Only If You’re Lucky by Stacy Willingham

My rating:
3/5
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Margot’s first year of college was not what she expected it to be after her best friend died right before they were going to go to college together. At school, Margot meets Lucy and is instantly drawn to her. They quickly become friends and Margot’s life changes forever.

I had seen a few mixed reviews of this one and I was so confused because when I went into this one I was absolutely captivated with the premise and setting. I love a college campus setting with a story with people who have addictive personalities.

About halfway through, I started to understand and lose interest in the story. It felt like the middle of the book was one big section that felt different from the beginning.

When everything comes together and is revealed, it left me with an unsatisfying feeling. I figured out most of the twists and at that point I wanted the book to be over.

I cannot quite say what happened with this one as to why I lost interest, but the beginning of this book was SO good!

I had read All The Dangerous things from the author and I really enjoyed that one, but this one missed the mark for me. I think that the characters were generally unlikeable which made me not connected to what happened to them.

Thank you netgalley for the ARC! You can read this one on January 16th, 2024!

Only If You're Lucky
by: Stacy Wilingham
St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books
release date:01/16/24

The on and off campus locale of South Carolina's Rutledge college serves as both a setting and an atmospheric character in Willingham's new academic thriller. Grieving over the loss of her best friend, Margot leaves her Outer Banks home bound for her first year of college. She then leaves her dormitory to live with three other women, including mysterious Lucy, in a house like no other.

Willingham's writing completely swept me up into the twists and turns throughout this steadily paced psychological mystery involving murder and disappearance. The boundaries of friendship, trust, and truth are jagged and taken to the limits. I have enjoyed all three of Willingham's novels, looking forward each time to her next one. I like her way with words and story.

Thank you to Net Galley and St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books for an advance reader's copy. My review is my own.

#OnlyIfYoureLucky #NetGalley #StMartinsPress #MinotaurBooks #StacyWillingham

Margot is sort of a wallflower during her freshman year in college since losing her best friend, Eliza in a tragic accident over the summer. But then she meets Lucy, a tantalizing girl that sucks her into her party world. When a neighboring fraternity boy ends up dead, quite the story about the girls starts to unfold.

Could I classify this one as a little bit of dark academia? It’s not really a throwback to academic old times, but it is set in a college and it’s surely dark! It was interesting to read that Willingham’s idea for this story came from the real place where she lived during college. It gave me a little bit of a vibe like The Maidens, The Secret History and The It Girl. I liked all of those and also enjoyed this read.

Pick this up if you’re looking for a slow burn dark thrill.

𝔹𝕠𝕠𝕜 ℝ𝕖𝕧𝕚𝕖𝕨
📖: Only If Your Lucky
✍🏼: Stacy Willingham
💻: Minotaur Books
📆: January 16, 2024
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ /5

⛔️16-up⛔️

👇🏽 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕚𝕗:
•you’re a fan of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
•bath and body works warm vanilla will always hold a special place in your nostalgic heart
•you love a dark academia thriller with complex friendships that always ends in murder


💭 𝕞𝕪 𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕤:
If you didn’t know it, I love Stacy Willingham.

I loved A Flicker In The Dark and All The Dangerous Things. This one is different. Slower maybe? But the writing is still incredible.

Slower than her first two books, this one focuses more on friendships and the complications that come along with them. The ins and outs of the complexities of trauma and how unresolved issues can lead to destruction.

Of course it had its mystery and a few twists as well as murder! It’s a really well written story and once again, I am blown away by Willinghams writing.

Keep your eyes peeled for this one! Hitting the shelves January 16!

Thank you so much to @netgalley @minotaur_books and @stacyvwillingham for this ARC! It was the perfect Christmas gift for this bookish gal.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this eARC. I really loved Stacy Willingham’s first 2 books, but this one was a bit of a let down. It reads a little bit too YA for my taste, and the main character Margo is super boring. It’s too slow and nothing really happens until about 80% into the book. I almost DNF’d.

