Lucky Brilliant

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Pub Date 10 Sep 2020 | Archive Date 29 Sep 2020

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Description

Lucky Brilliant is a captivating book about family, friendship, first love, and loss. The novel is perfect for young adults who like mystery-driven dramas, a page-turning tale that reveals surprising twists until the final chapter.

Fifteen-year-old Lucky Brilliant wants to change both the past and the future. After her charming father Chase is murdered for his winning lottery ticket, Lucky learns that he was not the person she thought he was. Chase Brilliant turns out to be a liar and a cheater who leaves Lucky and her mother struggling to survive. When Lucky begins to have psychic dreams that predict the future, she tries to prevent more terrible events from happening.

Best friends Eva, a fashionista, and Silas, a handsome eleventh-grader, help Lucky stay grounded so she can manage her household crisis. Just when life is improving, another shocking secret emerges.

Lucky Brilliant is a captivating book about family, friendship, first love, and loss. The novel is perfect for young adults who like mystery-driven dramas, a page-turning tale that reveals surprising...


A Note From the Publisher

Maureen Sherbondy is an award-winning writer whose short stories have appeared in The Stone Canoe, The North Carolina Literary Review, The Cortland Review, and other journals. The Slow Vanishing is her short story collection. She has also published nine poetry books. Maureen lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her writer husband and her cat Lola.

Maureen Sherbondy is an award-winning writer whose short stories have appeared in The Stone Canoe, The North Carolina Literary Review, The Cortland Review, and other journals. The Slow Vanishing is...


Advance Praise

“Maureen Sherbondy’s intriguing coming-of-age tale, Lucky Brilliant, is an entrancing page-turner.” –Lisa Williams Kline, author of One Week of You, Writer Before Your Eyes

“…perfectly captures teen anger, confusion, and alienation in a fast-paced story of loss and longing.” –Nancy Young, author of Sensing Things

“Maureen Sherbondy’s intriguing coming-of-age tale, Lucky Brilliant, is an entrancing page-turner.” –Lisa Williams Kline, author of One Week of You, Writer Before Your Eyes

“…perfectly captures teen...


Available Editions

EDITION Ebook
ISBN 9781684335459
PRICE $5.99 (USD)

Available on NetGalley

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Average rating from 11 members


Featured Reviews

“I remember standing at my brother’s grave when no one else was there. I kicked the dirt, found a rock, and threw it at the headstone. It bounced off and hit me in the leg. Anger is a boomerang, Lucky. If you throw it out to the world, it’s what you get back.”

This is such a brilliant story, I was enthralled by the sadness of the poignant plot and likeable main character. Everybody felt three dimensional and worthy of each plot twist and then, nothing felt forced.

The story itself literally had me, an old hand at reading many many books, at the edge of my seat. Such brilliant and emotional narrative, I could feel the love and the time that has gone into this story.

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Lucky Brilliant is an emotive look at love, loss and friendship. Beautifully written with a strong plot and characters that are flawed but very easy to connect with,

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I dd enjoy this book. It is worth noting, this book isnt telling a "tale" per say. It's more like you are a silent observer watching as Lucky deals with the death of her father and the impact it has. There is no real ending where you just know its over. we just kind of watch until Lucky seems to come to grips with this new life. That being said, it was still a very interesting read. I plowed through it in just a few hours. Lucky is super relatable.

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This book takes you on a wild ride of 15 year old Lucky’s life and the tragic accident that started a downward spiral for her and her family. Lucky asks her dad to pick up canvas for a history project on his way home from work not knowing he would get into a terrible accident. For months afterward Lucky blames herself because she asked for a canvas that she waited last minute to get. Lucky and her mother start to find out more of her fathers secrets as time goes on and they have to decide what to believe and how to move forward with the newly gained knowledge. This was a great mystery with heart break, new beginnings, and a teeny bit of romance thrown in. I throughly enjoyed this quick read that kept me wondering what would be on the next page.

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Lucky Brilliant, also known as Lucy Brilliant, is stressed out, waiting for her dad to come home with the canvas she needs for a school project. However, her father never comes home- leaving Lucky and her mother to be plunged into a nightmare that only seems to get worse.

This was a really engaging and captivating read, once I'd started it I raced through to see what was going to happen next! It was fun and very dramatic, with lots of twists and turns. I also really liked that there was a psychic element that I didn't expect, I think it added a really nice edge to the novel.

On the other hand, there were lots of parts that felt completely unbelieveable. That feels like a weird comment to make when the plot and themes required a suspension of reality that I really enjoyed; I think it's that it tried to blend fantasy with real-world, and whilst the fantasy elements were great, the real-world parts just felt too extraordinary, and untethered to any kind of reality. It often felt quite one-sided and one-dimensional.

There were also some parts that felt pretty dubious, the Silas storyline felt a bit ableist, and there was some fatphobia throughout too. I also feel like the portrayal of Eva was a bit sexist in some ways? Less in the way she herself was written, and more in the way that Lucky viewed her.

Misgivings aside, it was a really fun read!

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So very much I could post to after this week's events..AND BELIEVE ME, I'D LIKE TO 🇺🇸, but in the interest of my mental health, for now, I'm going to stick with BOOK REVIEWS!
Two reads that stood out for me this month are “Lucky Brilliant” @sherbondy.maureen and “Queenie” by @candicec_w.

I really enjoy reading YA (young adult) novels from time to time, & "Lucky Brilliant” is a great one that will be released on Sept 10. This story of a high-school aged girl who loses her father in a tragic accident had tremendous pacing that made it hard for me to put the book down (I even dragged my laptop camping because I had a digital copy that I could only access from my computer & I really didn’t want to wait to see how the book ended.) Lucky struggles with an inheirted gift that allows her to see tragic events before they happen but it feels a lot more like a curse when she starts trying to rearrange the present in an attempt to avoid her premontions coming true. This book deals realistically with loss, grief, mental illness & addiction through the eyes of a teenager, and gently reminds us that even when things aren’t perfect, they can still be good.

I'd heard various opinions on “Queenie”, the book that has been called ’”the Black Bridget Jones”, but I really, really loved it. Queenie is a young Brit who struggles to make her way in her career & in her relationships, due in large part to her own-self sabotage. It’s definitely a “modern" tale, complete with text message screen shots & email images as part of the book’s text (which I love), but is also modern in that Queenie’s sexual relationships are explicit, front and center in this book— (if that bothers you, it's not the book for you.) While not all of us have self-sabotauged with dangerous sexual relationships, self-sabotague is real and this book explores it well. It also explores racism, domestic violence and related PTSD, female friendships, & multi-generational family dynamics, but despite its handling of these weighty topics it’s in no way preachy or overly serious. I enjoyed every page!

Read a book- it's good for your mind! 🇺🇸 And a mind is a terrible thing to waste! #NetGalley #luckybrilliant

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I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley. Thank you for the opportunity.
This book reads well and easily, as it's writing is so smooth and really evokes a teenagers life. The characters are fascinating especially as the story goes on and we learn more about their backgrounds.
However, some parts of the story seemed unbelievable and like they were added to heap misery upon misery on Lucky. It made the story line melodramatic and less engaging.
On the whole an OK book.

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