A dark and chilly look into female friendships.
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All eyes go to Lucy Sharpe on their college campus so when her eyes focus on Margot, a shy and studious freshman, she can’t believe her luck. Immediately she says yes to being Lucy’s roommate along with Sloane, the sarcastic one, and Nicole, the nice one. Together they live next to the biggest fraternity on campus. With Margot finally coming out of her shell and out of the grief that’s had a hold of her since her best friend died before high school graduation, she feels like she’s found her place. But seeing a blast from the past threatens to ruin the new life she’s made for herself. A murder occurs and Lucy turns up missing. How are all these events connected?
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This was…okay. I guessed most of the twists and wanted more of a resolution at the end than I got. I had heard this one wasn’t as good as her first two so I feel like that might have swayed my feelings going into it. Still a solid thriller for fans of the genre and the audiobook was well done. This book released this week!

CW: vomit, drug and alcohol abuse, grief, death, murder, gaslighting, sexual assault, drastic weight loss due to trauma, PTSD, adultery

🔥 Only If You’re Lucky by Stacy Willingham 🔥

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5

💭 Thoughts:
If this book could be summed up in two words it would be SLOW BURN. 🔥 I loved the imagery and dark academia setting; however, I felt like it dragged until the last 25-30%. By the time I got to the end, the twists felt underwhelming. I wish they were sprinkled throughout instead of in bulk at the end of the story. I absolutely LOVED a Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things, so I recommend those two over this one!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I’ve read all of this author and I will continue to do so! We meet Margot in her first year of college. She is shy and quiet. At the end of her freshmen year, Lucy Sharpe tells her she’s going to join her and her two friends, Nicole and Sloane living in a house over the summer and for the next school year. The house is owned by a fraternity and Nicole is dating the Fraternity president. Margot is taken with Lucy, she reminder her of her best friend, Eliza, who unexpectedly passed away. The four them become good friends and have a wonderful time together. During the middle of their sophomore year, one of the Fraternity brothers is found dead. Now Lucy is missing and no one can seem to find her.

This book was SO good. Willingham successfully layers the storylines together to fit perfectly. Reading this book was like peeling an onion, as I kept reading, so many things were revealed. I didn’t know where this book was going to go (and honestly, I requested it on NetGalley purely because of the author), but I really enjoyed where the author decided to take this book. It felt new; it felt different.

Each character had such an individual personality. You could even tell by their actions, without saying a name, who it was because of how distinct these girls were. No one is really who you think they are, and that’s the best part! There were so many twists and turns it was great!

I know that this has been described as a slow burn, and maybe it is a little bit in the beginning and the middle, but it quickly speeds up (at least it did for me). I don’t think that I would change anything about this book. I’m so glad that I read it!

Margot is in her freshman year at Rutledge University in South Carolina. A place she was supposed to be with her best friend but unfortunately, she died in an accident before they could get there together. Or was it an accident? Margot blames it on Levi, a boy that came between Margot and Eliza and was with her when she fell. Margot is at loose ends until she meets Lucy. Lucy is wild and in charge, a lot like Eliza in many ways, and seems to be just what Margot needs. She ends up moving in with Lucy, Sloane and Nicole, right next to a fraternity house. As time goes on, she starts to see different things about Lucy that make her pause but doesn't seem to keep her away. Little things she says are starting to get to Margot. Sloane warns her that Lucy likes to keep people dangling but Margot finds excuses for her all the time. And then, Levi shows up at the college and things change dramatically. Levi is murdered and Lucy is missing. Anyone would kill for the right reason or person, wouldn't they?

The story started to drag for me a bit but so picked up with the ending. Fantastic ending! I was reeling with the reveals! That is what lead me to the 4.5 stars.

Genre: Thriller

Format: Audio/E-book - thanks @netgalley and @macmillan.audio for the complimentary copy!

4.25🌟 - I enjoyed it!

I love a campus thriller! This one was so fun. This felt like a lot of drama, more character-driven, and had more suspense building up to the plot! I felt really invested in the story and finished it within a a day!

Thank You to #NetGalley,,#Minotaur Books, #StacyWillingham for the free eARC #Only if you're lucky

Stacy Willingham has become a new favorite author. Her books usually have a lot of thriller and suspense, but this one is more mystery and drama. The first 100-200 page area a slow burn. The story can become confusing between the before and after and then all the characters. I liked some of the characters, but not all of them.

