I was unable to finish this book. While an interesting premise, I didn’t find it propulsive, and therefore did not finish.

This book was terrific! I loved the thriller aspect but even more I just enjoyed getting to know Daniel and his friends.

I devoured this book! Realistic fiction, a sprinkle of humor, and a decent amount of suspense kept me turning the pages and trying to figure out the ending before I got there.

This was such an entertaining book! I actually listened to the audio and the narrator is PHENOMENAL!!! I was intrigued by the condition that Daniel has and I loved learning about it and I loved the dynamic between Daniel, Travis, and Marjani. The emails between Daniel and Jonathan were fascinating and I just found the whole book to be quirky, fun, endearing, and funny! I absolutely recommend this one!!!

This was a good read. The story is told by Daniel (in his mind) who suffers from SMA (spinal muscle atrophy). While Daniel takes us on this journey of a kidnapping that he may have witnessed the book also focuses on educating the reader on this degenerative condition and what people who are living with it have to go through and what their daily lives look like. I really enjoyed the story of Daniel trying to help this missing girl and being part of society regardless of his condition as well as learning about SMA and some of the reality of it for people living with it.

This book was phenomenal. I absolutely loved the writing style. The book is told from Daniel's POV and although the book is partially about a kidnapping mystery, he stops to explain SMA to the readers and compares how his life is different/the same as others without SMA. Daniel has such a positive attitude and doesn't let his disability keep him from living his life, even though he knows he won't live as long as many others. Daniel's thoughts were eye-opening. Most people pitied him for being in a wheelchair and not being able to speak, but he considered himself lucky. This book reminds you that life is all about perspective on things. Daniel is one of those characters that I will remember for a long time.

This was truly an unforgettable story and I think everyone can learn a thing or two from this book.

Way back in 2006, I was toiling away as an information services provider in the environmental mitigation industry. That’s the LinkedIn version; the truth is, I was writing about landfills for a three-person consulting company. But I was also freelancing sports stories on the side, and one evening, while in the Turner Field press box, I caught sight of an established writer scrolling through a relatively new sports site called “Deadspin.” I hopped over to the site, a melange of indie sportswriting that ran the gamut from provocative to compelling to ridiculous, and, well, I didn’t watch much of the ballgame after that.

The rise and fall of Deadspin is its own Greek tragedy, but the important part of the story for our purposes today is that the site was founded by the wonderfully talented Will Leitch. He left the site not all that long after I first spotted it, but much like Paul McCartney and the Beatles, the shambling ghost of Deadspin will follow Will around forever.

Or will it? Will has just published a novel, HOW LUCKY (on sale today at Amazon and indie bookstores everywhere), a worthy pinnacle among his work at outlets such as New York, MLB.com and his own must-read weekly newsletter.

HOW LUCKY is the tale of a wheelchair-bound young man who spots what he thinks is a crime in progress … but did he? It’s set in Athens, Georgia, and it’s such a faithful depiction of the town that if you’ve been in Athens in the last five years, you’re probably a character in this book. It’s tense, heartbreaking and uplifting all at once, and it’s a perfect book to help you find your way through the late stages of the pandemic. Seriously, go get it.

Will was gracious enough to spend some time with me kicking around the book, the South, Stephen King and much more. Please, enjoy what I’ve inventively titled …

FLASHLIGHT & A BISCUIT Q&A: WILL LEITCH
First off: bless you. The world needs more novels, and especially GOOD novels like this one. But WHY a novel in 2021? You've got a long history with internet journalism, you know that a single viral tweet will get more eyeballs than everyone who's ever willingly read Shakespeare. What inspired you to write in this form?

The thing about a single viral Tweet is, well, it doesn’t mean anything. I’ll confess to always being baffled by so many people’s thirst—people I respect!—for those likes and retweets. I mean, I get the endorphin rush, I guess, but it doesn’t mean anything when it happens and it means even less in 24 hours when everyone has forgotten about it. I’m not trying to be dismissive of it, and I do think social media has considerable utility in its ability to amplify voices that have long been shut out of the conversation, but I have never understood why anyone would even WANT that. Every time I’ve ever Tweeted something that got around a bunch, it has made me feel antsy, uneasy, and uncomfortable. I mean, it just doesn’t mean anything. Maybe if we got a nickel for every retweet or something? Maybe? But we don’t. I have never understood it, and I suppose I never will. I’m sure it’s my issue rather than the world.

it has been more than a decade since I wrote a book—children, right?—and I was trying to figure out what I wanted the next one to be. Then, through workshopping and research, I figured out Daniel, the lead character of HOW LUCKY. Once I figured him out, it was just a matter of finding the right place for him. I just wanted to get his story right. I do not know if it was the right career move or not, but I was just happy and fortunate to get to write it.

