Saturday, January 27, 2024

ONLY IF YOU'RE LUCKY Review

Author: Stacy Willingham
Publisher: Minotaur Books/MacMillan Audio
Narrator: Karissa Vacker
Release Date: Jan. 16, 2024

Many thanks to MacMillan Audio for an audio arc of this book.

A sharp and twisty exploration of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things.
 
Review:
I'm always excited to receive another thriller from Author Stacy Willingham!  I became a fan after reading A FLICKER IN THE DARK and ALL THE DANGEROUS THINGS.  Like previous thrillers, ONLY IF YOU'RE LUCKY is twisty and gutsy with a last minute shocker sure to leave readers reeling.

Margot attends a liberal arts college in South Carolina and is like a fish out of water.  She isn't part of the in-crowd, standing on the sidelines instead wondering what would have been different if her best high school friend Eliza hadn't passed away.  As Margot battles depression, she quietly watches a mysterious transfer student, Lucy - a bright, vibrant girl everyone theorizes about but wants to be around.  Imagine Margot's shock when Lucy chooses her to be one of her roommates instantly raising her status on campus.  The girls rent a house from a fraternity group of boys who live next door.  Margot's life is good until the day a boy from her past joins the fraternity.  Levi was Eliza's boyfriend, and Lucy blames him for her friend's death.  As the story unfolds, things escalate and two people disappear.  Are they dead?  Are they alive?  Is there a murderer living among them?

ONLY IF YOU'RE LUCKY is narrated by Karissa Vackar who delivers an outstanding performance.  I love the way she brought each character to life.  I highly recommend the audio book if you're a fan of listening to stories.

Through alternating timelines, readers learn about Margot's past and the events that tore her life apart.  A steady pace is driven by an ominous tone that keeps readers burning through pages.  Taut, concise chapters keep the story flowing as twists and turns drive the intriguing plot line in this well-crafted story.  With themes of loyalty, betrayal, belonging and the true meaning of friendship, ONLY IF YOU'RE LUCKY is a highly atmospheric, intense suspense thriller that I highly recommend to fans of mysteries, suspense, and thrillers.

Synopsis:
Lucy Sharpe is larger than life. Magnetic, addictive. Bold and dangerous. Especially for Margot, who meets Lucy at the end of their freshman year at a liberal arts college in South Carolina. Margot is the shy one, the careful one, always the sidekick and never the center of attention. But when Lucy singles her out at the end of the year, a year Margot spent studying and playing it safe, and asks her to room together, something in Margot can't say no--something daring, or starved, or maybe even envious.

And so Margot finds herself living in an off-campus house with three other girls, Lucy, the ringleader; Sloane, the sarcastic one; and Nicole, the nice one, the three of them opposites but also deeply intertwined. It's a year that finds Margot finally coming out of the shell she's been in since the end of high school, when her best friend Eliza died three weeks after graduation. Margot and Lucy have become the closest of friends, but by the middle of their sophomore year, one of the fraternity boys from the house next door has been brutally murdered... and Lucy Sharpe is missing without a trace.

From the author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things comes a tantalizing thriller about the nature of friendship and belonging, about loyalty, envy, and betrayal--another gripping novel from an author quickly becoming the gold standard in psychological suspense.

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