Lucky Day is weird in all the best ways. From the first page, Chuck Tingle drops you straight into the chaos of the LOE (Low-Probability Event)—a catastrophe so surreal and absurd, it feels like the X-Files, Final Destination, and a fever dream all smashed together inside a casino. And yet, somehow, it works.

Vera is one of my favorite Tingle protagonists to date. She’s grieving, prickly, and fully in fuck it mode when we meet her—but watching her get pulled back into a world that makes absolutely no sense, and still choose to fight, was as moving as it was bizarre. There’s horror, there’s sci-fi, there’s a corporate conspiracy that gave me whiplash, and there’s just enough queer Men in Black energy to make it all delightfully unhinged.
Tingle continues to be one of the most thoughtful and original voices in speculative fiction. He tackles grief, identity, and nihilism with such strange tenderness—and somehow manages to break your heart while reminding you that love is real and existence is enough. I also really appreciated the subtle fourth-wall breaks and commentary on chance, probability, and the illusion of order.

And I have to shout out the audiobook, which was phenomenal. Mara Wilson nails the tone—dry, sardonic, vulnerable—and honestly, her narration elevated the entire experience. This one is perfect on audio.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio, Tor Publishing Group, and NetGalley for the advanced listening copy! 4.5/5

Utter and complete mayhem! Who is the villain? What is the villain? What is the body count? Plot hole what?!

The books opens with a mass slaughter and Vera is the only survivor in her group. She then descends into depression until an unsanctioned gov’t agency sought her help. Of course she won’t refuse coz she needed closure, and as a woman of science, she needs to know what exactly what went wrong on that fateful day. What followed is a series of absurdities that no science can explain… only Chuck Tingle.

I enjoyed this (though not as much as BYG). A quarter in I stopped trying to follow the bouncing ball and decided I’ll just go along for the ride. Mara Wilson narrated this brilliantly, she captured the adrenaline of the story. I wish I could talk to her and ask her reaction as she read/narrated the book.

Chuck Tingle, you magnificent creature, you've done it again - written a wholly original, darkly hilarious, utterly thought-provoking, highly entertaining story that made me think and rage and laugh and cringe all at once! This is a wild tale, and I absolutely loved it - although the ending got a little weird even for me/Tingle. It was still a crazy ride that I'd recommend to anyone with an open mind and willingness to travel dark and unusual roads in their fiction. I loved the concept of historical fate and exploring coincidence versus chance versus luck versus fate. The narration was extraordinary and perfectly captured the chaotic frenzy of the story. This was a fabulous tale - and how fabulous is the cover??

Chuck Tingle nailed it again. This was such an interesting concept and a stellar execution, the marvelous Mara Wilson narrating. This book is violent and suspenseful. Whatever you think is next in the plot, you’re gonna be wrong.

On a single day, 8 million people died in unique and unexpected ways. Vera, a statistics and data scientist was deeply impacted that day, rarely leaving the house after the event. Then, she’s recruited by a special agent to help investigate a lucky casino that may be connected to that very unlucky day.

This book was a wild, yet emotional read. The main character and their response felt very real and the narration was reflective of both. The science fiction elements created a very strange backdrop that kept me guessing and I enjoyed that mysterious thread.

Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio and the author for the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Come for the horror, stay for the bi-pride. 🩷💜💙

The chances of dying from reading a Chuck Tingle book are low, but never zero.

Have you ever thought of the probability of being beat to death with a typewriter by a monkey dressed as Shakespeare? These and other deep thoughts are coming your way in Chuck Tingle's newest book about the extremes of luck and misfortune.

I've never felt more lucky getting this book as an advanced listener copy. Mara Wilson is Chuck's go-to narrator and she once again does an amazing job. You'll have heard her in Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays. I also just listened to her in The Z Word. She sounds exactly like the narrator in my head sounds like.

The first chapter of Lucky Day grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. We're following Vera on the unluckiest day of over 8 million lives as she survives what is later called a 'low probability event'. Fish fall from the sky killing the people they land on. A massive parade balloon drags it's handlers by the neck in a macabre puppet display as they bounce off light posts. A manhole cover blasts up, removing a running man's face.

We follow Vera and a federal agent as they work to uncover why this event happened. Chuck Tingle is in top form here as the book balances perfectly absurd circumstances with deep meditations on identity and self-love.

Pick this up if you love
🃏 Absurd horror
🃏 Bi-visibility
🃏 Statistics (don't worry, Chuck doesn't make you do math)
🃏 Existential global mystery
🃏 Gambling

This book is best read while betting your life, that you'll survive this book.

