Lucy Score

Lucy Score is an American romance author whose small-town contemporaries — including Things We Never Got Over — have built a massive self-publishing following through their humor, heat, and warm ensemble casts.

Lucy Score began her career as an indie author, building a substantial readership through social media and ebook platforms before her books crossed into broader bestseller territory. Things We Never Got Over, published in 2022, became a phenomenon — a grumpy/sunshine small-town romance set in Knockemout, Virginia, featuring a buttoned-up woman whose chaotic twin sister abandons her niece, and the town’s most infuriating — and attractive — man. The banter is sharp, the emotional beats genuine, and the pacing efficient.

Score is a skilled genre practitioner who understands exactly what her readers want: witty dialogue, slow-burn tension that releases with satisfying heat, and community-rooted storylines that create a sense of return visits to a place that feels lived-in. The Knockemout series rewards readers who stick with the ensemble, as secondary characters recur and develop across multiple books. The humor is a particular strength — Score has genuine comedic timing, and her male leads, who can tip into alpha-male territory, are usually redeemed by self-awareness and capacity for growth.

The criticism most often directed at Score is that her books prioritize fantasy and wish fulfillment over psychological realism, which is both true and largely beside the point for the genre. Her heroes are extraordinarily competent, wealthy, and emotionally generous once they stop being difficult, and the conflicts that drive the plots are sometimes manufactured to sustain tension rather than emerging organically from character. For readers who approach her books as escapist entertainment executed with craft and warmth, she consistently delivers.