Only If You're Lucky: A Novel

Stacy Willingham

Jan 2024 · Macmillan Audio · Narrated by Karissa Vacker

About this audiobook

"Reader Vacker does a remarkable job.... Mystery and true crime fans will be drawn in and ultimately satisfied by this complex, tense tale read expertly by a talented narrator." —Booklist on All the Dangerous Things

A sharp and twisty exploration of female friendship from the New York Times bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things.

Lucy Sharpe is larger than life. Magnetic, addictive. Bold and dangerous. Especially for Margot, who meets Lucy at the end of their freshman year at a liberal arts college in South Carolina. Margot is the shy one, the careful one, always the sidekick and never the center of attention. But when Lucy singles her out at the end of the year, a year Margot spent studying and playing it safe, and asks her to room together, something in Margot can't say no—something daring, or starved, or maybe even envious.

And so Margot finds herself living in an off-campus house with three other girls, Lucy, the ringleader; Sloane, the sarcastic one; and Nicole, the nice one, the three of them opposites but also deeply intertwined. It's a year that finds Margot finally coming out of the shell she's been in since the end of high school, when her best friend Eliza died three weeks after graduation. Margot and Lucy have become the closest of friends, but by the middle of their sophomore year, one of the fraternity boys from the house next door has been brutally murdered... and Lucy Sharpe is missing without a trace.

From the author of A Flicker in the Dark and All the Dangerous Things comes a tantalizing thriller about the nature of friendship and belonging, about loyalty, envy, and betrayal—another gripping novel from an author quickly becoming the gold standard in psychological suspense.

A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books.

Ratings and reviews

Young, emotionally volatile women should not be allowed to form cliques. Only If You’re Lucky is a slow burn story of female friendships that border on obsession. It’s part college girls gone wild, and part simmering cauldron of torment. The story is told in “Before” and “After,” leaning heavily into the before aspects. Consequently, the overall tone is much more YA than I expected. This is a me problem. I don’t do well with the whole angsty YA vibe. Even so, it’s impossible not to get sucked into the drama. Our narrator, the masterful Karissa Vacker, has a gift for bringing stories to life. *Thanks to Macmillan Audio for the free audiobook download.*

I listened to the audio version of this book narrated by Stacy Willingham. She did an amazing job with it. The different voices helped with the overall experience of the book. I guess you would call this a thriller or a Young Adult thriller. The main characters are all college aged. This book was so twisty (especially at the end) that it was like reading a corkscrew. Everything that I thought I knew was wrong--so wrong. I was definitely caught up in the story and it kept me listening. Possible triggers for this book are rape, murder, deceit, cheating and hazing. Thanks to Macmillan for the copy of this audiobook. All thoughts are my own.

Good

About the author

STACY WILLINGHAM is the New York Times, USA Today and internationally bestselling author of A Flicker in the Dark, All the Dangerous Things and Only If You're Lucky. Her debut, A Flicker in the Dark, was a 2022 finalist for the Book of the Month's Book of the Year award, Goodreads Choice Best Debut award, Goodreads Choice Best Mystery & Thriller award, and ITW's Best First Novel award. Her work has been translated in more than thirty languages. Before turning to fiction, she was a copywriter and brand strategist for various marketing agencies. She earned her B.A. in magazine journalism from the University of Georgia and M.F.A. in writing from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She currently lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband, Britt, and Labradoodle, Mako.