What was the moment where this story went from idle speculation to, hey, this could be a novel? Where did it click into place for you?

All told? It wasn’t until I sold it. I wrote this whole thing with not only any assurance it would be published, but without my agent even knowing I was working on it at all. I met him for dinner one night in NYC and just handed him a printed-out copy of the thing. It was performatively dramatic and totally unnecessary, but I’ll confess liked the theater of it: here is this thing that I made because I felt as if I had to. If you think this is publishable, I’d love to have someone publish it. But I really just needed to write it. I didn’t know if it worked as a novel at all. There was a non-zero possibility that he could have read it and said, “Uh, this is horrible. Perhaps there’s you can maybe ghost-write an Adam Wainwright autobiography someday?” But he was excited about it, and after a lot of tweaking, Noah Eaker, my editor at Harper, bought it. That was the first time it ever felt real.

Stephen King likes your book!

Twitter avatar for @StephenKing
Stephen King
@StephenKing
I'm reading a fantastic novel by Will Leitch called HOW LUCKY. Publishes in May, I think. It's suspenseful and often wildly funny. You are going to like this a lot, and I think a lot of you are going to like it. It has that WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING vibe.
March 28th 2021

698 Retweets11,629 Likes
Holy shit! King once told me to eff off from onstage at a rock concert, but this is so much cooler! Tell me about the moment you saw that tweet, what it felt like, what it meant to you.

The thing about Stephen King is that he’s not just the most famous living author. It’s that to most normal people—and this includes just about all the friends and family I grew up with in Central Illinois—he is in fact the only thing they think of when they think of books at all. He’s the only author they know, or would think to know. So when he is as kind with this book as he has been—and it feels weird to talk about him like that, considering I’ve never met him and don’t actually have any personal connection to him at all—it draws all sorts of new attention. His endorsement is the sort of thing that leads your seventh grade English teacher to send you a message on Facebook saying “this has now vindicated my career.” That sort of thing. It’s incredibly flattering, and even more overwhelming. It also says a ton about him, not that he liked it, but that a guy as busy and legendary as him would even pick up a book by a new author he’d never heard of, let alone feel compelled to Tweet (twice!) about it. That’s the sign of a guy who truly, profoundly loves books.

You live in Athens. The book is set in Athens, right down to the names of football coaches and cross streets. The town is, as a college professor would say, very much a character in HOW LUCKY. What is it about Athens that's so compelling to you, particularly as a guy from the Midwest who lived in New York?

I love that Athens has a little bit of everything. You’ve got your Normaltown crowd, which is basically what it felt like to live in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. (The good and the bad.) You have your good old boys. You have the college scene. You have the music scene. You have little pockets of different people everywhere, all right next to each other. I could write stories the rest of my career about Athens and not get close to getting to half of them.

How do you reconcile what Patterson Hood calls “the duality of the Southern thing,” taking pride in the beauty and promise of the region without ignoring the evil that happened—and continues to happen—right here?

When I moved to Athens from New York in 2013, so many of my NYC friends said things like, “wow, I’d have such a hard time with the racism down there.” This from people who went to lily-white private schools in Connecticut and think the world begins and ends in a place that brought us stop-and-frisk, which elected Rudy Giuliani mayor TWICE and didn’t do much internal reckoning after Eric Garner. I love New York, and I love Athens, and there has been evil both places, and continues to be. Everybody, everywhere, has a ton of work to do and a long way to go.

What's the best place to grab a meal in Athens, and what do you order there?

I am a National guy. And you can’t go wrong with anything.

Finally: I've got a running F&AB playlist of music, new and old, that's hit me in just the right way over the last year. What's a song that just makes you FEEL, every time you hear it?

We spent forever trying to come up with a title for the book, but when I heard John Prine’s “How Lucky,” I knew that had to be it. Prine is the default background music of my life.

Added. Check out “How Lucky” and the rest of the F&AB playlist right here:


Make sure to go buy HOW LUCKY (Amazon here, indie booksellers here) this week for a damn fine beach read this summer. Stay safe, my friends, and we’ll catch you right back here next week.

This was an enjoyable listen that reminded me of the books of Matthew Quick. I learned a lot about SMA, about which I knew nothing before. Daniel is an excellent narrator and a persistent character. The cops seemed a bit too uninterested, but I guess it would make sense if someone cried wolf.

I know the author from podcasts, and online writing, so I grabbed the chance to read his first novel. It didn't disappoint. The conceit wasn't new, but we don't get a ton of books with disabled main characters and the writing was great. I really liked this one!

