A thoroughly immersive Dark Academia read, Stacy Willingham’s “Only If You’re Lucky” is told in two timelines with a single POV character. Margot is a shy college sophomore, trying to fit in but still reeling from the death of Eliza, her best friend in high school. When Lucy, a charismatic force of nature, “adopts” her and invites her to move into an off-campus house next door to a fraternity, Margot eagerly joins Lucy’s tight-knit circle and we’re off to the races in this blend of psychological insight with a twisty plot.

Not all the characters are likeable or reliable, (they party endlessly) but the escapades ring true for twenty-somethings who are feeling their way toward adulthood. There’s an underlying feeling of tension throughout, particularly when Levi, the boy Margot suspects of killing Eliza, joins the fraternity and wedges himself into Margot’s orbit. Willingham paints a picture of a world in which it’s not only your enemies but your friends you need to watch out for.

This was a compelling mix of suspense and character exploration. Not your typical twist-a-minute thriller so if a slower pace bothers you, this might not be for you. But I for one appreciated the deeper exploration of what each girl was going through as well as the intriguing mystery.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press in exchange for an honest review.

When we reach the end of this year, I know I will be looking back on Only If You're Lucky as a standout thriller, just as I did with Stacy Willingham’s 2023 release, All The Dangerous Things.

This is the first thriller of 2024 that had me swearing out loud, and left me gasping in awe as the hits kept coming. There’s an incredible and everyday hook (maybe it’s actually two incredible and everyday hooks), impeccable reveal timing and delivery… and it clearly has a thing with groups of three. Sigh.

Characters Margot, Sloane and Nicole, three identities squirreled away, hand picked and befriended by puppet master Lucy. Each personality sharp and precise, playing their intended role perfectly.

How on earth can an authors brain come up with this level of cunning corruption? Each aspect interwoven and connected, so deliberately laid out. Suddenly hours had gone past when it felt like mere minutes had transpired as I devoured this edgy plot. This book was there, and then it was over.

Do you want to know what a perfect audiobook is? This is it. Karissa Vacker absolutely nailed the inflection and intrigue the story provided while the characters become bigger than the page with her voicing them. With Lucy, the narration is vindictive and Vacker seems almost deliberate in word choice (even though she is simply just reading the book); Margot and Nicole’s voices are flawlessly naïve and mousy; with Sloane, the narration is even more subtle, adding to the constant friend or foe debate ever present; Detective Frank, has a smugness and air of authority to his voice. Each character has their role in the story, and Vacker has encompassed those qualities and traits, bringing them forth effortlessly with her voice. It is absolutely the perfect specimen of audiobook narration.

One request to anyone picking up this book after reading my review: read the acknowledgements. Just read them.

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books and Macmillan Audio for the complimentary copies to read and review.

What happens when vanilla makes friends with fire?

This twisty thriller focuses on college students Margot, who is struggling to find a way forward after the sudden death of her best friend last year, and Lucy, a firecracker rule breaker always looking for her next thrill. In the "before" timeline, Margot, Lucy, and 2 other women have just rented a house next door to a fraternity - where Levi, the man Margot blames for the death of her best friend, has just moved in. In the "after" timeline, Levi is dead and Lucy is missing.

This book has themes of female friendships, the darker side of college life, and the consequences of secrets and lies. It's one part How to Get Away with Murder and one part Pretty Little Liars and I was 100% here for this recipe. These characters are both unlikable and captivating, and the gritty underbelly of seeking a sense of belonging in a female friend group is exposed. Stacy Willingham has penned some of my favorite thrillers of late; her unique and twisty plots have made her an auto-buy author for me. Only If You're Lucky is a slow burn, with each twisted puzzle piece falling into place as we approach what I consider to be her best ending yet.

My sincere thanks to St. Martin's Press, NetGalley, and Stacy Willingham for the opportunity to walk on the wild side with Lucy and Margot in exchange for my honest review.

Stacy Willingham is quickly becoming one of my auto-buy authors. Her new book was highly anticipated and I’m grateful for the opportunity to read it.

This book was a slow burn suspense that leaned toward YA. Margot is stumbling through college, grieving her best friend Eliza and feeling out of place. Along comes Lucy who brings excitement and a sense of belonging.

