Cat Sebastian returns to the world of We Could Be So Good with another mid-20th century New York queer romance, this time featuring a grieving reporter and the professional baseball player in a slump he’s been assigned to write about.

WCBSG was my favorite book of 2023, so it’s auspicious that I’m starting the new year with another lovely book full of pining and gentle care. I sincerely hope Sebastian writes another book in this universe, and soon.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for the ARC to review. All opinions are my own.

This book truly made my heart sing. What a stellar reboot debut for Cat! Wonderful pacing, structure, and character depth.

Cute book set in 1960 Baseball! Book drags a little and 3rd person is hard for me to follow the characters but a nice romance

really really cute sports romance. tyssm for the arc, i enjoyed this one. would recommend quite a lot. was so funnnnn

I know more about nuclear fusion than I do about baseball, but I have So Many Big Feelings about this book. In fact, I cried again writing this review and it isn't even very long OR detailed. (Thank you to netgalley for providing me with an advanced copy)

It's about grief and all the little ways loving and being loved by someone changes you, about filling the holes when they're gone. About the dark days after. About hard times and how no matter how many times you miss, you just have to keep swinging.

Mark Bailey broke my fricking heart. And he kept breaking it because his pain is so real, so beautifully written. I love that, even though he fell for someone else, he still loved William. He still remembered him and the ways he had been loved by him.

And Eddie? Eddie. I can't put into words how good to Mark Eddie was. He was so sure and never faltered despite what Mark was so convinced of. And he respected when Mark needed space and time. He wasn't even jealous of William.

Lots of times, in these types of books, there's always the Big Compromise at the end and i always feel like one compromised more than they should have had to. This was not the case for these two.

Also, because I was worried for a bit there, Lula does not die. I repeat the dog does NOT die.

Ok, so usually when I love something SO MUCH I become completely paralyzed on continuing the series because there’s literally no way the rest could live up to it. But moving on from <i>We Could Be So Good<i/> onto <i>You Should Be So Lucky was seamless. There was a lot I loved and didn't love about this book but it was also such a huge comfort to be back in this universe. We even get our Andy fix within the first couple paragraphs being “Mr. Manager” (isn’t so cute thinking of Andy running a whole newspaper? He’s so sweet) and telling Mark Bailey that he’s got to zhuzh up the Sunday Supplement as some fancy shmancy sports reporter following baseball player Eddie O’Leary.

And guys…. There isn’t a plot to be found. Sometimes you might hear a *whisper* of a plot but then it disappears again. It’s so cozy and gentle and hitting a place in my heart so much. In WCBSG Andy was a BIG thing for me. I related so hard to his coded ADHD and the way people misunderstood as just quirky. But Eddie is here is so similar yet so different. He’s more in the fidgety must touch EVERYTHING and impulse control (Eddie loves a little word vomit).

Cat Sebastian first and foremost is a character author. She pours so much into her characters that it’s almost impossible not to fully love the people she brings to us. This is a prime example of a CS slow burn character study. There were some moments, however, that I wish we understood more about Mark and Eddie and their motivations. Like there was never a clear cut reason on why Mark was avoiding everything so much. We knew it a lot of fear from his last partner dying but it was never actually talked about much. So because things weren’t talked about it felt like they were jumping around a lot.

I loved all the quiet gems throughout the story. Like Mark finding the vaguely queer relationships in every book and top notch A+ flirting. Their relationship had such a sweet flow to it that just felt natural for them. In WCBSG Nick and Andy were friends to lovers. Here, Eddie and Mark were strangers to acquaintances to friends to crushes to lovers. Their relationship always has the undercurrent of attraction but they move so well through the stages of a relationship in a completely grounded way.

The way Eddie flirts with Mark feels like Cat Sebastian’s Regency MCs. There’s just a touch of rakish/rogue to it.

There still a few things that have me in a gripe, that even though the slow burn was so low but yet there was so much flirtation, once the romance really kicked in it felt like they lost a little of their chemistry. The spice just didn’t have quite enough kick to it. For me personally, the connection is half the spice, and I just felt like it was missing a little. (Just a teeny tiny bit) Later they got it back but there was definitely an ebb and flow.

This book focuses a lot on Eddie and his slump. Which is totally interesting but it’s A LOT of baseball. I like baseball but it’s a lot. Eddie is a really interesting character but I wish there was a little more focus on Mark and his grieving. Having to hide a relationship with a man who was essentially your husband for 7 years and then losing him and having to mourn alone would have been interesting to explore more. We get a little exploration but not enough.

