Chuck Tingle keeps hitting it out of the park with his traditionally published horror fiction (which is not to say he isn't doing the same with his self-published erotica)! His horror is frightening and dread-inducing, deeply felt in its emotional beats and urgent in its messaging. CAMP DAMASCUS will always be my fave, as it taught me more about myself than I thought I could learn at 40, but LUCKY DAY is an entertaining and touching contribution to the Tingleverse canon.

4.25 stars

I really don’t even know how to write a review for this book because it was just so strange. Good, but strange.
It’s interesting to think about whether or not there actually is a balance to the world and if for every good thing that happens something bad has to happen. The idea of a casino that can manipulate that and allow people to win big while still making a profit was a unique premise and I enjoyed Vera and Layne’s investigation.
I really liked Vera. At the beginning of the book she’s already pretty cynical but after everything happens she just becomes more pessimistic and jaded.
As the book got stranger and stranger I felt like she really used that to her advantage I liked seeing her figure things out.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the ARC!

For someone who has known about Chuck Tingles work for many years but hasn’t picked anything up until now. Oh boy was I missing out. Lucky day starts out with a statistic professor sharing positive news with friends and family until a low probability event happens and changes Vera’s life.
It’s so hard to share a ton of details about this book due to not wanting to spoil many of the twists and turns as it’s a wild ride. A good mix of sci-fi, FBI investigation, and horror scenes and elements.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced reading copy of Lucky Day.

Imagine waking up inside a statistical anomaly with no idea who you are, where you are, or why everyone around you is dying in the most bizarre ways possible. That’s Lucky Day. Chuck Tingle grabs you by the brainstem and whispers sweet existential dread until you’re questioning whether luck is real or if you’re just the cosmic punchline.

This is horror, sure—but not the kind with jump scares and blood-soaked basements. This is the kind that sneaks into your head, pulls out a folding chair, and asks, “What even is identity?” It’s smart, surreal, and deeply unsettling in a way that made me want to lay face-down on the floor for a while.

Pacing-wise, it meanders in places—especially early on—but it builds toward something oddly hopeful, which I didn’t expect. I wouldn’t call it a comfort read unless your comfort zone includes probability spirals and philosophical breakdowns. In which case… have at it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Nightfire for this ARC! My mind is still glitching. 📊💀

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for the ARC. Thanks to Macmillan Audio for the ALC. Book to be published August 12, 2025.

Lucky Day is a unique and imaginative book. It explores big ideas like fate, choice, and identity in a very unusual way. The story is surreal but has a surprising amount of heart.

Some parts can be a bit hard to follow, which is why it's not a full 5 stars. Still, it's a powerful and creative read that sticks with you.

If you're looking for something different that makes you think, Lucky Day is a great pick.

The narration was right on point. Mara Wilson did an amazing job as always.

This was not as strong as Chuck Tingle's last two horror novels, which were my favorite horror novels of all time. Thanks for setting the bar so high! Still, this struggled mostly in comparison. I loved the fantastical elements and the groundedness in a near-reality of our own. Like all good horror, Tingle takes use one step out of the ordinary to show us how wrong our ordinary really is. This worked so perfectly in Bury Your Gays that I'm still thinking about it a year later- but Lucky Day's central premise maybe reminds me too much that we are not as progressive a society as we think we are. Our current political climate has made that abundantly clear, and Chuck Tingle always goes for the jugular.

Four stars, and still a worthy horror-y novel. Maybe your luck will be better than mine...

What I love most about Chuck Tingle is his imagination. He will come up with the most off the wall, creative ideas, AND they'll be so wonderfully written and described. I loved the first part of this - a gory, thriller-y survival / apocalyptic-feeling type introduction. I wish we had continued with this, but instead it went in a detective, sci-fi direction that I am just personally not a fan of. I'm a bit burnt out on the sci-fi trope that's in this, but I will say it is creative in its use of statistics and probability.