4.75 stars

Lucky Day asks the question, "Does what we do matter?

Vera is a successful statistician and probability professor out celebrating her new book, when the unthinkable happens and people start dying in bizarre and tragic ways, including her mother. The event is known as the Low-Probability Event and after Vera survives it, she can't bring herself to participate in a work where something so unpredictable happens and moves into her late mother's house barely living. 

Four years later, she befriends a cat and Special Agent Layne comes to recruit her to help solve the mystery of the Low-Probability Event. He believes a casino that is above lucky is at the core of it. Vera is lured into solving the mystery with the promise of Data and data analysis and the change to solve something.

We get to watch her and Layne explore these low probability events to their core, which begs the question, is everything pre-determined, does what we do on an individual level matter, how do we move on when everything seems worthless and how do we find value and joy in everyday life?

I really enjoyed this one. It had me hooked from the beginning and the audio narration did such a good job telling the story through Vera's voice, I heard her anxiety,  excitement, and dread. It was a real treat to experience. If you enjoy horror or sci fi books I would pick this up. It kept me so intrigued and engaged. Highly recommend it!! Thank you to the publisher for providing an ALC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

4.25 🌟 rounded down

This was my first Chuck Tingle novel, and it was great! It was a bizarre, over-the-top, and sometimes gory sci-fi romp through probability, love, and the choices we make in life. It's relatively fast-paced, and I was able to finish it in less than a day. I liked both Vera and Layne's characters, and their relationship. I really connected with Vera, especially her nihilistic attitude after losing what she felt was the meaning of life.

Mara Wilson did the narration. I've listened to her audiobooks before and always enjoy her narration. She has a strong, clear voice that reflects emotions at the right times.

Recommended for fans of sci-fi with LGBT rep.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ALC.

while I enjoyed the audiobook & the narration by mara wilson, I can’t wait to get a physical copy to highlight some of the passages. this novel explores my favorite existential dilemma of "nothing matters" through a very logical main character. at times I couldn’t completely wrap my head around some of the statistics tangents—again another benefit of reading a physical copy. the plot unraveled in such an organic way, providing one revelation after the next. I never could quite predict what would happen, pleasantly surprised at each direction the novel went. chuck tingle is one of my favorite authors because of his ability to connect with the reader in his subtle & meaningful wrap ups.

thank you to netgalley & macmillan audio for the arc.

What a unique premise that this book had! I was really impressed with the theme of luck and how it could cause apocalyptic-like horror. I also loved that by the end, you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. There’s a part toward the end that revealed a serendipitous moment with our main characters, and I thought that was a great addition to the plot. It’s unlike anything I’ve read in the past in the best way possible. I had a feeling that this was going to be a great book, and I was right. I cannot recommend this enough!

The kind of horror found in Chuck Tingle's „Lucky Day“ is definitely not for everyone. Luckily for me, I hit the jackpot, and the existential dread I found in this novel is exactly my vibe. If you love horror based on real-life philosophical concepts, it might be yours too.

This story is absurd, crazy, and absolutely everything out of the ordinary, but what makes it so special is that every single aspect clicks into place to show the insane domino effect that made the story spiral into what it is: a story of hope.
Against all odds, it's still a story of hope that proves that in our existence, meaning can always be found.

Yes, at times it definitely is a bit much. And it absolutely should be noted that it's pretty gory. And a bit disgusting sometimes. And it's definitely very over the top.
But somehow it works.
This can also be partly attributed to Mara Wilson. The voice actor did an incredible job with bringing the characters to life while giving every character a distinct voice to make conversations easy to follow.

So buckle up, this is a wild ride where you just can't help but get swept up in unlikely odds, existential questions, and the occasional disaster. But hey, at least we get provided with a nice playlist.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with this ARC in return for an honest review.

unfortunately, this one didn't work for me. i went in with an open mind and genuinely wanted to love it, but the absurdist tone pulled me out of the story almost immediately. i kept fixating on the imagery - a chimpanzee in elizabethan garb attacking someone with a typewriter - when i was supposed to be reflecting on the nature of chaos and meaning. every time the book invited me to contemplate something larger, i was too distracted by how strange and surreal it all felt. the humor and horror were there, but they didn't always sit comfortably together.

conceptually, this book should have been everything i enjoy. it’s about nihilism, catastrophe, and what we choose to believe in after everything falls apart. it centers on a queer woman who is trying to rebuild some sort of framework for living in a post-sense world. but i struggled. there were long stretches where i genuinely didn't know what i was reading. the prose was occasionally sharp, but more often it felt meandering, like it was following a philosophical joke to the end of a maze and leaving the reader behind.

