A review by sami_leigh
Pretend You're Mine by Lucy Score

challenging emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
🌶️🌶️🌶️.5/5

She had called a lot of places home, but it was for the lack of a better word. She never really felt at home anywhere.

She laughed a lot. It was a sound that warmed him up. A sound that made him realise how quiet his life had become before. A sound that made him wonder why he had valued the silence so much. 

“Fact is, I just don’t have room in my life for her.”
“You’ve got the room; you’re just too chickenshit to make it.”

“I wanted to be memorable.”
“Baby, it would take more than all the time in the world for me to forget you.”

“You can’t put your worth in someone else’s hands like that . . . Whether you mean something to him or not has nothing to do with how inherently valuable you are.”

🌅 Third person 
🌅 Meet-disaster
🌅 Fake dating 
🌅 Friends with benefits 
🌅 National Guard; he deploys in a month
🌅 She’s starting fresh…again
🌅 Protective MMC
🌅 He has secrets
🌅 FMC who understands her worth makes the most of every day 🙌🏻
🌅 Insta-chemistry 
🌅 Small town
🌅 Meddling townsfolk
🌅 Tension 🔥 
🌅 Found family 
🌅 Representation of foster care 
🌅 Well established secondary characters: Claire & Charles, Sophie & Ty, Gloria, Aldo (Book 2), Linc (Book 3), Josh, James, Joni, Angry Frank.
🌅 MC growth: grief, communication, guilt, overcoming past trauma.
🌅 Epilogue 
• MMC’s perception of the FMC is a klutz who need supervision isn’t fully resolved.

⚠️ Death of a parent (past), car accident (past), death (past), injury/injury detail (explicit), medical trauma (explicit), active duty (MMC deploys in National Guard), child abuse (past, moderate), domestic abuse (not MCs, explicit), violence (moderate), stalking (moderate).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Medical trauma, Car accident, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child abuse, Violence, Stalking, and War