This is well-written, with great descriptions of horror and gore, and I'm sure people will enjoy it.

I'd recommend this for fans of Blake Crouch (Dark Matter, Recursion) and When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy (if you like the existential, meta-ness of that).

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy.

This book is unlike anything I’ve ever read in the best, most grotesque way. Set against the glitzy, too-bright backdrop of Las Vegas, Lucky Day is a literary rollercoaster of macabre absurdism, existential dread, and somehow… centipedes?

As a literature enthusiast, I was floored by how Chuck Tingle crafts an immersive, spiraling descent into chaos while grounding it in deeply human emotions. Vera, a former statistics professor haunted by loss, isn’t a typical protagonist I’d expect to relate to... but I loved her! Her grief, existential spiraling, and messy humanity made her incredibly real.

Then there’s Agent Layne: charismatic, fun-loving… until he’s not. You just know from the first meeting that he’s carrying secrets under that smile, and watching his layers peel back was such a satisfying tension builder.

📚 What Stood Out:

The final chapters are a feast of philosophical horror.

Tingle uses absurdity not as a gimmick but as a precision tool to explore randomness, grief, and the fragility of reality.

This book delivers both existential gut-punches and body horror with centipedes. Who else could do that?

Happy ending? Depends on your ability to process the existential.

This is definitely a one-sitting read. One that will linger with you long after the final page. I also want to shout out the author’s acknowledgements, which offered fascinating insight into the creation of such a smart and unhinged piece of fiction.

💬 Final Take:
Lucky Day is equal parts horror, humor, and heartbreak. Chuck Tingle proves that yes, anything is possible, and sometimes, that’s terrifying. I’ll absolutely be reading more from him.

Interesting new title from Tingle. Many great horror scenes and imagery that I really enjoyed, but the overall plot was not as intriguing as the other horror novels he's written. The characters were well written, but not as enjoyable either. Would recommend it to horror readers for the gory bits, but tonally not for all readers.

Lucky Day is an existential, absurdly wild ride, following Vera as she joins forces with Agent Lang to figure out the cause behind a Final Destination esque apocalypse that sweeps the world.

Lucky Day starts out with the apocalypse and only gets bleaker from there, but there's so much humor mixed in that it never gets bogged down. The horror is visceral and gory, never shying away from injuries or trauma, and it gets really bloody at times.

Tingle wrote Vera extremely well, making her seem smart and eccentric without her love of statistics causing the writing to drag. Vera is in a dark mindset for most of the story, and the juxtaposition between her and the high-on-life happy-go-lucky Agent Lang makes for some really entertaining conversations.

The direction that Lucky Day takes gets sciency, cosmic, and chaotic, but I overall loved it! I had a few predictions along the way, but honestly I had no idea where this book was going. Tingle does a good job explaining things, but I appreciate how he also just let things be weird and confusing too.

The writing and ending are heartfelt and emotional, showing that love and life matter even if nothing matters. We make our own meanings and those connections are what make everything worth it.

Here’s the thing, I am obsessed with Chuck Tingle and the way his mind works. Even if a synopsis seems a little out of my comfort zone, I’m picking it up. This would be the case here. Who knew a statistician would make for such a stellar FMC? Chuck did. I’m not convinced anyone else could pull this off. Lucky Day is a grief horror slash dark comedy combo that scratches an itch just right. I flew through it without even realizing I was because the story was so engrossing and the pacing was perfect. There were some gross body horror scenes that had me clutching my pearls. There were familial interactions that had me reaching for a tissue. There were scientific anomalies that had me scratching my brain. I loved this book. The whole idea of the LPE is so unique and cool, I will be thinking about this for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. A fun, absurdist horror novel that packs a punch and takes you on a wild, fast-paced ride. I didn't know what to expect when I picked this one up and my jaw hit the floor as the narrative unraveled into what it became. It was laugh-out-loud funny while being horrific at the same time. There are scenes from this one that are seared into my brain. I really like how Tingle played with fate and luck in a completely different way than I had ever read. The theme of nothing plays a large role as well and would be interesting to discuss in a group setting. The plot moved a bit too quickly for me and I would've liked more beats to slow it down and really process all of Vera's changing emotions. The ending left off in a really good place and left me with a smile on my face. Would recommend this to anyone looking for something very fast-paced that you haven't read before. It is a quest-type journey through a completely different type of dystopian-ish world than seen before.