Margot has new friends but she can’t shake her past. When someone from her past shows up, it all comes back to her.

Nothing is at it seems in this book. Everyone has secrets and they are slowly revealed. This story dragged initially, but it picked up midway. I couldn’t stop reading to find out what happened. If you like a thriller that unravels gradually, this is the book for you.
Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for my ARC.

stacy willingham is the master of keeping the feeling of something being so deeply off but not quite being able to place your finger on what. margot has never fully recovered from her best friend, eliza’s, death. hiding herself at college she ends up moving in with the girls she thinks she wants to be like..especially lucy who reminds her of eliza. but beneath the surface she starts to realize things are more off kilter than she thought. i love multiple timelines and unreliable narrators and this book so hit the mark for me. probably my favorite of hers so far!

Pub Day Review: Only If You're Lucky by Stacy Willingham
Swipe for Goodreads synopsis ➡️

Happy happy Tuesday, friends, and happy Pub Day to Only If You're Lucky! I was a big fan of Willingham's previous two releases, and her 2023 release, All The Dangerous Things, was in my top 10 reads of last year, so I was very excited to read this one.

Only If You're Lucky is a character-driven novel, following four college friends living in an off campus house. Our MC is Margot is more of an introvert, shying away from social gatherings in favor of staying in her dorm room every night, mostly due to a tragic event that happened a year prior. But when larger than life Lucy invites her to move to an off-campus house, she can't resist. Margot is drawn into Lucy's world of partying and is having a blast, until one of the frat boys living next door turns up dead, and Lucy disappears without a trace.

I feel like many of us have encountered someone like Lucy at one point in our lives: a larger-than-life personality, who everyone is just inexplicably drawn to. I thought her character was really interesting, and I love how we get deeper into her mind and motivations as the book goes on.

Interesting characters aside, I felt like the plot of this one really dragged. I did like the back and forth timeline and how the secrets started being revealed gradually, but I felt like the middle of the book really dragged. I also thought that the book was really wordy, with so many unnecessary paragraphs that just went on and on, and I found myself skimming a lot of them.

I did like the elements of the author's real life experience that she brought into the book (which she explains in the author's note) and there were some good unexpected twists, but overall, I didn't love this one as much as her others.

It was a like, not a love for me.

Stars: 3.5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

This is a very well written psychological thriller, while it contains four mysteries. It is mostly about the power of obsessive friendships, finding yourself in others and the desperation of maybe losing them. Lots of small details are dropped and all come together in the end. Lots of secrets are revealed. It is more psychological so a slower pace but that was part of what made it work, the slow build up

4 stars

I really like Stacy Willingham’s writing. She is quickly becoming a favorite author of mine!

Only if You’re Lucky did not disappoint. There were many surprises throughout the book that really caught me of guard. Some you can figure out before hand, but the ending really caught me off guard.

Overall the writing was great, the storyline was easy and interesting to read, and the characters were debatable. I liked Margot, I found myself feeling sorry for her in her attempts to fit in. I felt she put herself out too much and that’s why she found herself in these precarious positions she did. And Lucy, well, she wasn’t very likable but she did kind of redeem herself in the end because of her “situation”. This book is a solid 4 stars!

***Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC copy in return for an honest review***

When I first started reading Only If You’re Lucky, a thriller set amongst a group of college friends, it seemed oddly reminiscent of my own college campus (the nickname for the all-girl dorm I lived in freshmen year was the same). So, I was quite pleased with myself when the story ended and the author discussed her own college experience in the acknowledgments—lo and behold, she attended my alma mater as well (Go Dawgs!).

Even though the actual story was NOTHING like my own college experience, and the setting was actually in a completely different state, the overwhelming sense of familiarity kept me hooked with this slow burn the entire time; but let me be clear, burn s.l.o.w.l.y. it did. If you like your thrillers, well, thrilling, this one saves the thrills for the last quarter of the novel and it might be a bit of a slog. If you, however, enjoy a character study, particularly about the intense relationships of young women, then this might be the book for you. I didn’t really like any of the characters in the story (a common complaint that I tend to have with thrillers) but I was eager to see where the story went, and the setting, in particular, kept me turning pages. The last quarter of the book kept me up past my bedtime and while I predicted certain outcomes, others left me feeling foolish that I didn’t figure out some of the twists, given the many clues.

