The Book:
Only If You’re Lucky by Stacy Willingham
Published January 16, 2024 by Minotaur Books
Date read: February 10, 2024
The Characters:
Margot
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The Plot (from Goodreads):
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.
A tantalizing thriller about the nature of friendship and belonging, about loyalty, envy, and betrayal—another gripping novel from an author quickly becoming the gold standard in psychological suspense.
How did Only If You’re Lucky end?
The Reveal:
Lucy was Eliza’s half-sister. Eliza’s father had had an affair shortly before she was born. He was sending money to support Lucy, but Lucy still grew up in a trailer park with a mom who didn’t care about her. She began paying visits to Eliza’s father once she figured out who he was. She was obviously jealous of Eliza’s life, and she was the one who had broken in and laid in Eliza’s bed (not Levi).
Lucy also wasn’t a student at Rutledge; she just showed up on the first day and befriended Sloan and Nicole, letting them think she lived in their building. She said her roommate was a loser so she always hung out with them. She did it to befriend Margot, but waited a year to approach her.
The night Eliza died, both Lucy and Margot were there. I must’ve zoned out when they described the location–I think it was an abandoned school on a cliff edge? Somehow with classrooms open to the cliff below? Regardless, Margot had startled Eliza and caused her to fall, and didn’t try to catch her. No one knew Margot had been there. Lucy was there too but didn’t do anything.
Levi died at a party on an island. Everyone drank too much, and Margot stumbled across his body in the morning. Margot and Lucy both blamed each other for his death, but it was actually Sloane. Sloane thought Levi was abusing Nicole and did it to save her. (Actually, Levi had just been aware that Trevor was abusing Nicole and didn’t do anything to stop him.)
The Ending:
Lucy confronted everyone after Levi’s death. While she and Margot argued, Sloan stabbed her in the stomach. She worried Lucy would put it together and turn Sloan in. Sloan, Nicole, and Margot decided to say Lucy had run away. Since she wasn’t even a student there, the police believe that. They let Lucy take the fall for Levi and Eliza’s deaths.
The Review:
What a chilling read! Only If You’re Lucky felt completely different from Stacy Willingham’s previous two books. It’s more of a dark academia campus thriller, which is a thriller trope I love!
I will say that it starts off pretty slowly–there’s a lot of scene setting as we meet all the characters and get used to Margot’s daily life on campus. Once the twists get going, though, they really take off.
It’s I guess technically new adult but reads like a YA thriller at times–these characters are young and have a lot to learn, but that’s part of what endears the reader to them. Margot was hard to like at first, but she grows on you as the story picks up pace. The story becomes an interesting discussion on toxic female friendship and what it means to belong.
While I appreciated this new side of Willingham’s writing, the book took a little too long to get to the point. The story is good, but I had to switch to audio partway through to hold my interest. My library hold came in just in time!
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