Review: By a Thread by Lucy Score

By a Thread by Lucy Score
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Funny and Sweet

I think I was won over by the description of the grumpy boss in the blurb. I don’t normally read these kinds of books anymore because they all have a formula that don’t surprise me after the first 20 or so times I read the trope. However, something about this grabbed me.

Ally is poor. She is frazzled and working 4 or 5 jobs just to get by as she pays for her father’s very expensive nursing home. She’s trying to do up his house to sell, so she can eat something other than noodles for a change and then she runs into Mr Grumpy himself, Dominic. Dominic is wealthy, successful and very very grumpy, because he’s doing a job he really doesn’t want to do in order to help his mother. He takes it out on Ally and she gets fired. Dominic’s mother feels bad and offers Ally a job, which she takes, because she isn’t stupid.

As you can imagine the plot is pretty predictable, however the execution is very good. In fact it’s laugh out loud funny in a lot of places. Ally and Dominic’s banter is very witty and evolves throughout the book as they get more and more involved.

The other thing I liked about the book is that Dominic is 44 (no surprise there) but Ally is 39! Woohoo, this is NOT an age gap billionaire type book. It’s actually about people who are equal in age and experience. They just have unequal finances. I think this is why the banter works. It wouldn’t have worked with a 22 year old girl fresh out of college making moon eyes at her handsome older boss, it works because Ally is old enough to stand her ground and know her own worth. It’s this decision by the author about her characters which makes me wonder if I would enjoy other books by her. Everyone needs a piece of entertaining fluff every now and then, and this one was very intelligently done.

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