Only If You're Lucky by Stacy Willingham

 

My thoughts

This author wrote All The Dangerous Things and A Flicker in the Dark. Both excellent books. I could not pick between the two which was my favorite. This one is not quite as good. Sadly to me it left me asking a few questions.

While this book could have you holding your breath at times it also had me scratching my head. I still wonder about a couple of things that I can't name without giving something away. It's about college students and the things that a particular group get into. Namely murder. There are several deaths/murders in this story. Also sex abuse and rape though not explicit. Some indiscretions between a married couple.(where my main question comes in) And a lot of possible back stabbing. No pun intended here.

Told in a before and after voice from the main character Margot. Margot starts living in an off campus house with three other girls. The main one being Lucy. Lucy it seems is liked by quite a few of the students so Margot feels it's ok to stab her current roommate in the back and start living in another place without her. That was her mistake. 

Lucy has some pretty deep secrets. Ones that made me feel sorry for her. Like who was her father. What was it she truly wanted from the roommates. From Margot. Maybe it was just acceptance. Maybe she wasn't really as strong as they all thought she was. That is my opinion anyway. I liked Lucy for the most part. Yes she knew how to get what she wanted in many ways. But in the biggest way she was let down. She was hurt deeply. So yes, I felt sorry for her. 

The problem I had with this book was that it was very predictable. At least to me it was. I figured out way early how Lucy and Margot would be connected. Not exactly what, but I knew it involved Margot's deceased best friend. No doubt. And I was right. I also figured out a couple of other things though none of it really hurt the book. 

This book was good. Just not excellent like the previous two. I do still look forward to this author's next book. 

Thank you #NetGalley, #StacyWillingham, #StMartinsPress for this ARC. This is my own true thoughts about this book.

3.5/5 stars. It just feel a bit short for me. I do advise you read it and judge for yourself. We all like different things and see things different. Enjoy!

About

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.

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.