I really wanted this to be a 5 star but for me it’s 4 stars.

Thank you NetGalley and Avon books

Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager for this eARC! Cat Sebastian is so good at queer historical romance that it makes me want to run around the block screaming! This incredible story of a Baseball player and a Journalist in the 1960's, over coming grief and home sickness and the dangerous nature of two men falling in love in the public eye in the 1960's is just!!!! Also as a Philadelphia Phillies fan who just lived through the 2023 Trea Turner year, the story of a star player short stop joining a new team and hitting a batting slump had me LOSING it. I need this book on my shelf so I can grab it and return to it over and over and over again.

Thank you NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for early access.

This book was so good! I love baseball and I think Sebastian's portrayal of the fake Mets team was earnest and well done for someone who (admittedly) doesn't know much about the game! The relationship was raw and I really appreciated the care used when talking about Mark's former lover.

Historical fiction can be devastating, especially when dealing with lgbt romance, so this was a wekcome change of pace. A warm hug of a book, in spite of the characters' circumstances!

This was my first Cat Sebastian and it hit me directly in the heart.

It reads like a loveletter to a sport that may never love you back, during a time when people absolutely would not have loved you back.

The grief aspect was so soft and made so much sense with this story, and I don't even know how, but it just fit.

I loved Mark and all his prickly ways and Eddie's patience with him. I loved Eddie's ability to smile through his struggles, and his ever optimistic heart.

Just a really tender story here from every aspect. I really enjoyed it!

Cat Sebastian does it again. I adored this book, possibly more than the first. The grumpy-sunshine vibes were off the charts and she does such a beautiful job of writing about feelings and characters falling in love. A decent amount of spice without being over-the-top. Eddie is just the bee's knees to be honest.

Where to begin? I suppose I'll start by saying that in reading "You Should Be So Lucky" I was really struck by how true it is that we bring ourselves to every book we read. I have deep connections to and feelings about both baseball and journalism, and that was just under the surface for me the entire time. Plus, the historical NYC setting was a personal delight: I can picture, for example, exactly where the characters walk around the Village by Greenwich Ave and West 4th. Plus, "We Could Be So Good" was one of my favorites of last year and I would read a hundred more books about the staff of the fictional 1960's-era New York Chronicle if Cat Sebastian would write them.

All that said, I don't usually enjoy sports romances at all, so I was a tiny bit nervous about that. But this book is simultaneously <i>more</i> about the sport in question than others I've read and <i>less</i> about it, all for the better, for me.

The basic plot is that Eddie O'Leary is a highly talented player who has been traded to the expansion team the NY Robins, and is in a record-setting slump in the glare of the NY media spotlight. Mark Bailey (the Chronicle's book reviewer, whom readers of WCBSG will remember gave Nick the arc of "The Charioteer") is grieving, and lonely, and uninspired at work (he says he feels like "there's nothing left in the world worth writing about."). That's when he's assigned to cover Eddie O'Leary specifically for a column and also to report a magazine feature on the team.

The story follows the arc of the baseball season, and there's just so much to love about the attention to detail in terms of the game. The descriptions of the decrepit Polo Grounds, the dynamics of a team, the cheers and jeers of the fans, the elusiveness of a baseball swing ("Maybe if he could remember how to fall asleep, he'd remember how to hit the ball"). It's all beautifully drawn, and I just luxuriated in it, but it also really gets at the inherent emotion and wistfulness of the game.

<i>It's slow and often seems pointless. It's beautiful, when it isn't a mess. There's a vast ocean of mercy for mistakes: getting hits half the time is nothing short of a miracle, and even the best fielders are expected to have errors. The inevitability of failure is built into the game.</i>

Eddie's brush with that inevitability of failure is all interwoven with Mark's journey, which begins with a palpable, aching hollowness and isn't easy to read at times. It's at once a specific portrait of the gutting particularities of grief in the context of a queer relationship that's invisible to the wider world, and also gets at so many universalities of that grief. It's a depth of grief that shows the depth of love, though, and ultimately I found it to be hopeful and heartwarming.

The secondary characters are wonderful--I adored the grizzled old baseball beat reporter George "I Just Love This Dumb Fucking Game" Allen. All the descriptions of the reporters are pitch-perfect, in fact: "The press box is a sea of badly tailored suits in shiny wool and upsetting plaids." And it was lovely to see cameos from Nick and Andy, and Lilian and Maureen.

