Lucy Score is a new to me author and I was more than ready to jump into a holiday read. What I wasn’t expecting (having not read anything about this book prior) was that it would take place during a hurricane in the North East with on the page flooding and real time rescues. As someone who has lived through close to twenty hurricanes these sections of the novel were a bit challenging. I cannot imagine someone who had recently been directly impacted by Hurricane Helene or Milton picking up a cozy Christmas novel and being immediately thrown back into their worst living nightmare. So…heads up that this book primarily deals with flooding from a hurricane, and the immediate aftermath and clean up. 

I really enjoyed the pace of this story. While it wasn’t exactly dual POV in the traditional sense we did get to watch our two main characters navigate through flood waters, and their feelings. Our FMC is a hard working, reality tv star who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty on her construction and remodel projects. Our MMC is in charge of Merry, the town that was devastated by this hurricane, and has a built-in ‘no’ response when asked about new projects. 

While it was easy as a reader to see both sides, our MMC did a great job at being unlikable initially. His extremely harsh, misogynistic judgements of the FMC went mostly unchecked until almost halfway through the novel when her guy friends finally have a sit down, heart to heart with him about who she really is. The drastic change from being the towns over protective papa bear, to the sweet, cuddly, I’d-do-anything-for-her man was swift and immediate. 

We had a decent cast of side characters who were easy enough to follow along with, and who added depth and levity to the story. It also added to the familial feeling of being in a small town where everyone knows everyone and their business. This is especially important when our main characters start not-so-secretly dating. 

Compared to what I’ve been reading recently with dark romance and omegaverse, the spicy scenes were still decent. It was very obvious that the tone of these scenes were more reverent and described more or less like love making, despite the characters being unable to keep their hands off one another. There was a pretty sizable discussion about slut shaming, which I did appreciate, as well as a focus on the concept of a single, independent woman. 

However, the one overarching stain on this novel was the genuinely disturbing way our FMC talks about food and her body. Maybe that’s realistic for reality tv stars, but I read so many books with fat FMCs that it was shocking and disturbing just how many times our FMC mentions having to work off these calories and be destroyed by her trainer, or how much she just wants a cheeseburger but orders a salad instead. At one point her now boyfriend even says ‘hey if we order pizza will you actually eat a slice this time’? The inner monologue emphasis on her eating disorder, and everyone just being totally fine with it, was appalling. It’s one thing to be health conscious and make good choices for your body, but it’s another for every thought of food to immediately translate into ‘oh no I’ll get fat’. F___. Off.

This would have been a near perfect Christmas story, sans the unfortunate relationship with food our FMC had. I even teared up twice towards the end, genuinely ecstatic that our characters had made the best choice possible for their futures. I’d maybe try another novel by this author, and cross my fingers that disordered eating only extends to this one, singular character. But until then I hope you have a Merry holiday season.