Book Smart Kate

Book: 🌟🌟🌟 Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

By Lucy Score

I am a huge Lucy Score fan. She can write books that make you feel invested in the characters and the community they create. This book, the second in the Benevolence series, glimpses the quirky small town and cast of characters that she perfects in later works such as Things We Never Got Over and Maggie Moves On.

After ten years in an abusive relationship, Gloria is finally brave enough to leave and restart her life at twenty-seven. Aldo has loved her since high school and may finally have his chance. However, he is about to go on a 6-month reserve deployment to Afghanistan. He challenges Gloria to spend those months discovering who she is in her new life and if there might be a place for him with her when he returns. Then everything changes after a battlefield injury. Aldo and Gloria both must decide what is worth fighting for in life.

I liked so much about this book – the tender relationship between Aldo and Gloria, the way the characters are brutally honest with each other, and their relationships with their mothers. The book, however, seems like it could be more cohesive. I would start a new chapter only to flip back a page because the chapters didn’t seem to flow together, and the dual POV seemed to overlap and repeat the same events. It also felt like there were a few too many plotlines.

I had the opportunity to review the re-release of Finally Mine in advance of its June 13, 2023 release for @NetGalley and @read_bloom in exchange for my honest review.