After her best friend Eliza dies weeks after graduation, Margo, heads off a liberal arts college in South Carolina. She is very shy, keeps to herself, and stays inside the little shell she has created for herself. Eventually larger than life, charismatic, bold, and center of the attention Lucy Sharpe notices her towards the end of freshman year.

Lucy asks Margo to be her roommate. She finds herself living in off-campus housing with Lucy, Sloane, and Nicole. Margo starts coming out or her shell and starts to share her trauma and become close friends with Lucy. Half-way through sophomore year, one of the fraternity boys living next door is murdered and Lucy goes missing. .
Will they ever discover the truth? Were their relationships real or fake? How well did they really know each other? Can the heal after everything they've been though.

Only If You’re Lucky is a wildly thrilling read. The whole story has such an eerie feeling - you know something is about to happen - and the anticipation of the climax of the story is fabulous. The characters are creepy with a setting even creepier. The twists came out of nowhere and left me stunned. Stacy Willingham’s books keep getting better and better.

I have posted this review on Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5970285377

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/C2NVtKDr0Zw/?igsh=MXBqdnc5MWMyazk3Nw==

And Amazon

I enjoyed this overall! The twist at the end was amazing. I enjoyed the characters, there were some parts that I found myself skimming with the amount of detail. Overall, I really enjoyed!

If you knew you could get away with murder, would you do it?

🤯🤯🤯🤯 this book blew my mind!! “only if you’re lucky” is a dark, twisty thriller, unsettling tale of female friendships, deception, lies and morality.

Lucy Sharpe is larger than life. Magnetic, addictive. Bold and dangerous. 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.

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.

This was a slow burn but I found the alternating timelines of past and present incredibly intriguing. Highly recommend!!

Release Date: January 16th, 2024 - Out Now!

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan for my free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I don't know what it is, but for some reason, Stacy Willingham's writing just "gets me." I found her stories to be so bingeable and different from each other in the best ways. I love the set up of this one and I found each character to be complex to the point where you can't wait to find out more by them. I found the "twist" to be very shocking and I think this may be my favorite.

I am so excited to discuss this book in my upcoming bookclub on my YouTube channel.

This is a phenomenal dark academia thriller centered around friendships and secrets. It was definitely a long slow burn, but I promise it is all worth it in the end! The twist shocked me, I didn’t see it coming. One great part of this book is that it is very character driven, to the point that I felt like I started to really know these people. The only drawback I found to this book was that the ending felt a little rushed.

This was the second Stacy Willingham book that I’ve read, and it will not be the last! Thank you so much to NetGalley and publisher for the ARC.

I love a good dark and twisty novel, and this one definitely that. After a boring and safe first year at college, Margot becomes enamored with a girl on campus named Lucy Sharpe. Lucy has a magnetic personality and honestly reminds Margot of her best friend who passed away before college. The friend who was supposed to be there at school with her. When Lucy notices Margot at the end of the year and invites her to be their roommate, Margot is shocked but obviously can't resist. With little knowledge of pretty much anything except that this is a great opportunity to escape her boring (but sweet) roommate, she ends up in off campus housing with Lucy and two other friends Nicole and Sloane. All the while she continues to wonder how she was chosen by this clearly popular and self-assured girl who could have picked anyone to be her roommate. The house the girls live in is connected to a frat house on the other side of a shed in the backyard. The frat house/frat boys introduce a boy from Margot's past that she believes is responsible for her best friend's death. And when he ends up dead on a night out, many mysteries and secrets start to unravel.

The ending definitely requires some suspension of belief, and the novel was definitely pretty dark over all showing some not so pretty sides of college life. I also found the characters pretty unlikable over all. Themes explored are definitely heavy on the ideas of trust and betrayal. Who can we really trust? How far would we go to keep a secret?

Though I have not yet read any of Stacy Willingham's other novels I would be inclined to do so because this definitely kept me interested and wanting to find out what would happen next, though the characters and setting might not be my very favorite.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy to read and review.

I love this author but this book was so slow. It was so slow that I didn't care about anything. I wasn't intrigued, I didn't care what happened or the why.

I was bored for the most part and it was super underwhelming. I'm probably in the minority and thats ok but this book, just was not for me. 2,5 stars

rounded to 3

When Margot begins her freshman year of college she is still mourning the death of her best friend but when outgoing and popular Lucy Sharpe invites her to join her off campus house the following year, Margot jumps on the opportunity. Everything seems to be going great for Lucy and her new crew of friends until a frat boy next door is found dead and Lucy suddenly disappears.