My first Chuck Tingle was Bury Your Gays and I loved it, but every subsequent book of his that I read I like less and less.

In Lucky Day we’re with statistician Vera who has lost all purpose in life after a massive “unlucky” event defies all laws of probability and results in massive casualties of the most obscene and unhinged imaginable. When a government agent comes knocking to solve the mystery of what has caused it and why, it brings the duo to a strange Casino that might be at the source of the broken probability and fate problem. More chaos ensues.

The BIG IDEA at the heart of this book—what if luck was real and probability broke—is super interesting but if you wonder how confusing it would be to try and portray that, you would be right. It’s absolutely confusing as hell and you can tell Chuck Tingle gets bogged down trying to do it. At the expense of any character development and in the face of nonstop nonsense and gore for the sake of gore, Lucky Day is just an interesting idea, and that doesn’t make for an engaging novel. A good hook is still just a hook if you’ve got nothing else to back it up.

I would have DNFed this but I buddy read it with @roshlite and she ended up really liking it! So, I think it might just be a polarizing one.

Unfortunately, this might be my last Chuck Tingle as I’m starting to think Bury Your Gays was an outlier…

Lucky Day was my first non Stephen King horror novel and a great introduction to the wider genre. Horror has always been a way to put society under a microscope and examine human nature and this novel is no different. Unexpected, mind-bending, and a book with inertia; Lucky Day is a great read for newcomers and veterans to the genre of horror.

This book is absolutely bonkers and brutal, and I wouldn't expect anything less. It's pure Chuck Tingle chaos: gory, absurd, sharp, and somehow deeply heartfelt underneath all the blood and chaos. I went into it expecting something fresh and unlike anything I've read before, but I still found myself surprised by just how wild this story gets. Flying fish? Check. Government agents? Check. Alternate timelines, existential dread, and public pool trauma? Yep, it’s all here.

Vera, the main character, is a former statistics professor living in the aftermath of a "Low Probability Event" (LPE for short). This was a global catastrophe that changed (or ended) many people's lives. She’s numb, isolated, and grieving not just what she’s lost but the person she used to be. Then Agent Layne shows up. He’s a shady government agent with questionable methods and a mission: figure out why absurd and deadly events keep occurring all over the country, and how it’s all connected to an improbably successful casino. Vague? Yes, but intentionally so. I don't want to spoil anything. This is one that absolutely needs to be experienced.

There’s a "Final Destination" vibe running through the book, mostly because some of the kills had me screaming "Whoa!", much like I do when watching one of those movies. There's also plenty of Tingle’s signature twist of absurdist horror and queerness woven into the DNA of the story. And it’s not just chaos for the sake of chaos. There’s also commentary on bi-erasure and identity. That message is loud, clear, and beautifully integrated without ever feeling preachy.

I tandem read an ARC and ALC of this one, and Mara Wilson (who also narrated Tingle's "Camp Damascus") brings this story to life with a performance that’s perfectly tuned to the material. She captures Vera’s detached grief, Layne’s sketchy urgency, and the sheer craziness of the plot with pitch-perfect delivery.

Clocking in at just over 200 pages, this book doesn’t waste time. It moves fast. There’s no filler, no dragging middle, no over-explaining. Tingle knows exactly when to lean into the chaos and when to step back and let us breathe. Some of the imagery will absolutely stick with me. I’m definitely steering clear of public pools for a while.

