There’s a recurring motif in Mistakes Were Made by Lucy Score that sums up the entire novel in a single glittering image: a disco ball. A shattered thing, fractured into dozens of jagged pieces, that somehow catches the light and turns a whole room into something magical. That’s essentially what Lucy Score does with this book. She takes two deeply imperfect people, throws them into close proximity in a tiny Pennsylvania town where even the bald eagle has an attitude problem, and waits for the sparks to fly.
Mistakes Were Made by Lucy Score is the second installment in the Story Lake series, following the wildly popular Story of My Life, which introduced readers to romance novelist Hazel Hart and grumpy contractor Campbell Bishop. This time around, the spotlight shifts to Hazel’s best friend and literary agent, Zoey Moody, and Cam’s equally handsome but far more buttoned-up brother, Gage Bishop. If Story of My Life was a warm hug of a debut, this sequel is its louder, messier, more emotionally complicated sister who shows up late to the party wearing mismatched shoes and somehow steals the show.
When a Hot Mess Meets Mr. Five-Year Plan
Zoey Moody is an absolute hurricane of a protagonist, and that is meant as the highest compliment. Freshly exiled from Manhattan’s publishing world after a professional disaster, she’s camped out in Story Lake with exactly one client to her name, a savings account that has flatlined, and an apartment in New York that she’s about to lose to a condo conversion. She’s impulsive, disorganized, and prone to attracting chaos the way a magnet attracts iron filings. In the opening chapter alone, she takes a live snake to the face courtesy of the town’s resident menace, a bald eagle named Goose, and promptly runs headlong into Gage’s truck.
Gage, meanwhile, is the Bishop brother everyone calls the “nice one.” He’s a lawyer, a part-time contractor, and the kind of man who has his next five years mapped out with terrifying precision. Goal number one on that list: find a wife. Zoey Moody, with her allergy to commitment, her inability to operate a calendar app, and her general tendency to leave destruction in her wake, is decidedly not the candidate. And yet, Score makes us root for these two from the very first chapter because beneath the banter and the surface-level incompatibility, there’s a magnetic pull that neither of them can fully explain or resist.
The forced proximity setup here is handled with a clever twist. Gage, who owns a renovated barn apartment above his home, becomes Zoey’s landlord after her housing situation implodes. It’s a rom-com goldmine, and Score mines it expertly.
A Town That Feels Like a Character
One of the greatest strengths of Mistakes Were Made by Lucy Score is Story Lake itself. This isn’t a generic small-town backdrop painted in soft watercolors and good intentions. Story Lake is weird, specific, and deeply lovable. There’s a free-range pig that wanders through town, a puzzle-and-cat cafe where felines routinely sabotage your Eiffel Tower puzzle, and a community that once voted “Towny McLake Face” as its slogan. The cast of supporting characters adds enormous texture to the story:
- Opal, a retired psychologist with a cane and zero patience, who hands Zoey two books on ADHD and essentially changes her life
- Laura, Gage’s sister, navigating life in a wheelchair after losing her husband Miller, while raising kids and finding the courage to move forward
- Levi, the youngest Bishop brother and the town’s reluctant police chief, whose own story is already being seeded for a future installment
- Goose, the bald eagle with a vindictive streak, who is honestly one of the best non-human characters in recent romance fiction
- Nana, Gage’s golden retriever, who learned to honk the truck horn when left alone too long
These aren’t filler characters. They carry emotional weight, provide comic relief, and make Story Lake feel like a place you’d actually want to visit, even with the eagle problem.
The Heart Beneath the Humor
Where Mistakes Were Made by Lucy Score genuinely surprised me was in its emotional depth. Lucy Score has always been funny, and this book is no exception. The chapter titles alone, ranging from “Needy Anaconda of Lust” to “Routine Butthole Maintenance,” had me snorting in public places. But beneath the laugh-out-loud banter and the absolutely scorching chemistry, there are real stakes here.
Zoey’s late-in-life ADHD diagnosis is handled with rare sensitivity and authenticity. Score doesn’t use it as a quirky personality trait or a punchline. Instead, it becomes a lens through which Zoey reexamines her entire life: every time she was called “flighty,” every relationship that fell apart because she forgot something crucial, every time she internalized the belief that she just wasn’t enough. The moment Opal drops the diagnosis on her is quietly devastating, and the way Gage responds, with understanding rather than pity, because his own nephew was diagnosed with the same condition, is one of the book’s most tender sequences.
Gage’s emotional arc is equally compelling, though it unfolds more quietly. The Bishop family carries a grief they don’t always talk about: the loss of Laura’s husband, Miller, and the way that trauma has shaped each sibling differently. For Gage, it manifests as an almost pathological need to control outcomes, to be the responsible one, to prevent the next terrible thing from happening. When that control shatters in the book’s climactic sequence, his reaction is raw, ugly, and entirely human.
Where the Seams Show
For all its strengths, Mistakes Were Made by Lucy Score isn’t without its stumbles. The middle third of the novel occasionally loses momentum as the “will they, won’t they extend their one-night stand” dynamic loops through a few too many cycles of attraction, resistance, and rationalization. There are stretches where the reader can feel the page count, particularly during some of the secondary storylines that, while charming, pull focus from the central romance at critical moments.
The third-act conflict, while emotionally motivated, also treads on well-worn ground. Gage’s fear-driven rejection of Zoey after she puts herself in danger is understandable, but the speed of both the rupture and the reconciliation feels slightly rushed compared to the deliberate buildup that precedes it. For a book that takes such care in developing its characters, the emotional payoff of the resolution could have used a few more pages to breathe.
Additionally, while Score’s humor is one of her greatest assets, there are moments where the comedic tone undercuts scenes that could benefit from sitting in their discomfort a beat longer. Zoey’s tendency to deflect pain with jokes is a character trait, yes, but it occasionally prevents the reader from fully feeling the weight of what she’s going through.
The Verdict: Imperfect and Irresistible
Despite those uneven patches, Mistakes Were Made by Lucy Score is a deeply satisfying romance that delivers on every promise its premise makes. It’s funny, steamy, and far more emotionally layered than the breezy cover might suggest. Readers who loved Story of My Life will find plenty to enjoy here, and newcomers can jump in without feeling lost, though they’d miss the full richness of the Bishop family dynamics.
The Story Lake series, with Story of My Life as its foundation and Mistakes Were Made building on that world, is shaping up to be one of Lucy Score’s most memorable creations. For fans of Score’s Knockemout series, especially Things We Never Got Over and Things We Left Behind, this has the same DNA: sharp writing, chaotic heroines, and heroes who are better men for loving them.
If You Loved This, Try These
- Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score, the Knockemout series opener that launched a thousand BookTok recommendations
- Wild Eyes by Elsie Silver, for another small-town opposites-attract romance with a strong sense of place
- In Your Dreams by Sarah Adams, a charming forced-proximity rom-com with a similar balance of humor and heart
- The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez, for readers who want emotional depth with their banter
- Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry, featuring a protagonist who, like Zoey, is learning to take up space unapologetically
- Rock Bottom Girl by Lucy Score, one of her earlier standalones that shares the same small-town warmth and comedic voice