I love an academia set thriller and this slow burn was so well written. I loved how there was dual timelines that connected Margot’s past to the current investigation. The themes of female friendship and lies and secrets we keep from those closest to us were also deeply explored and relatable to anyone who went through the college experience.

Read if you like:
-Dark academia
-Slow burns
-Murder mysteries

This was such a snoozefest for me 😕. I was SO bored. I kept losing interest. Took me FOREVER to finish it. And that’s a first for Stacys’ books.

The timeframes were hard to keep track of. All of the chapters should have been labelled. This book did not need to be as long as it was.

If this wasn’t an ARC, I would have abandoned it long ago.


Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for a DRC. Only If You’re Lucky is available now.

ONLY IF YOUR LUCKY is a very well-written, dark academia, slow-burn thriller. For me, the slow burn paid off. It’s more drama/mystery than the prior two books by this author. I like the dual timeline to see how the MC present was connected to her past. While it takes a little while for this one to pick up, it still had me invested from the start. The writing pulls you in and makes you want more. I enjoyed the twists and definitely recommend picking this up.
Stacy Willingham’s books have been a hit for me since her debut and I can’t wait for more!

“𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐦𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫, 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐢𝐭?”
 
I’m always up for a dark academia themed book, and Stacy Willingham’s latest delivers a dark slow burn tale.
 
Willingham changes things up, focusing this time on a group of young college-aged females who live together in off-campus housing. Margot, the narrator, is both buried under her grief of the death of her best friend, Eliza, and wanting desperately to be molded by those around her to help her move forward. Willingham creates a super strong opening that then flashes back, reminding me so much of the narrative structure of the tv show How To Get Away With Murder. You get just enough peeks at the present that you wonder how the characters got there, keeping you hooked. It is easy to see why Margot is pulled in by Lucy (especially as Lucy radiates the sense of belonging Margot longs for), and gets bound together with Sloane and Nicole. I do wish we got more of Sloane and Nicole; they both were really interesting characters and it would’ve helped me feel more for them. All the characters are young, which lends to a bit of an immature selfish lean, so in turn they aren’t always likeable. The feeling of tension and uneasiness is present, alongside the perfect capture of the quick close friendships you develop in college. The last bit of the novel had some really good twists that I definitely didn’t see coming, which kept me turning the pages (the short chapters also helped!), although this is definitely more of a character-driven drama with suspense versus a full-out thriller.
 
Only If You’re Lucky is a story of a desperation to belong, friendship, misdirection, desire, head games and morality. I really enjoyed this college-set character-driven tale of deceit. Thank you to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the ARC!

This was a bit disappointing bc I’ve really enjoyed her other 2 books. Idk what it is about dark academia but every book I read I just don’t love. I found this to be a little slow, drawn out, boring at times. The storyline overall was actually interesting and the twists at the end were good but toooooooo slow.

If you are a fan of Stacy Willingham's previous novels, you will like Only If You're Lucky and so you can stop here and just go read it.

Only if You're Lucky is a standalone mystery thriller novel with college sophomore Margot as our protagonist and (mostly) reliable narrator. This book is a testament to Willingham's growth as an author with her most complex story to date and, in my opinion, her most fully-realized protagonist. Margot is dealing with trauma in some pretty unhealthy ways throughout but it does still feel like she's making an earnest effort on getting past it and it's not just there to add drama to the story or provide some useless red herring. She wants to change who she is and how she moves through the world but finds herself falling back into her old role as the sidekick when Lucy approaches her out of the blue and asks her to be her roommate. The mysteries of the book are well hidden and yet cleverly unveiled with enough hints and deliberate word choice sprinkled throughout to make it seem fair when you do finally see the pieces falling into place. This one is well worth your time and energy to read and I look forward to reading whatever the author puts out next!

Only If You’re Lucky by Stacy Willingham

This book started out so strong! The setting of this book brings us right back to undergrad: full of awkwardness, new friendships, parties, and discovery. Willingham’s descriptions of college life were so perfect I was smiling as I read them, remembering my own friendships and mishaps!
Probably the first 40% of the novel was fast-paced and we were given enough to be wanting more. Then we got a little deeper into the story and it got a little repetitive and sloggy (is that a word? Idk I made it up maybe). The mystery and the pacing went off the rails a little bit- but I think this is just her style. I know a lot of people love her books, so if that’s you I’m sure you’ll enjoy this! Very twisty, hard to put down at the end! Dark academia vibes for sure though- so if that’s book catnip for you, snap this one up!