that he intends to take her on a date when he returns after his deployment. He tells her about his long time crush on her and how he knows she is not ready to date anyone right now, but he hopes that in six months time she might give him a chance and go on a date with him. She tentatively agrees, forgetting how much life can change in any given moment.

I won’t go into any more detail about Aldo and Gloria’s story so as not to spoil this wonderful book for readers. Their story is emotional, filled with ups and downs and a few unexpected twists that set them aback, test their inner strength and their faith in each other and themselves. Through it all, they learn to trust again, to lean on others and to keep moving forward toward each other. Aldo and Gloria also discover that love is worth fighting for, even it is hard and taxing. The secondary characters in this book make this book even more compelling and foster an intense interest in reading more books written by this author.

I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley and I am voluntarily leaving an honest review.

Finally Mine is the second book in the Benevolence series and it’s a book about second chances. I’m feeling a bit neutral about it. This story is about Aldo and Gloria who were in the first book. They were attracted to each other when they were young, but through miscommunication and inaction, missed their chance to connect. Gloria wasted ten years in an abusive relationship; Aldo escaped to four tours in Afghanistan to avoid painful introspection.

Now Aldo is back from his last deployment with the loss of a limb; Gloria is finding her footing and adjusting to living alone after leaving her abusive ex. Will they be able to overcome the issues they face?

What I liked and didn’t like:

• Aldo started off after his injury with an understandable chip on his shoulder but bounced back quickly and became a great guy.
• I liked Gloria’s cool mother but had problems with why she didn’t step in and help her daughter sooner.
• I didn’t like how Aldo treated Gloria when he first came home injured but understood why. I found it odd though and too soon when he did a 360 and started hounding her for attention.

As I said before, I am feeling neutral on this one. It’s not a bad book and has good moments. One should remind themselves that this is one of Score’s earlier books and I can see how she has improved her craft since then.

I thank NetGalley and Sourcebooks Bloom Books for the opportunity to read it in exchange for my honest opinion. I gave it three stars.

Finally Mine by Lucy Score is a small town, slow burn story. I enjoyed the story, but it took a bit to get into it.
Gloria and Aldo are great together. They have overcome so much. They offered each other support through tough times. Their story is beautiful, romantic and heartfelt.
The story has a trigger warning for domestic abuse. It is tough to read those scenes, but Score did a great job telling a very tough story.

After ten years of suffering through her abusive relationship, Gloria is finally free. She's sworn off men for the foreseeable future, determined to work on herself and never find herself in that situation again. But when her crush from back in high school starts to flirt with her, how can she resist? After the best kiss of her life, Aldo asks her for a date... after he comes back from a six month deployment. But he returns early after an injury a different man, angry and haunted. Everything he ever wanted in Gloria is now out of reach. She needs a whole man, one strong enough to keep her safe. But Gloria isn't going to give up and these two so full of scars start to help each other heal.
This story was heartbreaking and sweet. The details of Gloria's abuse were hard to read and her recovery was hard. I love how understanding and supportive Aldo was with her, especially at the end. And although their story is familiar from the first book, the perspective from each of their points of view added more depth to the story.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I'll start by saying I am such a huge fan of Lucy Score!! This book was slightly different from her Knockemout books, but I loved it nonetheless. This was such a heartbreaking, yet empowering story about a woman who has been hurt time and time again, but learns to put her happiness and her state of mind first. I related to Gloria's fears about finally being on her own, scared that everyone would take pity on her for the things she had endured. I loved how vulnerable and open Gloria's character was, as it made rooting for her very easy.

I also found Aldo's character to be super loveable, as well. He always had Gloria's best interest at heart and their slow burn romance was a joy to follow. Lucy Score is the blueprint when it comes to slow burn romances and she definitely delivered with this book!! I highly recommend this one to not only any Lucy Score fan, but any romance lover in general!

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Bloom Books for this free arc in exchange for my honest review!

Rated 2.5 Stars

I loved the sound of Finally Mine but the reality was I didn't love it, I didn't hate it either and it wasn't meh. My feelings for it were somewhere in between. It was a very near DNF for me but I was determined to finish it after DNFing three books before starting it. What I did like was watching Gloria, the heroine take back her life and her autonomy. I enjoyed watching her come into her own, live and trust again and find love. There were fun, funny and cute moments throughout but overall it just didn't work for me. It was long and drawn out, plus it completely spoiled the first book in the series which I dislike when authors do.

Sweet and heartbreaking, this rerelease of a classic Lucy Score book is still powerful and beautiful.

Full of feels, angst and with a delicate fragileness, it's an inspiring tale of hurt, love and hope.

4 stars and a well deserved HEA.

This series is so amazing. I am completely obsessed. Do yourself a favor and grab book 1, Protecting what’s Mine and then come and read this one.

Gloria and Aldo’s made me feel all of the feels, and you won’t be able to get enough of her small town Romance.

Lucy Score has this amazing power that you what to know what happens but you don’t want the story to end.

Love the small town trope of this book. It wasn’t quite the Lucy Score book I’m used to but I still enjoyed it!

Great relaxing read. A little different than other Lucy Score books but just as good as the others I have read. Worth the read.

Another story about Benevolence. This time we’re reading Gloria and Aldo’s story. Theirs was a backstory from the first novel in the series, Pretend Your Mine. After Gloria is rescued from her abusive boyfriend by Harper, her life takes a huge turn where she learns about herself and her independence while falling hard for her high school crush Aldo. While Aldo sees her and can’t help but remember his own feelings from years ago and decides to pursue her but give her the space she needs to heal and become her own person. This story has the slow build of romance and friendship and all of these characters are likable and I enjoyed their interactions and friendships.

