A lot of sports romances use SPORT, broadly speaking, as a metaphor, but Sebastian brilliantly looks at what is specific to baseball--the fascination with statistics in a game where those numbers reveal baseball's unlikeliness--and parallels it to grief, love after loss, and the vagaries of life. The result is one of the smartest sports romances I've ever read, one that cares about history as much as its characters, that allows space for prickliness and hard feelings. Sebastian is brilliant; her career is one to watch.

I really liked revisiting the setting of Cat Sebastian's previous book, We Could Be So Good. This time the story focused on Mark Bailey, a reporter who experienced a devastating loss few people know about and Eddie O'Leary, a baseball player recently traded to a newly formed New York baseball team. Pretty much everyone hates Eddie after he melted down publicly over the trade and insulted his teammates, and Mark is assigned to write a series of diaries in the paper from Eddie's perspective.

Once again, there's not a ton of plot here; it's mostly just a soft relationship development story. I loved the way Eddie and Mark worked as a couple and how they helped each other work through their issues. It was very sweet and the historical setting was really interesting to read about.

Overall, I really liked this and hope we get even more from this 'verse in the future.

If there's ever a time when I don't give five stars to a Cat Sebastian novel, know that it's not truly me writing the review.

Mark is grieving the loss of his partner and Eddie is grieving the loss of his home and life back in Kansas. Together, they stitch themselves back together and learn to let that grief exist without letting it bury them.

This is a book about knowing the risks, knowing the damage your choices could cause, and saying "lol ok" and making those choices anyway. I loved Eddie most of all. A big, lumbering, golden retriever of a man. He was always so sure of himself and what he wanted and I loved that. So many times we have both main characters terrified to take that next step and terrified to go forward. Eddie was all in from the jump.

Cat Sebastian does it again! This was such a sweet follow up to We Could Be So Good. To be fair, I'm a HUGE baseball fan so I was going to be partial to this book from the start. Sebastian really captured the strange, infuriating, and beautiful elements of the game and, as always, developed full, lovable characters. A fun, lovely read that I'll be recommending to any romance or romance-curious reader.

I adored this book! After being more lukewarm than usual for a Cat Sebastian novel on her last Georgian era one, I've been loving her 20th century queer stories (including last year's We Could Be So Good and the self-published Cabots series), and am happy to say You Should Be So Lucky continues that trend with the added bonus of being a baseball romance. I didn't even know I liked baseball romance--I'm not a huge sportsball fan, and while I don't mind hockey romance, I'm sports-neutral as far as my romance taste unless it's from a really good writer--but lately I've read a few I really liked, and if nothing else it's nice to see something different in a more hockey-saturated market. Personally I'd recommend this title for fans of K.D. Casey's recent contemporary Jewish m/m series or Alicia Thompson's forthcoming The Art of Catching Feelings sooner than Evvie Drake Starts Over to readers looking for more baseball romances, as well as to those who enjoy mid-century queer romance like Fellow Travelers (the 1950s-1970s period in particular is another relatively unexplored romance genre market niche that I'd love to see more of).

Cat Sebastian can do no wrong. This book is a gem - if you loved "We could be so good" do yourself a favor and get this one too. Same cast of characters but this time focused on Mark and a ballplayer new to town who is in the biggest of all slumps.

As the author fully acknowledges, there's about 2% plot, it's just a beautiful journey of two characters. Sometimes their internal musings "maybe this, maybe that...' and the repetative course of sports - ball game, practice, things don't go quite right, travel, another ball game make parts a litle bit slow. But slow is this book's middle name. You can't help but love Mark and Eddie, and particularly Mark's journey as he emerges from his all-consuming grief to have windows of time where he is in the world again -- the descriptions of grief -- or rather, the way the author SHOWS a person going throguh grief - is exquisitely done. The scene with the jars of cherries is just ughghhg heart-wrenchingly beautiful/sad/happy/comforting all at once.

The main threads of the story -- just getting throguh the bad stuff (because it happens to every one / there's not a 'Reason' for it / there's not a magic switch to make it better); grief & loving all of someone, and the DOG -- are all just a beautiful hug of a book. It doesn't get too sad or too sacharine, it just walks a perfect line of living through the good & bad and being brave enough to carve out a space for love and found family, in the face of life's obstacles.

