Book Review: By a Thread by Lucy Score

By a Thread by Lucy Score was an accidental reread for me. I saw the cover on Netgalley and I thought it looked familiar, but requested it any way. I should have trusted my instincts, but it has been awhile so I went with it. 

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 demure about Ally Morales. She proves that her first day of her new job, which just happens to be in my office. And I can't fire her, because it's my mother the CEO who hired her...technically, Ally doesn't work for me, and she makes it clear she doesn't have to listen to me either. 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 working here, 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.

By a Thread has a lot going for it. I like the humor and the heat. The exchanges between Dominic and Ally are great, and the sense of community she forms with those around her was fantastic. I love some good enemies to lover banter- and found family- so all of that works great for me. I thought the handling for Ally's situation and her father's health was done well and realistically. I thought the secondary characters and non-romance of the story were just as engaging and entertaining as the heart of the story. I have to be honest though, I really do not like Dominic, at all. He is painted as the alpha hole with the heart of gold, but even in the epilogues continues to do the one thing Ally asked him not to- make big decisions for her or with no conversations about it. He never learns to respect that one boundary- but because she is just so in love with him and can't think around him she just keeps letting it happen.  That kind of takes the shine off the story for me, because there was the opportunity for him to change that trait- and it never happened. 

By a Thread definitely has some entertainment value and serious heat.