There is a thread throughout the book around what it would mean for Eddie to be outed as queer as a professional baseball player, though it's actually something Mark worries about more. I felt quite safe in Cat's hands around this issue, but it's worth noting, especially since that was mostly absent from WCBSG. YSBSL has the same feel and it's clear these books are in the same universe, but this one felt less like a big, warm, happy hug to me, which I thought was fitting. Baseball is in many ways a melancholy game and journalists aren't known for their sunny dispositions. They are known for thinking things like this, though:

<i>"I love you." He kisses Eddie then, because otherwise that phrase is going to linger in the air, true but somehow inadequate. He has a professional aversion to phrases that refuse to get the job done.</i>

I never know how to end reviews, but I feel I must end this one with an indulgently long quote from Roger Angell. As of this writing, it's six days until pitchers and catchers report.

<i>“It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look - I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring - caring deeply and passionately, really caring - which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved.”

*Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the arc.

There truly is no depth to my love for Cat Sebastian. If she could keep writing queer, historical romance forever that would be great, thanks! I’ve made countless videos about how much I loved We Could Be So Good (easily my favorite 2023 romance!) so needless to say, the second my request was approved I dove straight in. And it definitely didn’t disappoint!

You Should Be So Lucky follows the story of uptight journalist Mark, still grieving the unexpected death of his boyfriend 18 months on, as he’s assigned to write a story of down-on-his luck baseball player Eddie. If I’m going to trope-ify their dynamic a la booktok, they are the quintessential black cat / golden retriever pairing. I absolutely adored the slow burn between these two and how (like all of Cat’s books!) the emotional core truly was the focus of the novel. Mark’s grief and Eddie’s desire to be seen and loved painted such a beautiful picture of two people meeting each other where they are, scars and all. I will forever adore how *real* Cat’s characters are. It’s so clear how much care, thought and attention she devotes into creating multifaceted characters the reader can root for. Eddie and Mark were certainly no exception.

Thank you so much for the ARC— I can’t wait to scream about YSBSL closer to release and eagerly await whatever Cat writes next!

Even though it is early in the year, I feel confident saying that You Should Be So Lucky will be one of my 2024 favorites. This amazing opposites attract queer romance is set during the 1960 baseball season, amid a world of secrecy and grief. I had sky-high expectations for this book, and somehow Cat Sebastian managed to exceed all of them.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Baseball star Eddie O’Leary can’t believe he’s been traded to New York’s newest team. Or that he’s stuck in a slump, and his new teammates hate him. And journalist Mark Bailey, who isn’t even an official sportswriter, is going to interview him for a series of weekly profiles? Mark has been mired in grief for more than a year, and is hardly writing much at all lately. There is something about Eddie that intrigues him, though, and he can’t say no to the assignment. As these two very different men are forced to spend time together during interviews, meals, and road trips, their mutual attraction grows too. Can closeted Eddie and cautious but open Mark figure out a way to be together?

The romance between grieving Mark and golden retriever Eddie is top notch. Eddie is a delight, and his sunny outlook is the perfect foil for Mark’s dark wit and bitter take on the world. Mark’s grief as he mourns the partner who never publicly acknowledged him is staggering. But as Eddie becomes more and more important to him, he’s finally able to visualize what comes next.

The found family in the book is great, from Mark’s friends Lillian, Maureen, and my favorites Andy and Nick, to Eddie’s manager and teammates. And, it’s like Cat Sebastian knows that the way to make these characters even more endearing to me is to give them a terrier named Lula to love. Everyone should have a terrier boss to plan their life around; I speak from experience on this one.

A book about grief and homophobia should be depressing, but You Should Be So Lucky is full of love, humor, hope and two people just being sweet for each other.
I love everything about this book. Cat Sebastian creates characters that readers want to hug and protect, while rooting for them to find a way to get their HEA.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Loved this book! Cat Sebastian hits it out of the park, as she so often does. I really enjoyed this books themes about grief, being yourself, and I, a confirmed sports hater, even enjoyed the baseball!

Sebastian really nails the time period and the book has an atmosphere that feels so authentic and tangible. It's also full of longing and pining, if you go for that sort of thing, which I do.

There is also big grumpy/sunshine energy here, though sunshine does kind of have an anger problem. Eddie is a darling and Mark is a very prickly darling.

