Rock Bottom Girl — Books, Beauty, & Buys

By: Lucy Score
Published Year: 2019
Publisher: That’s What She Said Publishing
Pages: 532

Summary (Provided by Goodreads): Downsized, broke, and dumped, 38-year-old Marley sneaks home to her childhood bedroom in the town she couldn’t wait to escape twenty years ago. Not much has changed in Culpepper. The cool kids are still cool. Now they just own car dealerships and live in McMansions next door. Oh, and the whole town is still talking about that Homecoming she ruined her senior year.

Desperate for a new start, Marley accepts a temporary teaching position. Can the girl banned from all future Culpepper High Homecomings keep the losing-est girls soccer team in school history from killing each other and prevent carpal tunnel in a bunch of phone-clutching gym class students?

Maybe with the help of Jake Weston, high school bad boy turned sexy good guy. When the school rumor mill sends Marley to the principal’s office to sign an ethics contract, the tattooed track coach, dog dad, and teacher of the year becomes her new fake boyfriend and alibi—for a price. The Deal: He’ll teach her how to coach if she teaches him how to be in a relationship.

Who knew a fake boyfriend could deliver such real orgasms? But it’s all temporary. The guy. The job. The team. There’s too much history. Rock bottom can’t turn into a foundation for happily ever after. Can it?

Warning: Story also includes a meet-puke, a bouffanted nemesis, a yard swan and donkey basketball, a teenage-orchestrated makeover, and a fake relationship that gets a little too real between the sheets.

First Impression

This book had a solid first impression. It caught my eye while I was walking through Target and then I bought it on Independent Bookstore Day. I had never heard about it before but the colors and the fact that it was a book about soccer immediately launched it to the top of my list.

What I thought

This book was so fun!

Marley has moved back in with her parents after being let go from her job and being broke up with. She left her small town immediately after high school because of senior year drama and has been avoiding being back since. When she accepts a temporary position as girl’s soccer coach and gym teacher at her old high school, she discovers her old crush Jake is a beloved teacher at the school and also that her biggest high school nemesis lives next door to her parents. In her cluelessness, she and Jake find themselves in a fake dating/real coaching situation.

This is a longer book so it allowed for a lot of details and character building which I loved. There was a lot of growth in the characters and it made me feel like I got to know them and really connect with them. I am a huge soccer fan so I greatly enjoyed those storylines. There were some small inaccuracies in the soccer facts but they were small so I was able to forgive them.

Marley took a little while to grow on me just because she was so hung up on her high school past. In the book, she’s 38, but I felt like her story would’ve worked better if she was 28. I understand though that at 28 you wouldn’t have any of your high school peers having high school aged children that you would be teaching. However, the level of concern and the interactions with some of her old classmates felt a little immature to me.

I adored Jake and Marley’s chemistry though. I thought they had some very good banter and Jake’s maturity balanced out where Marley was immature. I also loved her friends and her family. I felt like no one was painted as old and crotchety. People were still fun, even when they were parents and I feel like often that is not shown in these types of book.