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

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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!

Ooooh, this was a good one! I loves me a good girl mystery, and this one did NOT disappoint. The characters were awesome, the storyline was great and the writing fast-paced. I'll definitely be looking for more from this author.

First off, I absolutely loved both of her previous novels and raved about them on my page. She is a fantastic writer. However, with that said, this book is very different. The main character Margot proves uninteresting with her monotonous voice and a tedious obsession, overshadowing potentially intriguing side characters whose appeal is lost in her lackluster narrative. The story adopts a before/after structure that fails to captivate in either timeline.
The plot unfolds slowly, lacking significant events until the unexpected drama at the conclusion. Despite the engaging atmosphere, particularly in the ending, my overall rating is 3 stars. Although eager to delve into this new one by Willingham, a favorite author, I found it disappointingly reminiscent of other cookie cutter female friendship books—replete with a college setting, a group of students, atmospheric elements, and a monotonous tone, but lacking the requisite tension and suspense.

Def a fan of this author! This was a solid slow burn mystery. Probably 60-75% through I thought I had parts figured out, but I was still surprised by this book. Entertaining throughout. Recommend to mystery fans.

I finished most of this book in one sitting because the big reveal happens a little past the halfway point, and then the wheels just come off! It's one thing after another of big reveals, hidden secrets coming to the surface, and jaw dropping moments.

I don't think I've ever met anyone like Lucy Sharpe; she's very reminiscent of other antagonists from other books, most notably from Ruth Ware's The It Girl. She's carefree, whimsical, a free spirit, who just attracts wounded dogs. I can't decide if I like these types of characters or if they annoy me...either way, they make for a great plot point.

The book toggles between the past and present - before and after Lucy goes missing. We do also get some insight into the past when Margot tells us the story about Eliza, which is all very eye opening and you could see why Margot was attracted to the type of person Lucy is.

Throughout the story, we get a clearer picture of life for Margot both before, after and during Lucy's disappearance. Things are not as they seem, people are not as they seem, and even Margot herself becomes unreliable at times. It's all a little confusing (in a positive way) because everything feels familiar and it's like things are repeating...but then once the curtain is pulled back and you see the characters for who they really are, things click into place.

There were multiple times throughout this book where I screeched and had my jaw drop. When you think everything has been revealed, you find out it's not.

Only If You're Lucky was not scary but it did creep me out at points so I couldn't really read at night. To me, Willingham's writing has an eerier undertone to it where it can send a chill up your spine. It's no different from other thriller plots but something about the way she puts the words together makes me uneasy.

This is definitely one of the best thrillers I've ever read, and I felt a little sad when it was over because it was gripping, suspenseful and so surprising. If you're a thriller nerd like me, you will adore Only If You're Lucky by Stacy Willingham!

Stacy Willingham is a gem at suspense.

Margot befriends the elusive Lucy Sharpe in college after a tragic accident took her best friend in high school. Along with Nicole and Sloane they embark on a friendship that will take you thru twists and turns you never saw coming. Who is Lucy really? She's the life of the party and the one everyone wants to be friends with. But no one really knows anything about her. As Margot unravels the clues the shock will keep those pages turning. The ending you won't see coming.

Thank you Netgalley and Minotaur books for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review.

Only if You’re Lucky by Stacy Willingham
Thriller
Pub Date: January 16, 2024 TODAY!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Stacy is hands down one of my favorite thriller authors! I am never able to guess her twists and her writing is great! I highly recommend any of her books if you’re looking for a good thriller.

This story falls under dark academia genre, which I’ve never read before. Margot is in her freshman year of college. Margot is your typical shy college student, what most people don’t know is she lost her best friend weeks after graduation. Eliza her best friend was the outgoing one, the yin to her yang. So when Margot meets Lucy at the end of freshman year, she finds her new Eliza. Lucy is outgoing, crazy and always down to do anything.
Now Lucy is missing, and all these crazy connections start coming up. Why does it seem like Margot is always a part of these missing friends.

I really enjoyed this one! I had no idea the different twist and turns this one ended up having. Sometimes College books seem a bit too YA for me, but this one didn’t bother me at all. I highly recommend this one if you like psychological thrillers!