How Lucky by Will Leitch
Publisher: Harper
Publication Date: May 11, 2021
Genre: General Fiction (Adult), Literary Fiction

How Lucky by Will Leitch is a beautiful book about hope, overcoming adversity, and friendship.

How Lucky reminded me of the movie Rear Window in so many ways and I loved how this was done! (I know the author disagrees, but I saw the inspiration there.)

This book was enjoyable to read with a great story!

I'm so grateful to Will Leitch, Harper, and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this ARC ebook in exchange for my honest review.

Such a quirky, heartwarming read. Daniel is physically disabled and lives in the college town of Athens Ga. He is not able to take care of himself at all. He is dependent on two caregivers. He trusts them implicitly. He has to, because not only do they take care of him, they are his voice. He has a day job, from his computer and all seems to be well… until one day he see’s, what he thinks is a kidnapping on the street in front of his house. His concern is how should he tell people about this.. Does he call the police? Tell his caregivers? Also what happens when the kidnapper and Daniel meet on an online chat room?? Such an interesting story.. Daniel’s character is so heartwarming and real.. This was another quick read with a ton of substance..

Thanks so much to NetGalley for the chance to read this book How Lucky and for introducing me to a an author that I was not familiar with.
The main character, Daniel, suffers from a physical disability called Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). This however, does not stop him from living independently with assistance from aides during the day and night. He has a very close childhood friend Travis, who he is blessed to have in his life. Travis treats him like a regular kind of guy and always looks out for him. Daniel has a strong support staff that care about him.
The novel begins somewhat like Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock. Daniel has been noticing a female college age Chinese student walking past his house every morning. One morning a car passes by her and she gets in the car. Did she know him? Was she kidnapped?
While Daniel is working online as a customer service rep for Spectrum Airlines, he begins to worry about this girl. The local news and college are reporting her missing. Daniel posts online that he saw her get in a car and could probably identify the person. When he begins to get threatening emails back, he gets the police involved.
This is an easy read. The author uses background knowledge of SMA to incorporate this physical disability throughout the novel. As the suspense builds, you want to cheer for Daniel at all times. He is strong, independent and resilient. He considers himself lucky regardless of his limitations from SMA.

This was such a unique book, definately the first I've read like this. I've never read a mystery/suspense book with a disabled narrarator but I loved his personality and how he views his life. The mystery was kind of boring but the main character and Travis make up for that. Loved this one! Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this book, seeing as it was a window book for me. I enjoyed the MC talking to the reader about how his life has been molded by his use of a wheelchair and computer. The ending left me wanting more. It felt like there were opportunities to "cheer" more than was done and there should have been more fanfare when everything is completed. I did like the voice of the MC and would love to have him become "a secret spy" using the computer as his tool.

5 stars! I wasn't sure about this book in the very beginning but about 40 pages in I was hooked. I fell in love with these characters, I can't remember the last book I read where I cared deeply about so many of the characters. Daniel, Travis, Manjita, Ai-Chin, they were all brought beautifully to life. I enjoyed, for lack of a better word, reading a novel from the perspective of a disabled person. I was struck by how dependent Daniel was and how the feeling of helplessness always surrounded him, and what a big deal, what an enormous accomplishment it is for him to do so many things that we take for granted and also by how many things he can't do that we also take for granted.I loved this author's writing style and I'm happy to see this is his 5th book because I have a few additional titles to peruse now. The message of this book, or one of them anyway, is to make sure you don't waste your life, to make sure you live it in a way that makes the world a little better place, in whatever ways you can, small or big, One line in particular, which is spoken twice during two pivotal scenes, deeply resonated with me. Letting someone help you is the nicest thing you can do for anyone. This book, and that line in particular, will stay with me for quite a while. Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free e-book in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. Based on the description, I was hoping for a fast paced and engrossing thriller, and that's what I got! The author did a wonderful job at building compassion for the narrator and his disability without it feeling forced or sentimental. It was compelling from the beginning, both for the mystery and for the desire to learn more about the narrator. A great choice for any thriller fan.

This wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t know much about it before I read it but I did like the idea of a man who watches from the window and sees something out of place. It was a big slow for me but definitely worth a shot.

A perhaps underrated aspect of a story’s quality is our engagement by the storyteller.

Yes, I mean the person crafting the story in question, of course, but there’s more to it than that. Once we venture beyond the third-person omniscience POV, well … now you’ve got a narrator. Another layer of the storytelling onion.

