I really enjoyed this one!
Told from Margot’s POV in multiple timelines, the way this story unfolded had me captivated.
Was Lucy trustworthy? Do the girls that Margot lives with have sinister motives? What’s going to happen with four young women living next door to a frat house?
So many ways this story could have unfolded, and it was a thrilling ride to see how it would all turn out.

I’m more years removed from the college residential life than I’d care to admit, but could easily remember how strange it felt to be living so closely with strangers. It’s an intimate and vulnerable situation to be in, and Willingham nailed it with this story.

Thank you @minotaur_books for sending me a @netgalley widget in exchange for my honest review that I am embarrassingly late to post.

Willingham is fast becoming my favorite thriller writer, her stories are so creative, with toxic friendships to murder. I read the story in just couple days as it kept me engaged the whole time, so many plot twists.

Lucy is one of those friends that you can't help but have this pull towards, she is bold, dangerous and make you come out of shell. Margot is the girl she decides she wants to be friends with. Margot is shy and plays it safe, so when Lucy ask her to live with her she can't say no and suddenly her life will never be the same again.

When her past comes back to haunt her, after a one of the fraternity boys from the house next door is murdered. Can she unravel her past to face what happened and why it all seems so familiar.

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for copy of this story for my honest review.

I did enjoy this Stacy Willingham book more that her previous. I do think it was consistently dark in mood, so I might prefer to have a little break just to lighten up the story. I did not like any of the characters, but I believe that this was intentional. I did catch on to the twist midway through the story, but was not bothered by this. I did not like the boyfriend or the manipulation of other characters in the story - it almost seemed unnecessary. Overall, I enjoyed it!

Margot sets off to college minus her best friend who suddenly died the summer before. Margot feels lost and is mostly floating through her freshman year until Lucy, the popular girl, ask her to be roommates next year. Blindsided but also excited Margot agrees and sets off in the the popular circle her sophomore year. However, partway through their sophomore year Lucy vanishes and the roommates work with the police to uncover what happened to Lucky.

Another solid read by Stacy Willingham! I didn't rate it as highly as Willingham's other books but still a solid read. The ending was totally unexpected it just took a bit longer to get there.

I really loved the author’s previous books, so I was excited to hear that she has a new book. This book was very slow and difficult to get into and is easily my least favorite of her books. I didn’t really care for the main character and found it hard to continue. I did not enjoy this book but still look forward to Stacy’s future books.

Stacy’s books are always adjust solidly excellent . Dependable, no plot holes, believable twists. This one was the same. I devoured it and couldn’t wait to figure out how it ended. Good stuff! 3.5 stars

There were so many things to love about this book. The achingly beautiful character development, the inherent sadness of Margot, the deceptive interactions..I loved it.
I did figure out most of the twists, but not all of them, so am rating this book as a 4 star.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this ARC

Only If You’re Lucky by Stacy Willingham – 4 Stars (Kindle, NetGalley)

I’ve heard great things about all of Stacy Willingham’s thrillers, but haven’t picked one up until this month! This was my first Kindle book finished in the new year in my initiative to scroll less, and it was great! I got it from NetGalley a while ago (my embarrassment and absolute insanity of a NetGalley backlist is an entirely different conversation – I’m just glad to say I’m taking baby steps). It’s a suspenseful story following a girl named Margot as she moves into a house full of new girls during her sophomore year of college. Pretty quickly it turns out that their house, and her roommate Lucy, are not what they seem to be. This one is definitely a slow burn, but I just had to know the ending. Lots of content warnings so do your research!

This is the third book from Stacy Willingham that I have read and I think this is the one I have liked the least. This is a slow burn where all the action happened in the last 1/8 of the book. This was a drawn out version of Pretty Little Liars meets Heathers. I think this is one that the movie would be better than the book.

The Plot: Margot, a college student, fixated on her deceased former best friend, Eliza, with an obsessive intensity. Now, her fixation has shifted to her current BFF, Lucy. However, when Lucy vanishes without a trace, Margot’s obsession escalates perilously, reaching a point of imminent danger.

