Chuck Tingle has been an insta-buy for me since Camp Damascus, and here he does it yet again. Skip the summary for this one, which spoils the first 25% of the book. I loved going in not knowing what to expect. It always feels like I'm sitting down at a summer campfire in the woods, and Chuck Tingle is there to tell me a great spooky story. I never have to ease into his novels; by the end of chapter one, I'm always breathless, going, "And THEN what happened?"

In Lucky Day, a bisexual narrator is repeatedly told that bisexuals don't exist. This results in her doubting that she's even real, that anything matters, that it's worth getting out of bed in the morning. It's also possibly tearing at the fabric of reality.

Tingle really pulled out all the stops for this one. Lucky Day has the same arc of powerless-to-powerful that I loved in Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays, but there's a logistical sophistication to the scenes, imagery, and plotlines that completely delighted me. His books feel like, if not an antidote to the times we're living in, then at least a hand stretched out to those who need it most, a reminder that we're not all on our own here, and that despite the horrors, love remains the most important tool we have.

Statistical probability horror was not on my bingo card for the year, but Chuck Tingle makes it work. It’s funny, shocking, and downright original from start to finish, mixing in moments of sincerity with moments of utter nonsense that make you wonder ‘how did he think of that?’ I admittedly haven’t read any Chuck Tingle in the past but this has me convinced to pick up his other horror novels and give them a go.

The Best Bits
A crash course (literally) in statistics
The Big Event - it’s the perfect manifestation of the definition of chaos
Agent Layne’s weirdness - his random daily choices are weird and endearing

The Big Event
The novel starts like any other, with a few basic events and some tense interactions. It all trucks forward as expected until the world explodes and the pages become pure insanity. Improbability is the theme of the day and Tingle is clearly having a field day, throwing every random thing at the wall to create pure chaos. It’s horrifying to imagine and leaves you on edge for the rest of the book. Is the world about to burst into chaos again? Will a trip on a plane result in a horrifying death for our main character? You never know, and that suspense keeps you rocketing through to the end.

The Constant Need to Know What’s Going On
Horror novels typically keep you on edge, making you think you know what’s about to happen until the opposite slams into you. Lucky Day has a unique approach of making you reel through a dozen options as you read each page. Is it an attack from a rival nation? Aliens? A government conspiracy? Is it actually random or targeted? Are tigers going to burst through a wall at any time and eat your face? Tingle keeps you guessing the entire time and it makes for a pretty thrilling read. It’s been a while since I delved into a story that had this much uncertainty, in a good way.

So Much Thinking
I loved how philosophical the novel was, diving deep into statistics and probability on a global scale. All of these stats are out there for you to learn and, with a husband who loves statistics, I frequently do learn some of them. Seeing them in action is something completely different, and makes it all the more fascinating. We spend so much of our time watching or reading things and saying ‘that would never happen’ and this book is literally built on that premise. It’s pretty brilliant when you think about it.

In my mind Chuck Tingle can do no wrong or even disappoint me with a book. I loved this one and will recommend it to others.

Thank you TOR & Chuck Tingle for this ARC! I loved Bury Your Gays so I was very excited for this but unfortunately it fell a little flat for me. The pacing of this book a bit off, in my opinion. Some parts were super exciting but others were pretty dull. The parts with actual horror in it left me wanting more. I did however appreciate Tingle showing the perspective of someone experiencing bi-erasure and some of the writing was very well done, which I expected from Tingle. I do think that someone who loves horror that is very out of the box might enjoy this!

3.25 stars. While celebrating the release of her new book, statistics professor Vera narrowly survives the Low Probability Event—a global catastrophe that killed millions in bizarre, impossible ways. Now four years later, Vera retreats into a nihilistic, reclusive existence. But when she’s drawn into an investigation surrounding a Vegas casino that’s extremely lucky, she begins to suspect a connection between the casino and the strange, sporadic mass deaths around the country. Can Vera and Agent Layne unravel the mystery before the next catastrophe strikes?

This was such a strange book!! It started off so strong with the Low Probability Event and the wild, over-the-top deaths in the beginning had me hooked right away. But as the story progressed, I started losing interest in Vera’s storyline. I just couldn’t connect with her as a character, but I did enjoy her interactions with Agent Layne.

