There is a scene early on where a hockey player, sitting on a hospital bed ninety seconds after a doctor tells him his career might be over, makes a crude joke about his own anatomy. The woman in the corner of the room, who barely tolerates him, calls him on it. She tells him he does not have to pretend he is not scared.<\/p>\n
That exchange is the entire novel compressed into half a page, and it is the reason The Final Score by Lana Ferguson<\/strong> works as well as it does.<\/p>\n Jack Baker plays right wing for the Boston Druids. He has just clawed his way back from a broken arm, and within minutes of returning to the ice he gets driven into the boards. The news that follows is worse than a fresh break: the original injury left him with a rare complication, one that surgery can fix and continued play can make permanent. He can have this season. He may not get another one.<\/p>\n Abigail Thompson is in the last stretch of a psychology master\u2019s, pulling shifts at a coffee shop, and quietly coming apart. Her father, a man who kept her a secret for most of her life until a scandal blew the arrangement open, will not stop calling. When a pipe bursts and floods her studio, she lands on her half-brother\u2019s couch, then in the spare bedroom of her half-brother\u2019s best friend.<\/p>\n You can guess who owns the spare bedroom.<\/p>\n Ferguson admits in her acknowledgments that Jack is her favorite hero she has written, and the affection is all over the page. He is loud, filthy, and relentlessly cheerful, and every bit of it is armor. He lost his parents at twelve. And he raised his little sister through a stretch in a group home. Somewhere in there he decided his job was to be the light in the room so nobody else had to be.<\/p>\n What raises him above the standard sunshine archetype is the specificity. Jack has ADHD. He has panic episodes. There is a beta-blocker on his nightstand for the nights his chest goes tight, and he hides it, because being the one who needs help was never in the contract he wrote for himself at twelve. Ferguson refuses to treat any of this as a quirk or as something a good woman\u2019s love will dissolve. It is simply how he is built.<\/p>\n Abby is the black cat to Jack\u2019s golden retriever, and the pairing is more than aesthetic. She is training to counsel people through exactly the damage she cannot put down herself. She keeps orbiting a father who treats her like a public relations problem, and she knows precisely why, and the knowing does not help even slightly. A late scene in which she sits through a lecture on childhood abandonment while it calmly describes her own life back to her is the sharpest writing in the book.<\/p>\n Both of them are being managed<\/em>. Jack\u2019s sister, his coach, his best friend, and his aunt all know what is best for him. Abby\u2019s brother handles her like something that might shatter if he raises his voice. Neither of them can breathe. When Abby finally says out loud that this is Jack\u2019s life and his call to make, it lands like a window opening. That shared bruise, not the forced proximity, is the real engine of The Final Score by Lana Ferguson<\/strong>, and it is a smarter foundation than most roommate romances bother laying.<\/p>\n The banter.<\/strong> Fast, filthy, and specific to these two people. Nobody trades lines that could have come out of anyone else\u2019s mouth. I would be doing you no favors by pretending this is airtight.<\/p>\n The third act runs on a very familiar engine.<\/strong> Hurting man says the cruelest available thing to the woman who loves him. Woman walks out. Man collapses. You can see it coming from three chapters away, and watching it arrive on schedule drains some of the sting. Abby does not understand hockey. She says so repeatedly, cheerfully, and to anyone who will listen. Because half the book is her point of view, the sport stays impressionistic: a puck goes somewhere, a crowd roars, Jack sits on a bench and hurts. That choice makes her a perfect surrogate for readers who could not define icing at gunpoint.<\/p>\n The cost is that the rink never quite becomes a place. If you came for tactical, sweat-soaked, on-ice tension, this book is far more interested in the locker room, the exam room, and the kitchen at two in the morning.<\/p>\n High. Explicit, frequent, and written with the sex-positive frankness Ferguson\u2019s readers expect. What keeps it from being wallpaper is that consent gets checked out loud and the sex reliably changes what these two know about each other. Adults only.