The structure: This was written in a before and after type of telling. We get to find out a little of Margot’s history with Eliza. We get little snippets in the current of Lucy’s story.

I didn’t like this book until I got to the end. There was a great twist at the end. This would make a great movie but the book could have been 100 pages less. Margot’s story got to be a little boring.

I’ve enjoyed Willingham’s books in the past and will continue to pick her books up, but the premise of this one wasn’t my favourite. She did a great job of bringing the reader back to the days of being on the cusp of adulthood, trying to fit in and figure out who you are. It was a slow burn to the end, a lot of the internal dialogue of the main character felt repetitive to me and I wasn’t very invested by the time all was revealed.
Thank you St Martin’s Press for the copy through NetGalley in exchange for a review!

I love a good dark academia/campus thriller but Stacy Willingham's latest fell a little flat for me. The story line dragged and the big reveal was a little convoluted for my taste.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I wasn't expecting the twists in this novel's plot. The characters are flawed and believable. The ending is satisfying yet begs for a sequel.

I absolutely loved this book. Stacy Willingham has quickly become an auto=buy author for me. While more of a character-driven slow-burn ride than her previous thrillers, Only if You're Lucky is still a smash gem that I recommend to all lovers of the twisty genre. Well done!

I had high expectations for this book after reading All the Dangerous Things but it took me 4 tries to start this book. The first 50% was a bit boring but the last 50% and ending did make up for it. I did see a bit of what was going to happen but ultimately was not what I was expecting in the end. Overall, this was a good thriller/mystery and I will continue to read more from Stacy Willingham
Thank you to NetGalley for this book for my honest review.

Decent read. Usually the flipped narrative, flitting back and forth doesn’t bother me but for some reason I struggled with it in this book.
I thought the author did a good job with the dialogue and character development, but I did find my interest flagging about half way in, it was a very slow build up toward and I think it could have been sped up some.

Thank you Minotaur Books, #partner for the advanced copy of Only If You’re Lucky in exchange for my honest review.

This is Stacy Willingham’s third book and of course I was thrilled to get my hands on it. I’ve loved her previous books and while I felt this one was a little different from her other two, I still enjoyed it and will be reading everything she writes.

This is a slow-burn mystery with a dark academia setting, which I loved. It explores friendships and how toxic they can be. While it has a bit of a YA feel due to the college setting, it also gives it that nostalgic feeling, too, if you’ve ever lived on a college campus, which I did many, many years ago! When the college drama turns deadly, the shocks start hitting, and I was instantly on alert. I loved how the dual timeline played out here and I found myself trying to work it out, but never quite getting there. This one has some twists I definitely did not see coming and that ending is one of the best endings I’ve read in a while! But be patient – the build-up to get there is so worth it!

This book is definitely a bit different from Willingham’s previous two books, more character-driven, but it is still good. And I love how in the author’s note, she shares the inspiration behind the book! Stacy Willingham is a trusted author and I will read anything she writes!

I have loved all of Stacy Willingham's books so far, so I was beyond excited to dive into this one. I really enjoyed it and it gripped my attention immediately. I will say I saw some of the twists coming, but there were some fun surprises too! Definitely a good read! ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press, the author, and NetGalley for the free gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

A creepy college-aged drama murder mystery with lots of twists had me hooked. This was a quick and fun binge finding out what happens in this creepy college house with tons of drama.

This was a slow burn but I think the tension added to the mystery of what was going on and it kept me hooked throughout to see what was going on.

This book kind of reminded me of Pretty Little Liars which was one of my favorite shows in high school so I think that's why I enjoyed it so much.

This is the sort of story that so expertly drops tidbits into the narrative that you almost don’t notice them until suddenly you realize what a clever, wicked, twisted story this is! Only If You’re Lucky focuses heavily on female friendship and obsession, but presented in a fresh and inventive story told in dual timelines that speed towards one another with a shocking conclusion.