vera, as a protagonist, makes sense on paper. she's a statistician who saw her entire field become irrelevant in a single day. that's a compelling starting point. but her voice quickly became exhausting. every line felt like a quip about the futility of life. nothing felt sincere. it reminded me of internet humor from a decade ago, when existential dread was still cute. and it was constant. her conversations, her internal monologue, even her interactions with other characters felt filtered through this tired, performative nihilism. i think she could have been an incredibly moving character, but the tone undercut that potential.

mara wilson's narration is what got me through. she brings warmth and depth to vera that the text alone did not provide. if i had read this in print, i'm not sure i would have finished it. her performance made the book feel more human.

this is the first of chuck tingle's novels that simply didn't click with me. i thought camp damascus was great and bury your gays had a lot of merit. this, though, felt too committed to its own bit. it never gave me the emotional foothold i needed to stay engaged. even more disappointing was the repeated biphobic framing. the way bisexuality was used here felt like a tired joke, not an identity that was treated with care. it clashed with the book's efforts to be thoughtful and profound.

i understand what this book was going for, and i know others will connect with it. there are moments of clarity, moments when the plot and the message align just right. but those moments were too few for me. mostly, it left me feeling disconnected. i was hoping for something messy and meaningful. instead, it felt like a puzzle that didn’t want to be solved.

Bizarre, hilarious, and deeply unique. The audiobook narration adds an extra layer of charm, bringing out both the absurdity and sincerity of the story. What starts out feeling like a wild, off-the-rails concept evolves into something touching and affirming with themes of self-worth, connection, and choosing love.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for this ARC.

Pick the weirdest way to die and then make it weirder.

I really loved this off-the-wall story of probability, dimensions, and well, death.

Final Destination meets Control meets X-Files, I hope y'all get the picture I'm trying to paint here lol. Absurd, unique, deep, and oddly funny too. The premise was so creative and a blast to read, a perfect mix of horror and sci-fi.

This was my second book from Chuck Tingle (Camp Damascus was my first!) and I got to say I think I'm completely sold now. I'm excited to see what he writes next and I'm excited to get to whatever books I haven't read from him yet.

A very unique and unexpected story. I hadn't anticipated just how strange this would be, but I really enjoyed it from start to finish. At no point did I anticipate what came next and I found myself growing fond of the main character and her life.

A statistician's worst nightmare come to life. Full of horror, but also gives plenty of space to develop heartfelt moments and character growth.

The audiobook experience was top-notch. Mara Wilson was a great narrator and did a wonderful job bringing the characters and their horrifying experiences to life. Can be enjoyed at a speed of 1x - 2x with ease, though I found I felt most comfortable at 1.75x without sacrificing key tonal intonations.

Recommend if you enjoy high stakes stories that keep you on your toes, with a hearty dash of body horror!! Can't wait to read Tingle's other works.

Absurdist and wacky, but that is exactly what I have come to expect from Chuck Tingle. Lucky Day has all the ingredients to be a wild, funny, creepy ride and it did not disappoint.

Super unique concept to this thriller, the events in this book are more absurd that you can imagine and downright nasty!

This book was so fun!!!! One thing I can say about Tingle’s work is how unique they all are and I always love his queer characters + the gory horror. This was scary in the way that picturing this happening in real life was terrifying me. I had to keep telling myself, this isn’t real lmao I loved the plot and never would I have thought I’d be into probability and statistics but with this book? I was into it! The gory death scenes were so so good and I loved that ending, so unexpected!!

Thank you to Net Galley, the author, and the publisher for an advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t know how it took me so long to start reading Chuck Tingle, but he’s quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Lucky Day is a perfect example of how his horror has a mix of playfulness and gruesomeness. It was so much fun and I loved it.

Lucky Day is about Vera, professor of statistics, coming to terms with a devastating global event called the “Low Probability Event”. She struggles to find meaning in anything while feeling like nothing. One day, a government agent named Layne comes to her doorstep needing her help. From there our journey begins.

The marketing for this says “When it comes to Chuck Tingle, the only thing more terrifying than a serious horror novel is an absurd one.” and I couldn’t agree more. The ideas in this book are wild, but the themes are grounded in reality. There are themes of grief, depression, and biphobia. All of which I can relate to, just not in the same way as Vera.

This book is fast paced and keeps you hooked from the very beginning. The Low Probability Event is gruesome, but also made me chuckle at how absurd it was. This continues throughout the entire story for me.

The only disappointment is the end for me- just wanted more! I would have loved to see Vera and Annie reconnect.

I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend this book to fans of horror, absurd books, and more. :)