Only If You’re Lucky follows Margot who meets Lucy at the end of freshmen year and moves in with her. This seems like a good thing for Margot because a few weeks before she was set to go to college with her best friend Eliza, she dies. The two end up becoming good friends. However things change when one of there neighbors end up dead, and Lucy goes missing. Are these two events connected?

I have read other books by Stacy Willingham and I really liked them. However, that wasn’t really the case with this book. It was written like a YA book and focused on a lot of a drama rather than thriller aspects. I found a lot of details in this book super unnecessary. The characters in this fell flat and I found myself not caring. I also felt like this book was hard to keep up with. The ending was okay. But this wasn’t the best thriller I have ever read.

I have been a big fan of Stacy Willingham since her first book, A Flicker in the Dark, was published and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the BOTM copy. I won a copy of All the Dangerous Things from a Goodreads Giveaway and I was elated! I tore through the book so fast that the ending left me dizzy with its astronomical ending. Her books have been five star reads because of the slow burn storyline and the explosive surprises.

This was one of my most anticipated books of 2024, but unfortunately, it fell short for me. I found the story repetitive, the main character slightly annoying, and the big surprises at the end didn’t excite me. Her books usually leave some kind of imprint in my mind that lasts years, but after reading this book, my mind was ready for something new and completely erased this story from its storage. *poof* 🧠

I will always be a fan of this author and look forward to her next book.

Thank you so much for the advanced copy of Only If You're Lucky.

As a big fan of Stacy Willingham, I was very excited to read her newest book. I absolutely loved it. One thing that I think is really cool is that this book is wildly different from her first two. The setting of the house in the college town was pretty cool. I got a pretty good mental image of the setting because the description was so vivid. I really like that it was Stacy's real connection to the book because it was written based on the house that she lived in during her college years.

While I was reading the story, I was a little skeptic because I felt like the story was going in circles about how much Margot missed Eliza and that Lucy was just replacing her....but geez that last 15% of the story absolutely made up for the slower parts. Stacy just really took her time simmering the story, leaving breadcrumbs along the way. I did not guess ANY of the twists and that always makes me giddy as a reader. I am already recommending this book to everyone I know and I wish it great success when it is published!

Well - this will be a 3 star review but one of those 'still read this it was good 3 star reviews'. Hear me out though.. I think if I didn't have high expectations from this author because of her previous two books I would have liked it a whole lot more? This one felt quite juvenile, then it almost lost me, and the end left me mega confused. I really don't want to spoil anything with my review, so I won't explain why I was confused or what I didn't like all that much about it, but it didn't hold up to her previous two books.

Now, in saying that, it was still fairly good. It was super dark, super twisty, the writing was phenomenal and it was hard to figure out what characters to like or trust. It was a fairly slow burn, but it weaved the dark tale to set you up for the blow out ending.

I am in the minority on this one I think, but this book just did not wow me at all like Willingham's other books have. Even if you consider this a slow burn mystery, there is very little that happens for the majority of the book. Sometimes, slow burns have great character development, but the majority of the characters to me were two dimensional and didn't stand out from one another. I've read reviews of people talking about twists and turns throughout the book......that was not my experience. The action picks up a bit at the end, but really the resolution is unsatisfying and incomplete at that point. I will pick up the next by Willingham, but I will temper my expectations a bit more going in.

3/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Stacy Willingham is an incredible author and I love her books A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things! Only If You’re Lucky is my least favorite of her books so far and fell a bit short for me. It is a slow burn and I did not feel like it ramped up until the last 30%. This book is centered around college life, mind games and friendships you would kill for!

Margot and Eliza were inseparable best friends since they were young, until Levi Butler moves in next door and their dynamic begins to change. Eliza mysteriously dies and Margot decides to continue with her and Eliza’s original plan to attend Rutledge. She is immediately enamored with the elusive Lucy. Lucy has undeniable charisma and her presence draws you in. Lucy invites Margot to live with her and two other girls, Sloane and Nicole, in a house they rent from the fraternity house next door. One of the fraternity boys is brutally murdered at a party they are all at and then Lucy goes missing shortly after… Everyone is harboring secrets and new details come to light as police are investigating the murder and missing person.