<\/p>\n Readers who loved The Game Changer<\/em> and want Jack\u2019s side of that world Fair warning:<\/em> the book handles parental estrangement<\/a>, harassment, panic attacks, career-ending injury, and childhood loss with care, but it handles them constantly.<\/p>\n If Jack and Abby are your entry point, the back catalogue is worth raiding. Ferguson\u2019s Berkley run includes The Nanny<\/em>, The Fake Mate<\/em>, The Game Changer<\/em>, Under Loch and Key<\/em><\/a>, Overruled<\/em><\/a>, and The Mating Game<\/em><\/a>. The Game Changer<\/em> is the direct predecessor here, giving Ian and Delilah their story, though The Final Score by Lana Ferguson<\/strong> stands alone without leaving you lost. A preview of her next release, The Soul Mate<\/em>, is tucked into the back of this edition.<\/p>\n The Long Game<\/em><\/a> by Elena Armas, for the same brand of aching, funny sports romance The Final Score by Lana Ferguson<\/strong> is a warm, loud, extremely horny book about two people who were never allowed to be the one who needs something. It leans on a breakup beat you have read before. It is also funnier than it needs to be, kinder than it has to be, and quietly radical in its last twenty pages about what a happy ending is allowed to look like.<\/p>\n Jack Baker learned to smile when he felt like crying. Watching him stop is the best thing here.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a scene early on where a hockey player, sitting on a hospital bed ninety seconds after a doctor tells him his career might be over, makes a crude joke about his own anatomy. The woman in the corner of the room, who barely tolerates him, calls him on it. She tells him he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Setup, Kept Clean<\/h2>\n
Two People Built From the Same Wound<\/h2>\n
Jack, who is not the himbo you were promised<\/h3>\n
Abby, who can read everyone but herself<\/h3>\n
What actually binds them<\/h3>\n
What Ferguson Gets Right<\/h2>\n
\nThe medical honesty.<\/strong> Jack\u2019s condition has a real name and a real prognosis. There is no miracle, no montage, no convenient full clearance in time for the finals.
\nThe critique of loving badly.<\/strong> Everyone who adores Jack is also bulldozing him. Ferguson lets that sit and does not let the nice people off the hook.
\nAbby\u2019s father, cut off on her own terms.<\/strong> She is not rescued from him. She does it herself, in one phone call, and the book hands her the credit without splitting it.
\nThe ending.<\/strong> No spoilers, but the last chapter makes a structural choice about where this couple lives that almost no romance has the nerve to make. It is the most emotionally intelligent decision in the novel.<\/p>\nWhere It Slips<\/h2>\n
\nA conveniently timed accident.<\/strong> Without saying what it is, a physical injury turns up at precisely the moment the plot needs its leads shoved back into a room together. Efficient, yes. Also visible scaffolding.
\nBradley Thompson is cardboard.<\/strong> Abby\u2019s father exists as texts and shouting down a phone line. He gets no interior life, no complicating detail. For a novel this invested in psychology, its central antagonist is a strangely flat piece of work.
\nThe clock is aggressive.<\/strong> Six weeks from mutual loathing to declarations of love. Ferguson mostly buys it with sheer volume of shared scenes, but slow-burn readers will feel the whiplash.
\nVerbal tics.<\/strong> \u201cBFF nachos\u201d and \u201cI plead the Fifth\u201d are charming the first three outings. They appear rather more than three times.<\/p>\nA small note on the hockey<\/h5>\n
The spice level<\/h4>\n
Who This Book Is For<\/h2>\n
\nGolden retriever hero loyalists and grumpy\/sunshine devotees
\nAnyone who wants mental illness written as ordinary rather than tragic
\nHurt\/comfort readers who like their comfort earned
\nSkip it if:<\/strong> you need a slow burn, a closed door, or granular hockey<\/p>\nLana Ferguson\u2019s Other Books<\/h2>\n
If You Liked This, Read Next<\/h2>\n
\nIcebreaker<\/em><\/a> by Hannah Grace, for hockey with a grumpy\/sunshine spine
\nThe Deal<\/em> by Elle Kennedy, still the benchmark for banter-forward campus hockey
\nJust for the Summer<\/em><\/a> by Abby Jimenez, for hurt\/comfort that hurts properly
\nBehind the Net<\/em><\/a> by Stephanie Archer, for an anxious hero and the woman who sees through him
\nFunny Feelings<\/em> by Tarah DeWitt, for damaged people being gentle with each other<\/p>\nThe Verdict<\/h2>\n