As I said, not normally a sports fan, but this one made me care about baseball a bit! Plus we had a nice Jewish side character, which always is a bonus for me. I think the thing I like most about this story is that it feels so layered, like it has proper texture. It feels very much like someone painstakingly crafted a world for these characters. We don't really talk about worldbuilding for realistic fiction, but this book is an excellent example of that done right.

Highly recommend!

Starting this while my phone's on 2%, so we'll see how far I get. I think that the thing about historical fiction, maybe especially historical romance, and maybe most especially gay historical romance is that there will be a lot of anachronism mixed in with all the details and for the sake of the overarching plot and for believing in it you just have to go along. A lot of this feels very strange for a book set in the '60s following two gay men, but the reader isn't getting this before 2024, probably didn't exist when all this was happening, and nows this is meant to be more of a sweet fantasy than a true tale. So all the baseball men really are pretty nice, as are the news men. Well, 1% now so I'll say I had a good time, read the whole thing pretty quick, and as a Cary Grant and Rock Hudson lover would compare this most closely to Netflix's Hollywood. Do with that what you please :)

Romance can be pretty hit or miss for me, but as my 5 star review likely indicates, this was a HIT! No pun intended. The book follows two young men, one a reporter, one a baseball player, as they fall in love in 1960. Obviously, because of the 1960 of it all, queer men, especially famous athletes (I mean, shoot, they aren't even out NOW) had to be very closeted. The book manages to thread that tricky cathartic needle of being simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking. The romance itself was very sweet, and there was not a shortage of spice (but even the spice read as sweet to me due to the nature of the relationship), and I even liked the baseball bits. The setting and trappings added to what would've already been a great character development tale. Anway. I loved it. Would definitely recommend to fans of romance. 5 stars.

Cat Sebastian is one of my favorite authors and my go-to comfort read author. When I'm feeling down, I know a Cat Sebastian romance, with all its clever, infinitely quotable phrasing, prickly characters, endearing earnestness, and dedication to queer joy will pick me up again. So when I got the email that I'd been approved to read the advance copy of her latest, I squealed and then dropped everything to immediately begin reading. My mom asked me if I was going to take it slow and savor it and I was like, "no? Honestly the only way for me to really enjoy a book I love is to devour it and then reread it again and again and again. If I'm reading a book slowly, I have mixed feelings about it at best."

True to form, I finished this the next day, after being unable to concentrate on anything else. And, as I knew it would be, it was delightful and charming and full of heart. I cried softly for the last little bit of it. Not the wrenching sadness of the third act breakup, because her books don't really have that. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I enjoy it in other books. But I think the tears come most often when I'm reading her books in the quiet moments of being seen and understood. The little realizations that cut deep because you recognize them in yourself, and then you come away seeing yourself a little more clearly, too.

I loved the flavor of 1960 New York that colored everything, pinning the story so firmly in time and place. I loved the way an angry baseball player in a slump and a grieving and barely-employed newspaper reporter and a dead-last team of misfits and has-beens came together to create baseball magic and gain a new lease on life. I loved the inherent decency of the characters, their charm and heart and courage. I loved the way they grew together and compromised and lived. They felt real, like people you might meet on the street one day, like people I would like to be friends with.

As is always the case when I read a Cat Sebastian book, I highlighted about three dozen quotes that will be nearly impossible to pare down into a few favorites for my blog post. I also preordered the audiobook so I can listen to the story again when I need to. Actually that's a lie - I would have, if I hadn't already preordered it the second it showed up as available for preorder.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Avon for providing an early copy for review.

I enjoyed this one but I found the characters to border on insufferable. There were times when the dialogue felt very cringe and needed a bit of thinking put behind it.

Honestly, Cat Sebastian can write anything and I would read it. This is a beautiful look at grief and hope, and somehow baseball is a perfect metaphor for it all. I think I enjoyed We Could Be So Good just a little bit more, but A+ for Cat Sebastian not going with the typical third act breakup and for writing a story that is sweet, sad, and lovely.

As a lifelong fan of the Golden Age of Hollywood, this book gave me a mental movie starring young Christopher Plummer and Burt Lancaster. The quiet desperation of grief paired with the endlessly talkative smiles make this a wonderful grumpy/sunshine story that also demands we pay attention to the closeted culture of queerness in the 1960s. The lack of graphic spicy scenes makes one immerse more deeply in the developing love story between Eddie and Mark. This story is as cozy as one of Mark's sleek cashmere sweaters.