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press and Minotaur Books for the pleasure of reading this ARC of Only If You’re Lucky! Grab your copy when it comes out on January 16, 2024 🖤

This one was a 4.5 ⭐️ read for me, so I’m actually kinda surprised the overall rating isn’t higher.
I enjoyed the multiple timelines & how the story was formatted to keep you guessing, revealing a little in the present & then backtracking to reveal something in the past. By the end of it, when I thought I had it figured out, it surprised me again. With all the twists and reveals, it really hooked my attention and kept my interest through to the ending (which I also enjoyed).

Read if you enjoyed the show How to Get Away with Murder… but don’t expect it to be the same plot. I love books where everyone has secrets & often omits the truth and this book delivers on both accounts!

A big thank you to @minotaurbooks @macmillianaudio @netgalley & @stacywillingham for the EARC & ALC of this book! I really enjoyed (as usual) flipping between the ebook and the audiobook - especially since it was so well narrated by Karissa Vacker 🤯🙌🏼

My FIRST 5⭐️ of 2024 🎉🎉
I’ve been admiring her books after seeing them as BOTM picks & all over Bookstagram - but this is the first one I’ve actually READ (I promise I’m reading her backlist ASAP!) and I am so glad I did!

Only If You’re Lucky centers answers the question of “If you could get away with murder, would you do it?” - filled with themes of dark academia, greek life, friendship, death investigations & more. Flipping between past and present timelines in a very intentional & cliffhanger-esque way (yes I made up that phrase), I flew through the chapters hanging on to every word & trying to guess the way things were going to pan out - I was HOOKED!

I feel like I’ve read enough thrillers that it’s becoming easier for me to guess the ending, so when twists take me off guard I am THRILLED - which is what happened here! If you’re looking for a thriller that delves into the risks & rewards of friendship or one that makes you question if someone is who they say they are this book is for you!

**Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press-Minotaur, and Stacy Willingham for an ARC of this book!**

Have you ever seen the cult-classic film Clue?

(Yes, the film inspired by the board game, with the likes of Tim Curry, Martin Mull, Lesley Ann Warren, AND Madeline Kahn in it. If you haven't seen it...make it a weekend goal...you WON'T be sorry! But I digress)

The film actually has not one, not two, but THREE potential endings, wherein the mystery of whodunit is explained in detail by the butler, Wadsworth. He has figured out the murderer (or murderers!) in each scenario and tells the group in detail how, where, and when each murder was committed.

But one of the lines the group YELLS at the butler in each one of these endings UNFORTUNATELY popped into MY head when I was at about EIGHTY PERCENT of the way through this book...

"JUST GET ON WITH IT!"

Margot has that same buzz of excitement that every young adult has when entering college...and she's equally relieved to leave her high school life behind. Her closest friend Eliza died tragically a short time after graduation and Margot hasn't even begun to chip away at the complex trauma brought on by the event and everything that came before it...including Eliza's entanglement with some less-than-savory characters. But in an attempt to move on, Margot approaches college with fresh hope and settles into her first year at school with a nice albeit boring roommate.

That's all well and good -- until one day, she's approached by the enigmatic and intoxicating Lucy, a beautiful student who is the center of every crowd, with a reputation for danger. Lucy makes Margot an offer she can't refuse: she can come live with Lucy in an off-campus house with two other girls, the sassy Sloane and doormat Nicole, and have easy access to the exciting life she could only have imagined before. Eager to break out of her shell, Margot accepts the invitation and gets swept into a life of late nights, partying, drugs, and dangerous games of Spin the Bottle...not to mention entanglements with the Frat Boys Next Door.