Although a bit chaotic at times, I really did enjoy the cosmic and surreal vibes, especially toward the end. Some parts were totally absurd, but that’s what I loved about it— in a world that used to be orderly, chaos has taken over, and it feels like anarchy at times. Chuck Tingle also did a great job with queer representation, showing Vera’s struggles as she figures out her identity as a bisexual woman.

This book certainly isn’t for everyone, but if you’re interested in an unusual story that blends science fiction and cosmic horror elements, you may enjoy this one.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an electronic ARC of this book!

In Chuck Tingle’s LUCKY DAY, on May 23, the world experienced what became known as an LPE, a Low Probability Event. Over eight million people lost their lives in seemingly impossible and bizarre ways. They were either crushed by falling fish, hung by a soaring parade balloon, murdered by an enraged chimpanzee holding an old typewriter, or several other improbable and grisly deaths. While many people seem to have moved on, Vera, a probability professor and survivor of the chaos, has moved steadily into nihilism.

Her reclusive life takes a turn when she is approached by Special Agent Layne asking for her help in trying to take down a casino; one sporting the best odds for their clientele while also remaining wildly profitable. Is this impossible “good luck” linked to the “bad luck” suffered on May 23?

Whenever I recommend one of Chuck Tingle’s horror novels, I’m nearly always asked if he’s the same Chuck Tingle who writes those “butt books”. Yes, it’s that same Chuck Tingle and while I haven’t read one of the books that brought Tingle to the dance, I have to imagine that these horror novels could not be more different from those parody stories. Chuck is a tremendous writer and I think Lucky Day has overtaken Bury Your Gays as my favorite of his non-comedy work. The ideas presented here surrounding probability, statistical analysis, fate, and destiny as well as the way that Tingle navigates those ideas left me smiling from ear to ear. This book is devourable in a single sitting, if you have the time; it’s a hard one to put down. LUCKY DAY is reminiscent of a Black Crouch novel crossed with Jason Pargin with a queer slant.

This was a wild ride. Vera is a statistics professor who is out celebrating with friends and family when the first low-probability event takes place. Thousands of people die as fish rain down from the sky and other unimaginable events happen. Four years later, Agent Layne asks Vera to help him figure out the cause of the low-probability events. The book digs into statistics and chaos vs order. And also questions reality and nothingness. This was a fun read and I enjoyed it.

CW: suicidal ideation, gore, death

I enjoyed this, but I feel like it didn't quite do what Tingle set out to do. In his other books it's been very clear what the horror aspect is, it's had a lot of social commentary, and I have gobbled them up. This one is quite different.

In this story we start with the Low Probability Event, which is basically when a bunch of stuff that statistically should never (or almost never) happen, does. And the utter chaos that ensues.

We have Vera who has written a book about a casino in Las Vegas that has better odds than any other casino, yet still makes money. She's having brunch with her friend group, fiance, and mother to celebrate the book, when everything goes to shit. She's also been working up the nerve to tell her mom that she's bisexual and engaged to a woman. Which she does during the brunch, and her mother doesn't take it well at all, claiming that bisexuals don't exist.

I think that Tingle was trying to make more of the idea of bi-erasure and biphobia, but I don't think it quite worked. Like, the connections weren't quite there or weren't quite strong enough.

For most of the book Vera is assisting Agent Layne, who works for a shady governmental agency that has been investigating the Low Probability Event and who has found links to the evil casino that Vera had written about. At one point Agent Layne makes a comment about bisexuals not existing, that they're either straight and experimenting or not willing to admit they're gay. So, there is this bi-erasure coming up again, but it feels kind of forced? Throughout the book Vera is constantly battling with thoughts of nothingness and wanting to not exist. I think this is supposed to be linked to the bi-erasure? But, as I said, it just doesn't quite work.

It was an enjoyable read, it kept me going with almost non-stop action, I just wish that the bi-erasure/corporate greed as horror aspects had been a bit more fleshed out.

Lucky Day was such a fun rollercoaster ride of a novel! Filled with improbable nightmare situations, I couldn't predict what would happen next. I enjoyed following Vera as a protagonist and her struggle with finding meaning after tragedy. I think it's best to go in blind, so I won't say much more than that. Tingle brings humor and novelty to his writing that just works for me. It's a shorter book, and Tingle made the most of the pages. If you like irreverent horror novels with queer representation, I think you'll like this one. I’m already eyeing his backlist!