This is a strange, smart, high-stakes romp that’s somehow both bonkers and sneakily profound. If you’re a fan of Chuck Tingle’s brand of horror—or just looking for something completely original and a little unhinged—this one’s a must. And seriously, if you listen to audiobooks, grab this one. Mara Wilson’s narration is perfect.

After surviving a most absurd global catastrophe called the "Low Probability Event" - Vera, previously a happy and successful statistics professor pre-LPE, is thrown from her depressive bubble when government agent Layne comes barreling through her front door. According to him, she's the only person who can help solve the mystery of these absurd disasters and their connection to an unusually lucky Las Vegas casino.

***

Chuck Tingle is easily one of my favourite modern horror authors - every title of his has been an absolute smash for me, and Lucky Day is no exception.

I don't even know how exactly to describe this one...it's some kinda cosmic horror with Final Destination vibes. The imagery is absolutely bananas and I was SHOOK by how completely unhinged, random and brutal these disastrous events are - I don't think anyone could ever possibly predict the wild, gory deaths Tingle puts to page here. So with that said - be warned! I wouldn't say this novel is particularly frightening, but it is gory for sure, so consider your tolerance before picking this guy up. Though certainly not much of a gambler, Las Vegas has been a frequent vacation spot for my fam over the years and I found it to be an absolutely brilliant setting for this premise. The name and description (aside from the cosmic horror) of the Great Britannica Hotel & Casino felt almost comically believable to me (iykyk).

I just...love it. Tingle always manages to create thought-provoking stories covering important, relevant topics while incorporating a biting satirical tone and conclusions that are consistently full to the brim with love. His books hit all the good notes for me. Due to the absurdity of so many of the events, I don't want to say much more than this for fear of ruining the surprise.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for providing an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

Lucky Day comes out August 12, 2025 for those interested!

This book was a wild ride. We're following Vera after surviving something called a 'Low Probability Event' occurs, which ended with her mother, and millions of other people, dead. Four years after this tragedy, Vera is a shut in living in her mother's home. One day, a government agent named Layne, knocks on Vera's home and the two team up to try uncovering a connection between the event and a casino in Vegas.

This book was somehow incredible and ridiculous at the same time. I've read Bury Your Gays by this author so I kind of knew what to expect, but I was still surprised by how off the rails this went. The pacing was a little strange at parts, but the ending really redeemed it. I listened primarily to the audiobook and I really enjoyed the narration. The accents were done well and I could understand when different people were speaking.

If you liked weird, apocalyptic books with a side of statistics and angsty queer characters, then I'd recommend this one!

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan for this ARC!

(3.5 stars rounded up)

Vera, with her firm grasp of probability and statistics, experiences tragedy during a Low Probability Event. She isolates for several years, until reluctantly joining Agent Layne in an attempt to connect the dots.

Wow, does Chuck Tingle pack a lot into a slim novel! The action starts early and doesn't let up until the very end, culminating in a beautiful ending (going to return to that last chapter when times are tough). Fun references to Tingle's other works for the buckaroos.

Move aside plain ol’ Death. We have a new haunting specter named Bad Luck and things are about to get unhinged.

The beginning of the book kicks off with a wild global catastrophe and was definitely my favorite part. Vera is an endearing and relatable protagonist (I’m depressed ok) and I enjoyed her dynamic with her polar opposite temporary PiC Layne as they head to the luckiest place on Earth: a casino in Vegas. Overall, a wild ride indeed. Equal parts horrific and absurd. If Final Destination is your brand of horror and you like a cosmic twist, this is for you.

Chuck Tingle has done it again! This book goes from 90 mph of nasty, brutal "what the heck is going on" to exploring a character's internality, the concept of fate, and ultimately lands on human resilience. Only Chuck Tingle can wrap up a story so absurd into such a beautiful package. And as always, LOVE WINS. I consider this impeccably executed.