Where do I begin? First off, I can never not hype up Lucy Score. She never fails me. NEVER, NOT ONCE, NADA. This book was quite the journey, and I love every second of it. This is a book about second chances, finding yourself, chasing your dreams, making amends, finding family in the most unlikely of places and of course, falling in love and finding your person. In this case, it was people. What I liked most was that it wasn't just about the romance, but that it was about Marley's story. It's about HER journey. I cannot say enough about Lucy Score's ability to world build and develop the best secondary characters. This had so many tropes I love, like fake dating and small town romance and sports. This was so heartwarming, particularly the girls of the soccer team and of course, Libby. Marley and Jake had fantastic chemistry and I absolutely adored the fact that he loved her from the start, and loved her for who she is and not what others expected of her. I lvoed the way he supported her and just wanted the best for her, even when she couldn't see it for herself. The humor in this was top notch, and there were so many times that I laughed out loud. I also love that Lucy Score tends to write her heroes and heroines a little bit older, in their late thirties to forties, as this is something we rarely get to see in romance novels. Yes, Marley could sometimes be a lot with her anger and resentment and woe is me attitude, but I found that and her entire story so relatable. This kind of gave me some Ted Lasso vibes, so if you're into that, I'd say check this out.

"We'd started under the shadows under the bleachers. And here we were, twenty years later standing in the sun."