Below is the complete list of Benevolence books in order of publication. This is the recommended reading sequence for the series by Lucy Score.
Benevolence Series
- Pretend You’re Mine (2015)
- Finally Mine (2018)
- Protecting What’s Mine (2020)
About Benevolence Series
Lucy Score’s Benevolence books are a compact small-town contemporary-romance series, and their smaller scale is part of their appeal. This is not a sprawling romantic universe with dozens of branches. It is a tight three-book run made up of Pretend You’re Mine, Finally Mine, and Protecting What’s Mine, with a later collected edition bundling the trilogy rather than adding a new core installment.
What makes the series work is the way it balances standalone romances with a shared world. Each novel has its own central couple and emotional payoff, so no book feels like half a story waiting for the next. At the same time, the books clearly belong together. Benevolence itself matters as more than a backdrop. It provides the emotional continuity of the series: a small-town setting where family pressure, local ties, and familiar faces make each romance feel warmer and more rooted than it would in isolation.
Publication order is the best way to read the series because the emotional handoffs become more satisfying that way. Pretend You’re Mine opens the trilogy with one of the strongest premises in Lucy Score’s earlier work: a fake relationship that quickly becomes much more personal than either lead intends. It establishes the tone of the whole series—fast, emotional, and deeply invested in the fantasy of finding real love in a place that begins to feel like home. Finally Mine and Protecting What’s Mine then build on that world rather than merely repeating it.
The series is also a useful snapshot of Lucy Score before her later runaway mainstream success. The Benevolence books already show many of the qualities readers now associate with her: strong romantic chemistry, accessible prose, a clear affection for emotionally complicated men, and heroines who are never meant to disappear into the hero’s story. But these novels feel more intimate and more compact than some of the bigger, broader books that came later. They are less about spectacle and more about emotional belonging, which gives them a slightly softer, more close-knit charm.
Another strength of the trilogy is tonal consistency. The books are contemporary romances first and foremost, but they carry enough family and community texture to make the setting feel lived in. The small-town atmosphere is not there just for comfort. It creates pressure too—everyone knows one another, history lingers, and private feelings are harder to keep neatly contained. That mix of comfort and exposure is one reason the books fit together so well as a series.
For readers who already have the list above, the best way to think about Benevolence is as a neatly connected romance trilogy built around place, familiarity, and emotional payoff rather than one giant serialized plot. Read in publication order, the books become more than three separate love stories. They form one small-town romantic world that grows more rewarding with each return.