Overall, an entertaining read, albeit with a slow start.

I really tried to give this a go. I made it all the way to about 30% in but the characters are so boring, indistinguishable and annoying. The plot is also too jumbled with the flashbacks and flash forwards not being labelled every chapter drove me crazy.

Only If You’re Lucky by Stacy Willingham

When Margot heads into her second year of college, she is still struggling to start a new chapter of her life. She desperately needs a new beginning that helps her cope with the death of her best friend. When mesmerizing and mysterious Lucy befriends her, it sets off a series of events that no one anticipated. Well, maybe almost no one? We all have multiple sides to us…some just happen to be deadlier than others.

This, imho, is the best of Willingham’s books. It kept me completely enthralled and fit into the murder, mayhem, and mystery box. It’s a great binge read for a stormy or dark night. Willingham (via Margot) describes in the following quote what a good book can do, and it definitely applies to Only If You’re Lucky:

“That’s the beauty of fiction, of words: when your life becomes too boring, too bland, too hard or depressing or chaotic or calm, they allow you to simply float away and inhabit another, try it on for size.”

#onlyifyourelucky #stacywillingham #mystery #mysterybooks #murdermystery #minotaurbooks #minotaur #netgalley #bookreview #bookclub

Only If You're Lucky is Stacy Willingham's newest mystery novel, out today. This was a twisty, unpredictable story set on a college campus, where not everything is as it seems.

Margot has spent her freshman year at Rutledge being invisible, going to classes and staying in her room. She has kept to herself even more after a tragedy the summer before school started. But now, Lucy, the most popular girl on campus, has invited Margot to live off-campus with her and her two best friends, Sloane and Nicole. Being enamored of the three of them, jealous of their friendship, Margot agrees, but she has no idea what she's getting into.

When another tragedy strikes at the college and Lucy goes missing, the rest of the girls are questioned about what happened. Did Lucy murder their next door neighbor then run away? What happened in the sand dunes during the big frat party? And what is Lucy hiding?

This was a gripping mystery with twists that I didn't see coming. I couldn't have predicted this ending. Margot is a relatable character, dealing with grief and loss, and trying to fit into this friend group. Lucy is a charismatic leader, bringing everyone with her wherever she wants to go. Sloane and Nicole are less of a focus in the story, but are nonetheless fleshed out with their own personalities and issues.

Written with a non-linear timeline and not-so-reliable narrator, the story was paced well with intertwining plotlines. Margot's home life and college life end up intersecting in ways that she didn't want, the lives of the characters twisting together. Willingham's ability to write an interesting, suspenseful, surprising story is unmatched.

All in all, a great suspense novel with unpredictable twists and turns. If you enjoy Stacy's other novels, then definitely pick this one up! I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys the books of Karin Slaughter or Ruth Ware.

Thank you to @NetGalley and @MinotaurBooks for a digital copy for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.

I’ve heard so many amazing things about Stacy Willingham’s thrillers, and now I know why!! She channels her readers into the psyche of her characters in a way that hooks you and doesn’t let go. 𝘖𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘐𝘧 𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 𝘓𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘺 is full of moral ambiguity, toxic friendships, and enigmatic characters in a dark academia setting. This book kept me guessing the entire time, and I absolutely devoured it!

Margot is trudging through the end of her freshman year of college while grieving the death of her best friend when she meets Lucy - the magnetic, cunning, beautiful “it girl” on campus. Lucy befriends Margot and pulls her into a new life full of frat parties and shared secrets among a new circle of friends. Just when college life seems to be looking up for Margot, things take an unexpected and deadly turn, leaving one person dead, and Lucy missing without a trace.

This book really took me back to my college days and had me reliving so many of those mixed emotions that come with starting a brand new life, tasting freedom for the first time, wanting a clean slate, and wanting to belong. Willingham shows us how easy it is to get caught up in someone else’s orbit, and how quickly things can spin out of control.