There are plenty of narrators in the world of fiction, with wave upon wave of first-person perspectives lapping against assorted narrative shores. There’s a certain degree of familiarity that comes with that plentitude – it’s rare for you to get a story to you by someone whose like you’ve never encountered before.

But in Will Leitch’s new novel “How Lucky,” that’s precisely what we get.

The person at the center of this story – the one through whose eyes we watch it all unfold – is unlike anyone you’ve met in literature. And the story that he shares with us is thrilling and funny and just a little off-kilter, driven by the notion that the desire to save the day isn’t confined to a certain type of person. It’s a story of living a life of limitation, yet refusing to be defined by those limitations – even when the world around you isn’t quite so free of judgment.

Daniel’s living a pretty good life. He’s a twentysomething living in Athens, Georgia – go Bulldogs! – and generally making his way. He’s got a couple of close friends that he sees regularly, including his childhood best bud Travis, and a solid job as the social media manager of a regional airline. He’s got his own place and embraces the opportunities that his home presents him.

Daniel is also a lifelong sufferer of spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA. It’s a rare degenerative disease that attacks and destroys motor neurons, rendering those afflicted with increasingly weak musculature. In its worst forms, it is a death sentence for infants. Milder forms – for a given definition of “milder,” anyway – take longer to reach their full deadly potential. For Daniel, this means that he is confined to a wheelchair. He is unable to speak and can barely move on his own. He has caregivers that help him eat and bathe and the like.

And yet, he’s happy. Thanks to a childhood with a single mother who refused to coddle him and a best friend who never treated him as anything other than just another kid, he has grown into someone who maintains as much independence as possible, given the circumstances.

But one day, Daniel’s life becomes a good deal more complicated. He’s on his balcony, gazing out toward the street, when he sees a young woman walking toward campus. A car pulls up, there’s a brief conversation, and in she climbs. Not long afterward, Daniel discovers that the girl in question – an Asian veterinary student named Ai-Chin – has been reported missing.

What follows leads Daniel down a path he’d never expected – a path where he tries to be the hero in a manner that real life rarely leaves room for. And while he’s got his limitations, he’s not going to let them keep him from trying to uncover what happened to Ai-Chin … and to save her before it is too late.

“How Lucky” is a solid thriller, with the layers of cat-and-mouse mystery that lend themselves well to a page-turner. You’ve got the usual red herrings and dead ends and the like. All of those aspects are well-conceived and well-written.

But what makes this book really special is Daniel. We simply don’t see heroes like Daniel in any story, whether it be written or filmed or staged. He is a unique and engaging creation, reasonably clever and adept, but ultimately just a regular guy forced into irregular circumstances.

And that’s the thing – he really is just a regular guy. The reason that “How Lucky” works is because Leitch never once allows Daniel to become some sort of caricature of the disabled. While his actions can’t help but be influenced by his disease, Daniel is never defined by SMA. He’s not defined by his wheelchair or his need for care. By letting us into Daniel’s head, Leitch allows us to understand that his protagonist is just … a dude. A reasonably smart, funny dude, but a dude nonetheless. We’re not expected to view Daniel’s situation as either noble or tragic – it just IS, serving as only one of many aspects of his identity.

Now, the story that surrounds Daniel doesn’t always work. There are a few issues – particularly in the book’s final third or so – that fail to fully click. Things get a little wonky with regard to certain subplots and the story’s resolution feels a touch rushed. But for the most part, it’s a solidly-constructed thriller that balances its tension with humor and self-awareness.

“How Lucky” introduces us to a hero unlike any we’ve seen before, someone committed to help a complete stranger despite not really grasping the true stakes of his involvement. In Daniel, we’re given the chance to experience a story told from a perspective we don’t often get – a story that is taut and poignant and surprisingly funny, all through the eyes of someone who sees the world through an altogether unique lens.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Quirky and fun, Will Leitch has crafted a tale with an engaging plot and a wonderful narrator whose voice is inspiring and authentic, Daniel's endless optimism, resilience, and perspective on life simply brightened my day.

This book was a little bit of everything - it was both heartwarming and witty as well as suspenseful.

The story had great character development. Daniel is remarkable, and I read the story half holding my breath. Even though I knew where Daniel's actions would lead him, Leitch STILL had me on the end of my seat. Daniel's caretaker Marjani and his best friend Travis are both devoted to him and really well drawn and delightful in their own ways.

If I had any regrets, is that the book ended exactly where it did. I wasn't ready for it to end, and I wanted to know what came next for Daniel.

I went into this one a little blind, and I was delighted through and through. Fans of Fredrik Bachman and Richard Russo will love this book. This one is a favorite for the year so far!