But when a familiar face from her past reemerges, Margot realizes that the man she holds responsible for Eliza's death is within reach...and this might be her only chance to make things right. And when Lucy asks the group one night during one of her trademark games, "If you knew you could get away with murder, would you do it?"....is her question simply rhetorical? Or does Lucy's dark streak extend farther than her trio of soul sisters knows? And when she says she would do anything for her friends...does she truly MEAN...anything?

If there's one thing I NEVER expected from Stacy Willingham after being BLOWN AWAY by her first two books and the creativity, the artful prose, and the veritable HURRICANE of twists and turns in her plots...it was THIS kind of run-of-the-mill book. This one falls neatly into a category that has over-saturated the thriller space lately: the Terrible Teen and her Trio of Friends Trope. Granted, these characters are in their early twenties...but sad to say, this book reads ENTIRELY like YA. In some respects, this may have been hard to avoid, given the location and subject matter...but although I hate to say it, these are Willingham's least compelling characters to date. Although magnetic Lucy was intriguing at the start, by about 25% in, her character became as one-dimensional as the rest of them, and I became less and less interested in her backstory as the novel wore on.

And speaking of backstory...while Willingham normally balances two timelines with efficiency as well as intrigue...I found myself not really caring AT ALL what happened to Eliza in the past, despite the mysterious circumstances of her death. Each journey into the past felt like a snooze, and hardly more interesting than what was going on at the college...and trust me, after a few recounting of drug and vomit filled evenings, THAT picture was plenty clear too. I've just read too many books that are like this, and frankly, it's not the kind of experience I need recounted. The good characters were painted as overly good, the bad as overly bad, and when even the 'good' characters aren't particularly likable? You're in a for a LONG ride.

Speaking of long rides, though I somehow finished this book in 3 days, I think was due to sheer force of will and a desire to get THROUGH it rather than the experience I had with her previous books, where I couldn't flip the pages fast enough. The biggest reason for this struggle? Pacing. When I said earlier that at EIGHTY PERCENT I was STILL waiting for the majority of the big reveal...this is no exaggeration. Slow burns are often problematic for me in and of themselves because I tend to be a fan of breakneck twists and turns, quick chapters, and mile-a-minute twists rather than the alternative...and coming from Stacy, who KNOWS how to write a sharp and speedy book...this felt especially tortured. The amount of times I rolled my eyes in this book just out of sheer impatience made me want to throw in the towel more than once...but I was ACHING for the compelling ending I hoped would come once all was revealed. And the final twists ARE decent, and brought my rating up slightly...but in all honesty, as much as it pains me to say this...it felt like too little, too late.

There are so few voices in the genre who have emerged in the last few years with a voice that feels unique, fresh, and new with the writing chops to back it up, and I still consider Stacy Willingham to be one of these talents. In her author's note, Stacy reveals that she drew a LOT of inspiration for writing this book (aside from the murders, thankfully) from her time at the University of Georgia and some of the associated places there. It often seems like when an author writes a book inspired by life or something they felt they needed to say, it can go one of two ways: the work can stand out as one of their best and most authentic...or the departure from their 'usual' work can seem like a spur of the moment trip from the airport where you picked a destination at random...and rather than ending up in Vegas, you ended up in Boise.

But when it came to this particular gamble, however, I think Willingham would have been better not leaving ANYTHING to chance.

3.5 stars

It pains me to say this, but this was a flop for me. It was extremely boring, and it definitely lacked the "thrill" aspect I was expecting from this book and author. It's completely different from her first two, which I enjoyed and would recommend reading! But this one. Ehhh. Not so much. I commend the author for being so versatile and I will still read her next work. I just hope the next one grips me more than this one.