This is a slow burn, which might not appeal to everyone, but I loved the pacing and the way she weaves in flashbacks to give us clues and build tension, right up to the big twist (which I did not see coming!) Everything about this thriller was just so expertly written and well-crafted. As someone who loves character-driven stories with a strong plot that’s full of surprises, this is as good as it gets!

Thank you Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the e-ARC! I can’t wait to dive into Willingham’s back list!

A very fast read but not too memorable.

It was more of a character study than anything, I thought. There was an air of mystery surrounding our cast but nothing to me was very shocking.

Lucy was a complicated person. She did a lot to get into Margot's good graces and it all unravels slowly. Margot, having been through the death of her best childhood friend, was understandably standoffish but I wish she had more of a backbone throughout instead of just at the end.

I did guess one little mystery not too long before it was shown on the page but all it made me think was "huh, that's interesting I guess".

I still think this author's first novel was the best

Margot’s college life is not starting out how she wanted it. Her best friend from high school passed away and since then she has become a wallflower. She ends up with her current roommate as her friend because it was easy. But the three girls that captivate her are where she wants to be. Lucy is at the center of those girls and when she asks Margot to move in with her and the other two, Margot drops her current roommate. Everything changes from there. Margot starts to get more comfortable until a fraternity boy is murdered and Lucy goes missing.

This is a bit more of a slow burn than I was expecting. I also was annoyed with Margot - she was an unreliable narrator. The middle kind of stalled out for me but the ending made up for it. Could this also be considered a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde retelling?

Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Minotaur Books. Only If You’re Lucky comes out tomorrow.

I really, really enjoyed this one! Only If You’re lucky is a slow burn mystery centered around female friendship and belonging and the lies we tell ourselves (and each other). It’s also a tale about morality, whether people are inherently good or evil, or if like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, they are “radically both.”

This story follows Margot, who starts her first year of college in a haze of depression, grief and guilt following her best friend’s death. Margot has always been the shy, careful friend, but when popular girl, Lucy Sharpe, asks her to move in with her & her friends, Margot can’t help but be drawn in to Lucy’s larger than life (and maybe even dangerous) personality. The four girls are all opposites, but they find themselves intertwined as lies are told and secrets are unraveled.

Nothing is as it seems with these girls. The house they move into is a character of its own. I love Stacy Willingham’s writing and this book really made me think. I was drawn in the entire time.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur for an advanced copy of this book. It releases tomorrow 1/16!!

Rating: 4 out of 5

Review: I’ve been a fan of Stacy’s since I received an arc of her debut novel. While her debut remains my fav, this book was great!

She has a way of describing things that I don’t see often. Her books are very atmospheric which I love! This book was sort of a slow start for me, but I was dying to know what happened next. The backstory started to seem like it would go on forever, but once the twists started it was a rollercoaster of events. I loved the ending of this book and how Stacy is able to tie every miniature detail into the main plot. Check this one out!

Margot spent her first year at Rutledge studying and keeping mostly to herself while still mourning the death of her best friend who should have been here with her. At the end of the first year, Lucy, a bold and dangerous girl approaches Margot to be the fourth roommate in the house she's found off campus, away from the dorms. Something about Lucy makes everyone do what she wants. But there is a secret, sinister side to Lucy, and there are secrets, dark secrets about her too. By the middle of the second college year a fraternity brother is murdered, Lucy is missing and Margot has learned all of Lucy's dark secrets and even tho they are hard to believe, Margot knows they are all true.

Only If You’re Lucky was a twisty tale filled with secrets, murder, and drama. The first half of this book took me forever to get through but I did fly through the last half of the book. It seemed like things got more interesting towards the latter half of the story. I liked the author’s writing and I thought the main characters were intriguing. There were a lot of twists in this story and things definitely got wild at the end. I don’t think the ending was very believable though and it seemed way too far-fetched. I was not a fan of the ending, but I still would recommend this book to mystery/thriller lovers.

3.5/5 stars

“You’re only young once, and only if you’re lucky."

Wow, what a ride! This is my second read by Stacy Willingham (I also read A Flicker in the Dark) and I loved this one even more! I usually find thrillers to be relatively predictable, but for me, this one was anything but. I thought I had it at all figured out time and time again, but nope…I didn’t see the twists coming.

- Thriller
- Mystery
- Dual Timeline
- Single POV