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.

The writing is heavily expositional and not for me. I stopped after chapter 1 (4%) but would imagine this being a solid three stars for the target audience, four for the right readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon for the ARC.

You Should Be So Lucky is a charming tale of romance and baseball, and also of grief and moving forward. Sebastian really captivated me with this story! I couldn't help but root for Mark and Eddie, and I felt the weight of what each character was facing also. I am really enjoying this series and I definitely recommend to anyone searching for those queer historical fiction reads!!

This was a cute romance with plenty of humor but also plenty of real emotional moments. I love Cat Sebastian books and I love queer sports romances books, so my expectations were high, and I was not disappointed.

This was a sweet and fun sports romance with two protagonists I really rooted for and wanted to know more about. I thought Mark's process as a widower was a great perspective, and the balance of secrecy vs authenticity felt optimistic but not overly so for the time period. I do think it drags on a little bit, like the first one in the series, but it's still a nice read.

I loved this book. Cat Sebastian was one of the standout discoveries for me in 2023, and this follow up to We Could Be So Good is as amazing as her other works. I loved the evolving grumpy/sunshine relationship between Mark and Eddie. I'm glad Sebastian decided to build out the characters and setting from the previous book by exploring Mark Bailey's personal life and the evolution of the Chronicle. There's a common thread of isolation continued from We Could Be So Good, showing that even someone like Mark Bailey, who seemed to have constructed a community for himself despite the hostility he faced as a gay man in the late 1950s, can be just as lonely as any of the other characters. I love seeing how Sebastian explores queer identity and relationships in different historical periods and in different settings, and moving this story slightly forward and outside of the relative safety of the Chronicle offices was a great way to ground the new events in familiarity without retreading the same ground.

I 100%, wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who love queer or historical romances.

This book is an absolute delight. Soft, gentle, funny, and sexy - and all the historical NYC and baseball details are fantastic. Cat Sebastian never misses, and her midcentury books are my particular favorite.

A queer historical romance about grief and second chances had me clutching the book to my chest and kicking my feet giddily from pretty much start to finish, and that about sums up the deft skill and emotional power of Cat Sebastian’s writing.

In You Should Be So Lucky, Mark and Eddie confront some pretty heavy universal struggles: we will all fail, no matter how hard we try, and death spares no one — and there’s often not a logical or fair explanation to either of those universal struggles. Here, those struggles are handled with so much care and humor at the heart of the story that it feels like a warm ember is cradled in your hands the whole time, so you aren’t bothered by the harsh reality of the world’s dreariness. While both Mark and Eddie struggle, there’s plenty of light, warmth, laughter, and love throughout their story. Most abundantly, there’s an ever present hope of a second chance, for nearly every character on the page, and each of those individual second chances are beautiful and heartwrenching in all their highs and lows. I’ve yet to find a Cat Sebastian book I didn’t love, but this one in particular is something special: it lays a foundation of hope gradually and unceasingly, until it’s something that can’t possibly be broken. I loved every minute.