This story is centered around college students so it is dark academia, which has not always been my favorite theme when it comes to thrillers, but since this author's first two books were enjoyable I was hopeful I'd enjoy this one as well. I think the main issue I had was it felt like nothing was happening throughout the story to the lead up to the big reveal. Like we get it Lucy and Eliza are so much alike and so very charming and you, Margot, are a wallflower. Can we move on to the good stuff? 😅

It lacked the "thrill" aspect I look for in thrillers and was more drama and mystery centered. Sure, you are wondering what is going on and how the mystery part is going to play out. We get the past and present with the little bread crumps try to lead us along the way, but for me they weren't big enough to make me want to fly through the pages. When we finally get to the major twists at the end, they felt so farfetched to me it made the time invested to get to that point even more disappointing. I typically prefer the "edge of your seat", heart-pounding thrillers over drama/mystery reads anyway. However, if done right I enjoy them as well and in my opinion, this one wasn't. Like I said, read her first two books. I don't think you'll be disappointed with them! But I can't readily recommend this one, unfortunately.

**Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an advanced copy of this book and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion. I am posting this review to my Goodreads account immediately and will post it to my Amazon & Instagram accounts upon publication.

The twists!! Didn’t see a lot of them coming! I picked up a couple, but whoa! This is a great psychological thriller mixed with mystery and drama. Liked the unreliable narrator. The pacing was slow and wasn’t sure exactly where this all was going, but once things started to unravel, I couldn’t put the book down.

I liked the dark academia trope as this follows young college kids, heavy on female friendships. There was a lot of character building so that is where most of the suspense stems from than actual action.

I would def recommend this book!

Thank you Netgalley, Minotaur Books, and author Stacey Willingham for this ARC in exchange of an honest review.

Wow, this is DEFINITELY a slow burn novel! I was already losing heart to continue on because nothing was happening until the last 25% then expedited the entire twist on the final 10% of the book. The premise was interesting, it gave me a bit of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife vibes due to the college setting, and mostly this book felt like a domestic drama somehow, which kept me going to see how it all concluded. The changing timeline was a bit confusing to me even though it indicated if it was "before" or "after," since there was a part of the story that covered a distant past. Overall, I still liked it, I recommend this to anyone who don't mind an extremely slow burn type of story. This book is out on Jan 16th!

Margot our main character loses her best friend in a freak accident. She had a pack they were to go to college together. Unfortunately Eliza didn’t make it there.

Margot meets Lucy, and moved into the Kappa house with other girls. Lucy is wild and opposite of Margot, makes her feel alive; live dangerously.

Until one day Lucy also goes missing..:

This book unfortunately was very slow until I was at 80%. I found myself skimming and reading more of the dialogue. It was just a lot of unnecessary background. I would’ve rated this book lower had the ending not surprised me as much as it did.
I was shocked, and didn’t see any of that coming. At all. Very fitting and ended the story well. I wish there would have been a few more twists during the rest of the book instead of last 10-15%

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this in advanced in exchange for my honest opinion.

I'm definitely a fan of Stacy Willingham and her cadre of unreliable narrators. Her previous works had MCs who were more mature and relatable as a reader in her 40s. Only If You're Lucky comes off more as a YA or New Adult thriller with characters who lacked emotional maturity and who made poor choices (admittedly myself as well back in those days). Having read the afterward though, I do believe this book begged to be written. A house with history and baggage is definitely one of my favorite characters!

Freshman year at college is full of excitement and anxiety. So many new things to experience on your own outside of your parents' rule but also so many unknowns and new friendships to forge. Imagine planning to do that with your BFF, but than your BBFF dies in a tragic accident... or so they say. How much of your new life is one you sculpted, one you fell into, and one that was manipulated for you? Only if you're lucky will you make it through.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

Isn't the saying that opposites attract? Or is that just pure science? Either way, Margot and Lucy are opposites. Something draws them together, an attraction they can't avoid. No, it's not romantic, they are just best of friends. They end up moving in together off-campus, there's boys that live next door - you know the story, right?

Nope. This isn't a romance - no one falls in love and has a happy ending here! Instead, Lucy is missing and one of the boys is dead. Where did she go? That's what I stayed up to find out. I couldn't help it! The book was fast paced and I enjoyed the twists. I didn't mean to stay up so late (more than 1 night in a row), but now I know the answer and I can't wait to read another book by Stacy Willingham!