By A Thread: A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy by Lucy Score


By A Thread by Lucy Score
A Grumpy Boss Romantic Comedy
Publisher: That’s What She Said Publishing, Inc
Genre: Contemporary
Length: Full length (582 pages)
Heat Level: Hot
Rating: 5 stars
Review by Honeysuckle

Dominic was staring at me like he couldn’t decide whether to chop me into pieces or pull my hair and French kiss me.

Dominic
I got her fired. Okay, so I’d had a bad day and took it out on a bystander in a pizza shop. But there’s nothing innocent about Ally Morales. She proves that her first day of her new job… in my office… after being hired by my mother.

So maybe her colorful, annoying, inexplicably alluring personality brightens up the magazine’s offices that have felt like a prison for the past year. Maybe I like that she argues with me in front of the editorial staff. And maybe my after-hours fantasies are haunted by those brown eyes and that sharp tongue.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be the next Russo man to take advantage of his position. I might be a second-generation asshole, but I am not my father.

She’s working herself to death at half a dozen dead-end jobs for some secret reason she doesn’t feel like sharing with me. And I’m going to fix it all. Don’t accuse me of caring. She’s nothing more than a puzzle to be solved. If I can get her to quit, I can finally peel away all those layers. Then I can go back to salvaging the family name and forget all about the dancing, beer-slinging brunette.

Ally
Ha. Hold my beer, Grumpy Grump Face.

Dominic’s world is about to be shaken to the core when Grumpy Grump Face meets the sexiest piece of sass this side of Jersey. I was #TeamAlly from the first scene they share. She may be desperate to earn the money she needs to keep her life afloat but that doesn’t mean she’ll take his brand of bossy snobbishness. Honestly, I was laughing out loud so much with this book.

I was really intrigued with how similar Ally and Dom’s backgrounds were. Not that they had the same childhood, just that their childhood made such an impact on their adulthood. For Dom, it’s his relationship with his father. For Ally, it’s the lack of relationship with her mother. But more than that, I came to realize that it was the positive impressions made by their other parents that end up shining through.

Another plus for this reader, Dom and Ally aren’t just out of college kids just getting started in the world. They’re Gen X! I could totally relate to them on so many levels but the strained muscles after ‘strenuous exercise’ had laughing out loud for real.

While this is a romantic comedy, there are a couple of really not funny themes that are dealt with within the pages and handled very well. One steals our loved ones away while they still live and other creates such a gross disadvantaged work society that an entire modern movement was developed to combat it’s effects. Again, I thought Ms. Score handled both with dignity and honesty.

I’ve been a Lucy Score fan for a while and stalk her author page religiously for hints of new stories. This one in particular was fun to watch develop and I still wasn’t prepared for how much I fell in love with the characters until I read it. They click. As in the chemistry is so palpable, it jumped off the page with both sparks and smoke.

A great couple needs fantastic friends and side characters but also a villain. So I wouldn’t say this story has a true black hat bad guy. Don’t get me wrong, Dom’s dad deserves to chemically castrated but other than a single scene he’s mostly a background threat. It was enough tho. I instantly disliked him for how he treated Dom and his mother as much as I disliked him for how he treated others.

It’s always a good day when a favorite author releases a new story. Fans of Lucy Score as well as fans of really good story telling need this book.