Ugh...I love Cat Sebastian. So. Much. You Should Be So Lucky is set in New York in the 1960s. Eddie is a baseball player newly traded to NYC. Mark is an arts reporter asked to write some diaries intended to make Eddie more likable to the public. Neither is very thrilled about this idea until they start spending time together and sparks start flying!!

Cat Sebastian continues the captivating world she built in We Could Be So Good with this well-rounded romance about grief, loss, and baseball. 1960 is the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s baseball career; his new team hates him, he keeps putting his foot in his mouth in front of the press, and he’s suddenly descended into a mortifying batting slump. Enter Mark Bailey, journalist for NYC’s The Chronicle, usually tasked with book reviews and architecture writing, but now assigned to ghost write a weekly diary from the struggling new batter to increase the paper’s readership. Both reeling from personal losses, Eddie and Mark find comfort and an undeniable connection in one another. You Should Be So Lucky is another sure hit from Sebastian, full of flawed but loveable characters, beautiful introspection on the nature of human relationships, and plenty of belly laughs. Definitely a must-purchase for our library’s collection!

Thank you Netgalley and Avon Publisher for the advanced copy.

This was such a sweet romance. No drama. Just the two characters in loved with each other.

Our two main character had their own problems, like how Mark tried to move on after the death of his lover and how Eddie tried to adapt in new city and club. We Saw how they struggled and supported each other.

I also loved how Cat Made Eddie personality. He was like a literal sunshine.

It was such a good book if you love no-drama romance. But, if you thought you prefer more conflicts, you would be dissapointed.

Cat Sebastian's reign as the Queen of mm romances continues with "You Should Be So Lucky".. The follow-up to "We Could Be So Good", this story centers on Nick and Andy's co-worker and friend, Mark Bailey. Mark, an arts reporter, agrees to write a "diary" for one of New York's newest shortstops. Eddie O'Leary is traded to NYC to as a star player, to save this team from their dismal record. His lackluster performance only continues to bring the team down, until he meets Mark. Will Mark be successful in helping Eddie get his mojo back? Will Mark open his heart to love after the devastating loss of his partner? Will the team and fans discover their secret? Will they have a happy ending? If you follow Cat Sebastian, you already have that answer. I hope that you will be as captivated by this love story as I was. Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for allowing be a sneak peak at this wonderful book!

As always, Cat Sebastian wrote another delightful book! This was very fun & as a person with a bad history with baseball, it made the sport much more interesting. Felt a little redundant at times, but overall was very sweet. I’m sad I won’t run into Mark & Eddie in real life.

The best way to summarize my thoughts on this book would be to play a recording of the inarticulate sound I made when my friend sent me the NetGalley link. Cat Sebastian is an auto-read author for me, and I have loved baseball literally my entire life--when the Twins finally won a playoff series this past year I burst into tears, sitting in my friend's car on the way to a concert. So you could say I am very biased towards loving this book, and you would be correct! Thankfully, Cat Sebastian knocks it out of the park (budum tchss).

Continuing on from "We Could Be So Good" (a favorite from last year), this is another sweet and low angst read; one that still manages to find ways of exploring grief and emotional turmoil in a respectful and in-depth way. I will say this definitley fits the 'fanfic vibe' of 'So Good', and your mileage may vary with that. Both books read like low angst, historical aus of your favorite 'grumpy x sunshine' pairing, and so I would recommend this book if you're in a cozy mood. I work on my feet for most of the working day, so coming home to this book, and curling up to read with a cup of tea, was really quite lovely.

It's not perfect--I have wished in nearly every single m/m Cat Sebastian book for her female characters to have more defined personalities and roles besides 'friendly lesbians who playfully scold the main couple into getting their act together'. Her female characters seem to flit in and out of these books, mainly to be shown as more put together than the male characters, and to be sounding boards for the male character's emotional turmoil. This problem is not exclusive to this book, it is just something that I have noticed across several of her books.

I wish we got to see more of Eddie's teammates, especially since I found the late night batting practice scene to be one of the best scenes in the book. And more information on William would have been wonderful--I felt his and Mark's relationship was fairly well sketched, but I also never really felt I got to know him well and truly as a person outside of the relationship.

But, overall, I'd say this book is very nearly a run home (probably a triple, maybe an in the park, if the runner's feeling lucky).

4.5 stars


Cat Sebastian manages to do something magical with this book. It's incredibly unique, managing to expand the reader's expectations of what a book in the romance genre is capable of, or what a book in this genre even can be. You Should Be So Lucky is a novel equally concerned with grief as it is with romance, and it approaches grief with more tenderness than any novel I've ever read before. Sebastian builds this romance and the main characters' relationships through a firm belief that grief isn't an absence of love, but rather a compounding of it -- grief is love saying, "Yes, And."

