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abinthebooks 's review for:
Maggie Moves On
by Lucy Score
Might as well just call this Abi Moves On, because I don’t want to spend much more time thinking about this book…
What a disappointing read to start off 2023. Maggie Moves On started out very promising, with a strong and compelling heroine who was very focused and successful in her career. Maggie and her partner are home renovators and have an HGTV-like show on YouTube. They have come to a new small town in Idaho to tackle their biggest project yet, a crumbling mansion with major family history. It’s here Maggie meets our hero and her love interest, Silas, a at-first-glance pretty-boy landscaper. But what followed quickly dimmed all hope I had for the story, and very clearly lowered my rating from what could have been a 4.5 to a 2.25.
MY LIKES
• Maggie’s drive. I really liked Maggie & her focus on her career. Her partner, Dean, hated how driven she was, but it was something I loved about her character.
• Silas, our heroes family. They were probably the highlight of this story, and definitely added depth.
• The dog
That’s about it for the likes unfortunately.
MY DISLIKES
• The writing. This was horrific to listen to. It felt like millennial writing, (you know what I mean by that? Like Red, White and Royal Blue writing where you just get the ick from reading it, because you can just feel it’s written by a millennial?) with middle school aged smut scene writing. The smut was so vulgar in the way that it felt as though a child would write smut if that makes sense? The words and phrases “shaft”, “sex”, “wet tight heat” (I’m literally gagging as I type), “milking” (pls she’s not a cow), and “slide right home” were used, something I definitely wrote in smut on wattpad back in jr high.
• The hero. The hero at first seems to be this loveable golden retriever type of guy. He falls in love with Maggie at first sight, and he’s just so cute at their first meeting. He’s very flirty, and funny and just overall has a good vibe to him. He has very good banter with Maggie at first as well. But it’s like he has a complete personality switch. Silas becomes controlling and a complete alpha male asshole. He gets mad at Maggie for not telling him things when she’s not obligated to tell him anything? He gets angry at her because she tells him she doesn’t want a relationship when she made it explicitly clear from the beginning she doesn’t do strings. He was so irrational, and I hated his POV and his character with my whole being. Oh and he’s blond!! Red flags keep piling up.
• The writing of queer people. Silas, our hero, insists his stepbrother come out of the closer as gay when he’s clearly not ready. I thought this was fucking odd in itself, but everyone else that knew about this character being gay also did the same thing to him?? So is this Lucy Score’s like normal or…? Like what is going on bro.
• Too much going on. Speaking of what is going on, yeah what the hell was going on in this book. Every possible thing under the sun happened in this book, and could I tell you about it? No, no I can’t because I genuinely just tuned out for the last 25% of this book. But what I did retain of this book was for 1. How slow the plot moves and 2. How much was going on. A mystery plot, a romance, a bunch of side romances, past character traumas, a home renovation, a estranged family plot, found family plot, Silas family drama plot. Like I’m being frl, this all happened in this book and yet it moved so slow.
So yeah, this was such a disappointment, especially because Lucy Score was such an anticipated author for me to try. I do own another one of her books which I will give a go, but this was definitely not a hit for the first book of 2023.
➸ 2.25 stars
What a disappointing read to start off 2023. Maggie Moves On started out very promising, with a strong and compelling heroine who was very focused and successful in her career. Maggie and her partner are home renovators and have an HGTV-like show on YouTube. They have come to a new small town in Idaho to tackle their biggest project yet, a crumbling mansion with major family history. It’s here Maggie meets our hero and her love interest, Silas, a at-first-glance pretty-boy landscaper. But what followed quickly dimmed all hope I had for the story, and very clearly lowered my rating from what could have been a 4.5 to a 2.25.
MY LIKES
• Maggie’s drive. I really liked Maggie & her focus on her career. Her partner, Dean, hated how driven she was, but it was something I loved about her character.
• Silas, our heroes family. They were probably the highlight of this story, and definitely added depth.
• The dog
That’s about it for the likes unfortunately.
MY DISLIKES
• The writing. This was horrific to listen to. It felt like millennial writing, (you know what I mean by that? Like Red, White and Royal Blue writing where you just get the ick from reading it, because you can just feel it’s written by a millennial?) with middle school aged smut scene writing. The smut was so vulgar in the way that it felt as though a child would write smut if that makes sense? The words and phrases “shaft”, “sex”, “wet tight heat” (I’m literally gagging as I type), “milking” (pls she’s not a cow), and “slide right home” were used, something I definitely wrote in smut on wattpad back in jr high.
• The hero. The hero at first seems to be this loveable golden retriever type of guy. He falls in love with Maggie at first sight, and he’s just so cute at their first meeting. He’s very flirty, and funny and just overall has a good vibe to him. He has very good banter with Maggie at first as well. But it’s like he has a complete personality switch. Silas becomes controlling and a complete alpha male asshole. He gets mad at Maggie for not telling him things when she’s not obligated to tell him anything? He gets angry at her because she tells him she doesn’t want a relationship when she made it explicitly clear from the beginning she doesn’t do strings. He was so irrational, and I hated his POV and his character with my whole being. Oh and he’s blond!! Red flags keep piling up.
• The writing of queer people. Silas, our hero, insists his stepbrother come out of the closer as gay when he’s clearly not ready. I thought this was fucking odd in itself, but everyone else that knew about this character being gay also did the same thing to him?? So is this Lucy Score’s like normal or…? Like what is going on bro.
• Too much going on. Speaking of what is going on, yeah what the hell was going on in this book. Every possible thing under the sun happened in this book, and could I tell you about it? No, no I can’t because I genuinely just tuned out for the last 25% of this book. But what I did retain of this book was for 1. How slow the plot moves and 2. How much was going on. A mystery plot, a romance, a bunch of side romances, past character traumas, a home renovation, a estranged family plot, found family plot, Silas family drama plot. Like I’m being frl, this all happened in this book and yet it moved so slow.
So yeah, this was such a disappointment, especially because Lucy Score was such an anticipated author for me to try. I do own another one of her books which I will give a go, but this was definitely not a hit for the first book of 2023.
➸ 2.25 stars