ONLY IF YOU’RE LUCKY | Stacy Willingham
01.16.2024 | Minotaur Books
Rating: 5/5 stars
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.
As if I didn’t already love Stacy Willingham enough, she’s back again with another thriller I could not put down!
From the very start of Only If You’re Lucky I was drawn into Margot’s world. Obsessed with both her past and the glimpses of the present timeline. Those little snippets of “after” made me put on my detective hat and try to guess what would happen along the way. Some of my suspicions turned out to be right, but it took me a while to really get to those conclusions. And don’t worry, Willingham still came through with quite a few surprises!
Fans of dark academia type thrillers will eat this one up. The off-campus housing situation that Margot has is a fascinating and very realistic setting (make sure to check the author’s note for inspiration on this!). It truly lends itself to helping build up the tension between Margot, her roommates, and the neighboring fraternity brothers.
This is one of those books that I’m going to be recommending to everyone, so do yourself a favor and get your pre-order in for this ASAP!
A huge thank you to Minotaur Books for my gifted copy!
What Jess Reads 