Another great book by Lucy Score. Gloria who has been in a toxic abusive relationship, finally decides to leave. She finds love again but the relationship is a struggle with her ex after her and a terrible accident happens to her new love. All comes together finally in the end for a hea.

This book/series just wasn’t for me. I didn’t enjoy the first all that much, but liked the characters in this. I can understand the appeal of her writing style for others, but I didn’t feel as connected to the story as I do others.

The characters both had a lot of growth and healing and watching this was enjoyable. The pacing of the story was good, but was a bit too insta lovey and fluffy for me.

I didn’t understand the first chapter how NO ONE inside the bar followed them out to make sure he didn’t kill her. They didn’t have to physically intervene, but for being a small town that cares for everyone, that made no sense to me.

Mini Book Review
Finally Mine by Lucy Score

📚Tropes, Triggers and Thoughts📚
Second in Benevolence series
Cannot be read as standalone
Lots of cross over storyline- same timeframe as Pretend You Are Mine
⚠️Military injury, Domestic abuse, Stalking
Second chance romance/missed chance romance
Gloria and Aldo
Honestly this one didn’t work as well as the first for me, too much of their romance was revealed in the first book so this one felt kinda repetitive
I did love the “therapy” inner dialogue chapters that provided the reader with insight into the MCs emotional growth and healing


Thanks to @netgalley and @bloombooks for my digital ARC in return for an honest review. Opinions expressed are my own.

I think fans of Pretend You’re Mine will enjoy getting to hear Gloria and Aldo’s story. Gloria having finally left Glenn after the altercation in the parking lot with Harper and Luke is trying to sort out who she is now. Is she poor little Gloria who has been abused the past ten years (and where is the town here? No one could help out??) or fresh start Gloria who is only looking forward. Her high school crush Aldo has definitely shown interest but is she ready for him?

Aldo makes his feeling known to Gloria and promptly gets deployed with Luke. But then Aldo comes back earlier then schedule, losing a leg and having to figure how who *he* is now. I enjoyed getting both of the main characters POV but damn Lucy Score writes a long book and I definitely skimmed. I just could never get over the fact this town never stepped in with Glenn who is comically horrible and Gloria.

I'll be honest, I wasn't sure about this book going in. The beginning is hard to read and I haven't liked reading books that deal with abuse but I ended up really enjoying it. I think Score did a great job showing the main character's progress from self doubt and blaming herself to real growth by the end of the story. So much of this story is about personal growth for both of our main characters. Within that, I love their story together. I liked the therapy aspect, I enjoyed the side characters, and I liked their love story.

I have seen some criticism that the people around her "should have" done something different. I get the frustration but I think Score's story rings true for the adage that you can't make someone leave, you can only be there for them when they do. The book talks about her mom's shelves lined with books about just such things. I appreciated that no one else saved her in this story. She did and then she did the work to heal. Then she entered into a relationship.

.... but I hated the third act breakup in this one! It felt so unnecessary. I could have lived with a pulling back. Unsure about how fast they are moving or about moving in but why make it more like a full break up? It didn't feel needed.

Either way, this was my first Lucy Score book and I'll be adding more to my TBR.

This is a re-release of a book Lucy Score released in 2018 and since I’ve read more recent books of hers, I have to think she’s improved as a writer A LOT since she wrote this book. Gloria’s tale and happily ever after definitely needed to be told. I love stories about women empowering themselves, and this was a classic tale of an abused woman. Aldo’s story also needed to be told. We have men and women who go on tour who come back both mentally and physically injured. I would’ve loved to have seen a fresh story about these two survivors and how they found love with each other. We got a little bit of that but I will admit to being disappointed in how this story was told.

As this is the second book in the series, you’d expect a little bit of referencing of things that had happened with the previous novels characters. Finally Mine takes this referencing 200% further, recapping huge portions of the story- in fact, I feel like the author cut and paste large chunks of the last story and included those bits into this book. I don’t know if it’s because I read these books only a few weeks apart, but there was so much repeating of what I’d already learned in the first novel that I started to not care about Gloria and Aldo’s tale. I spent my time skimming and looking for new portions of their story and then trying to piece those chunks together. I feel like the author did the reader a huge disservice in the style of writing she chose for Finally Mine. I think there are ways we could’ve learned their history where it would’ve felt fresh, or maybe picked up at some point in their plot and wrote some new content. As it stood, it felt like about 60% of this novel was re-capped. That is just not enough new content for me to develop feelings for these characters. The re-capping actually ended up being more annoying than helpful. I so wish this author hadn’t done that to these wonderful characters.

No surprise that I had trouble with this book. I think the characters should’ve been given a chance to have their own story instead of just re-telling what we’d learned in the previous novel, or shown the same plot from a different perspective. Because of that lack of new content I wasn’t able to care for these characters as much as they deserved. Maybe some day this author will re-write this novel so that these characters are allowed a chance to shine. ❤️❤️❣️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

While I love Lucy Score, this series was not for me.
DNF
I read the first one in order to be prepared for the second, and now I realize that was a mistake. The first one felt extremely slow, and when I went to start the second... I realize it was the same scenes as the first book, just from a different perspective. While I do love that we get to have a piece of everyone in the town of Benevolence and keep them through both books, it was just too repetitive. I almost wish Gloria story hadn't happened until after Harper and Lukes Story.

Lucy Score is a phenomenal author and I will continue to read all of her novels, this series is just not the one for me. I will not be posting elsewhere for this novel.