Margot is a shy freshman at her South Carolina university when she meets Lucy Sharpe. Having tragically lost her best friend Eliza the summer after high school, Margot spends most of her first year of college hiding in her dorm with her roommate, Maggie (who couldn’t be a more supportive friend). At their first dorm meeting in the all-girls dorm, Lucy steps forward and pulls out a backpack with a case of beer. She’s beautiful, magnetic, and funny. Margot can’t help but be reminded of Eliza when she observes Lucy that first year.

As fate would have it, Margot is on the lawn at the end of her freshman year when Lucy approaches her and offers her the fourth bedroom in a house on campus she is renting with two friends. Margot immediately accepts, and after an awkward parting with Maggie (whom she was supposed to be rooming with the following year), Margot moves into the house with Lucy and two of their floormates—Nicole and Sloane.

Over the summer, Margot is happier than she can remember in a long time. Lucy is as charismatic in friendship as Margot observed from afar, Sloane is sarcastic and witty, and Nicole is kind and dating the president of the fraternity that owns the house they are renting. The four become close, spending days and evenings curled up on the couch together, going to parties with the boys from the fraternity, and partying after hours at a local bowling alley where Lucy works. Life is good, and Margot can almost forget the hole in her life where Eliza was.

Things are going great, until one of the fraternity boys next door is brutally murdered. The campus is in a frenzy, hounded by the press and police trying to find out what happened to the student. Meanwhile, Lucy has vanished without a trace. Are Lucy’s disappearance and the murder a terrible coincidence, or are they somehow linked?

This book was gripping from start to finish. The timelines alternate between the events of that summer and the beginning of sophomore year and the days after the murdered student is discovered and Lucy’s disappearance. After moving out of her dorm with Maggie, Margot becomes more alive but also more disturbed. Her friendship with Lucy comes with binge drinking, occasional recreational drug use, and hangovers that can last days. All of this lends a small air of unreliability to Margot, particularly in the present timeline.

Margot’s grief is overwhelming for her, and throughout the book we learn more about Eliza and her death, particularly when a student at the fraternity is someone linked to Eliza from their hometown. He’s the last person Margot wants to see and a constant reminder of Eliza. And he also happens to be the student who winds up murdered, adding another layer of complexity and suspicion to Margot. People in her life seem to wind up dead, it turns out.

At the same time, Margot is vulnerable and meek. She has a strong desire to fit in, but in her head she questions so much of what she does. Margot explains at one point how she always feels invisible, but when she was with Eliza (or later Lucy), she felt like someone. People noticed her and they could place her. The friendships in this book are exciting and dysfunctional.

This is a dark and alluring portrayal of female friendship, but at the same time I think many women reading this will find a glimmer they can relate to. Those days when you’re young and your friends are the most important and exciting thing in your world. The feeling that you don’t want things to change or worry that someone new will come in and tear your friendship apart.

The sweltering heat of the southern campus becomes an atmospheric backdrop for this tantalizing story. The events of the book and the setting feel like a nod to southern gothic—where flawed characters swarm around a disturbing and twisted story. Each page adds to the tension, and the story becomes almost oppressive as Margot spirals further and further away from who she is. From the beginning the reader knows this is all heading towards a murder and a disappearance. But so many other pieces of the story are missing.

At about two thirds of the way through the book, Willingham begins to drop twists in that pick up seemingly forgotten loose threads and twist them together. By the end of the book the reader has the whole interconnected web of secrets and buried truths. The ending is jaw-dropping and one that completely surprised me.

A gripping and tantalizing story of obsession, loyalty, friendship, and murder.

Love it or hate it, this one brings you right back to your college years. Drinking, bad decisions, dying to fit in, douchey frat guys, it’s got it all. Wanted to scream at the stupidity of the characters at times, but it also felt relatable in some respects.

Overall the story dragged on a little long, but the final third picked up the pace. Not much happed till that point in the book. Other than a couple far fetched details I struggled to get over, it was a fun read and provided for a very spirited book club discussion!

I have heard better things about her other two books so I have them on the list to read soon.

Thank you to Minotaur and NetGalley for my free copy