What are the odds you witness your mother’s death when it's raining fish on the same day that your friend gets murdered by a typewriter-wielding chimpanzee?
Accomplished statistician Vera's life was perfect. Recently engaged, an accomplished professor, and a first-time author, she felt incredibly lucky. Until four years ago, when she was placed in the center of a catastrophe so gruesome and unlikely that it resembled something more out of a horror-movie franchise than reality. It caused her to question and lose everything. Readers follow Vera as she is recruited by a secret government agency to help make sense of the events of that day four years ago and reset the scales of fate. A masterwork in balancing the horror genre with speculative fiction, Tingle provides readers with an addictive and thought-provoking adventure. Sure to satisfy the bloodlust of Tingle's loyal fanbase, the philosophical questions and fully formed characters woven throughout will appeal to fans of Michael Crichton, Andy Weir, and Blake Crouch. A success so rare, readers will feel as if they've hit the jackpot; a must-read and a strong contender for the best book of 2025

After surviving the Low Probability Event in which millions died in improbable but possible ways all around the world, former statistics expert Vera has given up on life and humanity. But when government agent Layne finds her and asks for her help and expertise to save the world, Vera reluctantly answers the call. With well-developed characters and dark humor, this thought-provoking horror read is fun for lovers of the genre.

I love Chuck Tingle, so I feel super lucky to have been approved for this ARC. It's definitely another winner. I think I might put it more at 4.5 because the ending was a little bit of a bummer, but not enough to put it at a 4. It's very much a mix of Final Destination with a little bit of cosmic horror thrown into a casino/gambling setting. It also reminded me a little bit of the game Control in parts. The main character is a bisexual statistics professor named Vera who lives through a disaster during which her mom dies after a heated argument, and shuts herself in for several years to mourn. A new government agency was formed during this time to deal with these random violent events that started occurring after the big disaster, and Vera is brought in by an agent from this agency to consult because of her experience. It's a complicated plot to explain, and it's probably better to just read it. Just know that it's a very fun, gory and a fast read. Thanks again for the ARC!

Things I liked:
It's got the typical Tingle weirdness that I absolutely adore. He also writes great queer characters, where being gay isn't their whole being.
Such a unique story - where something is messing with the luck on the planet (although mostly in the United States).

Things I disliked:
Toward the last third or so of the book, things got a bit hard to follow. The pacing felt off and the final payoff/conclusion of the story was just a bit of a letdown. Maybe my fellow readers will not mind, but I just wasn't as engaged in the story.

My first Chuck Tingle book, and I loved it. It's a little absurd and plenty horrifying, hilarious and unsettling.

My thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for an advance copy of a book about a grieving professor of statistics who is given a chance at redemption, to go after a casino has played the odds so much that they nearly destroyed the world.

There are days that people set out with the best of intentions, days that everything goes right, nothing odd happens, nothing weird. Working in retail those days a cherished. There are days though that nothing goes right. Hair won't stay down, clothes suddenly looked rumpled, fish fall from the sky and kill people in car accidents. Well those are normal days to Chuck Tingle. Lucky Day is a story about what happens when everything goes wrong at once, leaving a statistics professor at a loss emotionally with no sense of how the world works, and the chance she has to make it all right.

Vera Norrie was having a great day. Vera was celebrating her first book, a look a casino who was gaming the odds in their favor, celebrating being made the youngest professor at the University of Chicago in Probability and Statistics. And finally Vera was going to share with her Mom the truth about her life and who she loves. Until everything went wrong. Literally. An event called the Low Probability Event occured, fish fell from the skys, things blew up randomly, animals go nuts, things that couldn't happen, happened, all over the world, but mostly near Vera. Vera's happiest day went to saddest, with sudden loss, and a complete loss of how the world works, and why. Four years have passed and Vera is approached by a Federal agent working for a scary group investigating the event by the name of Jonah Layne, comes to Vera with a scenario. The casino that Vera wrote about might be responsible for the Event. And might be planning something much worse, something that only Vera might be able to stop.

A wild, wacky ride of a book that has a lot of violence, a lot of humour and a lot of sadness. With statistics. This is the first that I have read by Chuck Tingle, and I must say I enjoyed it quite a bit. The story is nuts, the descriptions are just as crazy, and boy is it violent. However the characters are really good, well-developed and even when the world is going mad, seem real. The story gets going fast and never lets up. Tingle has a gift for making even math seem interesting. There is body horror, speculative thoughts about the future, chimpanzees and lots of fun. A good summer read for a particular group of readers.