I so, so, so treasured my time with this book. Usually I tear through Sebastian's novels, gobbling them up at breakneck speed. But this book told me to sit and savor and FEEL. I have no idea how many times I cried, but damn did I Feel while reading this.

I loved how this book transports you into feeling physically present through the entire story, from the Polo Grounds to Greenwich Village, all within a historical lens. My one qualm is that I felt like the build-up of the relationship didn't quite hit the same way it usually does in Sebastian's novels, but I'm honestly not mad about it because the extraordinary other elements of this book really, really make up for me being picky.

I will likely be revisiting this book sometime within the next 8 months, and I fully intend to buy a copy for myself and another to lend out to other people -- this is a book I want to share with my world.

Cat Sebastian knows how to break your heart and then put it back together again in the most beautiful way, much like she does with Mark's heart in this story. Coming out of the fog of the most unimaginable grief, Mark doesn't imagine he will ever be truly happy again. But, he needs to keep busy, so why not take on an assignment to report on professional baseball, of all things. Surely, baseball player Eddie O'Leary won't be exactly what he needs to bring happiness back to his life. Set in vibrant 1960 New York City, Cat Sebastian gives voice to a love story that used to have to be kept secret, but deserves to be told.

This M/M historical (1960's) romance set in New York City features a professional baseball player in the midst of a huge batting slump and the arts reporter asked to provide local color on him even though he is barely writing while grieving his late partner. Neither Eddie nor Mark expect sparks to fly between them, but surprisingly that's exactly what begins to happen. I love this book so much, even more than the author's previous one which is set in the same universe. Highly recommended.

Cat Sebastian's last book, We Could Be So Good, was my favorite book of last year, so I was very excited to spend more time in that universe. While You Should Be So Lucky wasn't quite on that level, it was still very, very good. Sebastian's characters always have such a fondness for each other, and that's always the highlight of her books for me.

You Should Be So Lucky was as much a romance as it was an exploration of grief, particularly grieving silently because you quite literally cannot tell anyone the reason you're grieving. Mark's journey of slowly letting people into his life and his evolution from cynical to hopeful was really believable and well done.

Thanks to Avon and NetGalley for this eARC!

<i>We Could Be So Good</i> was a standout for me last year, and this followup about a grieving journalist and a baseball player (who kind of has the yips) was a similarly sweet and cozy mid-century romance. It seems simple, but Cat Sebastian just excels at writing two characters who click. She doesn't shy away from the challenges of being gay in the 1960s, but I'm glad that the lives of her characters, though they aren't perfect, never take a turn towards grim. I'll read as many of these as Cat Sebastian wants to write, and yes, I would love to walk Lula through Gramercy Park.

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian is everything I have come to love about Sebastian’s work. I adored how this book, which is a romance involving a baseball player in a severe batting slump and a minimally employed writer, is also a complex exploration of grief, second chances, and meeting people where they are in life. Mark’s grief is palpable throughout this story. It jumps off the page and is compounded by not being able to share his past relationship with others. Eddie sees his grief and accepts Mark where he is and simultaneously Eddie is, perhaps unknowingly, grieving his rookie season and comfort zone after being traded to a new team. I loved the side characters we met: Eddie’s teammates, his team manager, George Allen, Mark’s dog Lula. I will be rereading this book perhaps immediately and recommend it to anyone who has ever had something they love just not go the way they anticipated, anyone who loves a prickly but ultimately caring main character, and lastly anyone who is going to cheer for the underdog.

It's a delight to see more of the crabby book critic Mark Bailey from We Could Be So Good. Here, he's recovering from the loss of his partner and takes on a new assignment on baseball player Eddie O'Leary. Eddie a big heart and a big mouth, he has just been traded to the New York Robins, he's managed to alienate the team and the city, and is in a hitting slump.

You really believe that these two characters like each other from very early on, but they have very good reason to be cautious about starting a relationship, which makes for wonderful pining. The backdrop of the Robins' attempt to establish themselves as a team and the secondary characters are delightful.

A classic Cat Sebastian and the perfect followup to WCBSG! Lovely, soft, and intimate, exploring themes of grief and belonging, and a sports romance to boot. A great read for the start of 2024.

Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager via Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.