Chuck Tangle has become an author to keep and eye out. I came from 'Bury your gays' and really enjoyed that one! Chuck is able to capture readers attention and make characters endearing. 4/5 for sure!

This one unfortunately was not for me. I DNFed it at about 42% in, but this is not a mark on the quality of this book. It is simply not a book for me!

This book starts with honestly a whip-lash inducing bang. From a soft, lovely scene of two sapphics waking up together ahead of a book launch, to coming out to a mother who immediately is INCREDIBLY homophobic ("it's just a phase") and biphobic ("bisexual isn't real"), to the world LITERALLY exploding around our MC, taking us through a blood bath of completely impossible scenarios (fish falling from sky, monkeys on the loose smashing heads in with a typewriter, some lady falling on a couple parasols exactly into her eyes and going into a murderous rage, amongst MANY more) that result in BILLIONS of people dead and injured - this book felt immediately less real than I anticipated it feeling. Then we are plunged into our MC's four-year depressive state where she no longer believes she is real and literally nothing matters, which is a direct look at how the rest of the world is coping after this insanely tragic event.

What stopped working for me - other than the opening feeling completely unreal to me and taking me out of the story - was the character work in the next couple chapters, and the reasoning for the plot moving forward. The agent that comes to talk to our MC and convince her to help shine a light on this supposedly corrupt gambling house/casino, which she had done before hand as a probability professor, is honestly the most cartoon character I have ever had the honour of reading. Why is my man so child-like and odd?? who's to say. And honestly the way that the plot was moving toward investigating this casino, as though it somehow had anything to do with the tragedy from four years previous just felt off to me.

Which is why I DNFed. I'll be interested to see what other people think of this one as it comes out. I really enjoyed Bury Your Gays, so I will be tentatively taking a look at Chuck's further releases, but for this one, it's a no.

<b>Disclosure Statement: I received an ARC from the publisher for review. My thoughts and opinions are entirely my own and have not been influenced by either the publisher nor the author in any way.</b>

I'll admit, not always have I understood Chuck Tingle's tagline "Love is real." It feels like it's too obvious a statement, and I've seldom ever understood the significance of it as a maxim. <i>Lucky Day</i> is what has helped me grok the phrase.

Because at the core of this book is the existential threat that nothing we can do matters, that our interactions are all superficial, all artifice. As someone on the spectrum and someone who also struggles to understand how absolutely meaningless the world can be--just full of grief and pain--I have lived that existential dread my whole entire life. But what the book posits is that nothing is truly meaningless if we work to build our meaning along the way, and how we look to one another is the way we push back against the all-consuming void.

In this light, I understand Chuck's message. "Love is real" isn't arbitrary turn of phrase; it is the confirmation of life and living having meaning. If love is real, then love matters. And if love matters, then life isn't devoid of purpose, of meaning, of significance. And if love can matter, so can so many other things in life. We don't have to be trapped in cycles of circumstance. We can matter. And not every bad thing that happens is a disaster; good can come from even the worst things.

In a world of chaos and uncertainty, it's really nice to come across a book that reminds me that nothing is truly for nothing.

4.5 stars, but rounding up.

Chuck Tingle does it again! A thought-provoking, unique, sci-fi horror that I thought was a great book overall. Vera Norrie was the smart, bisexual female protagonist that we need more of in the world. I also thought Agent Layne was also her perfect opposite. The probability plot was confusing at first, and started out as a downright impossible and chaotic, but Tingle wraps it up nicely toward the last chapter.

The only part I felt lacked, or was hard to believe, was Annie. I don’t believe that she wouldn’t have tried to find Vera within the four year gap. They had to have had a conversation about where her mom lived, and if Annie loved her enough to marry her, she would have tried to find her. Lake Geneva isn’t that far away from Chicago. Also, the story probably could have been written without her.

I didn't find Lucky Day as enjoyable as Tingle's previous novel, Bury Your Gays--which I loved. I didn't feel as invested in the main characters, and the writing for me wasn't as clever as Bury Your Gays. The novel felt rushed. I will still be reading his next novel, but this is one I wouldn't necessarily recommend.