Review of Only If You're Lucky | Shelf Byte - Shelf Addiction Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
Welcome to shelf Byte, a shortform, spoiler free review series featured here
on the shelf Addiction Podcast. Iam your resident reviewer and host, Tamera.
I will feed your shelf addiction bysharing my byte sized book and audiobook
reviews. I know that the spaceon your coveted bookshelves is limited. In
a few minutes, you'll know myopinion on whether you should be adding today's

(00:28):
title to your collection, or ifyou should borrow it or pass on reading
it altogether. If you love longform book chats, check out the shelf
Addiction podcast feed, available wherever you'rehearing this episode. Let's begin today.
I am reviewing Only if You're Lucky, Written by Stacy Willingham, narrated by
Carissa Backer, Published on January sixteenth, twenty twenty four by McMillan Audio.

(00:53):
The unabridged audiobook runtime is ten hoursand seventeen minutes before I dive in.
Thank you to Make Audio for providingme access to this audiobook in exchange for
an honest review. First up,the summarized synopsis. Margo, a shy
college student, is drawn to thebold and magnetic Lucy Sharp, who invites
her to live in an off campushouse with two other girls. Margo finally

(01:18):
emerges from her shell after the deathof her best friend and becomes close to
Lucy. However, in their sophomoreyear, a fraternity boy is murdered and
Lucy disappears without a trace. Triggerwarning for language, drinking, assault,
and college chasing. I decided tolisten to this audio book because I listened
to both A Flicker in the Darkand All the Dangerous Things, also written

(01:42):
by Stacy Willingham, and I enjoyedthem both. I think I enjoyed All
the Dangerous Things the most. Thatearned a four star rating from me.
Plus, I've listened to several audiobooks with Carissa Vacker as the narrator,
and I also enjoy her narration.Put these two things together, and I
thought this would be a hit forme. Now was it. Let's break

(02:04):
it down. Let's talk about thethings that I liked. First, I
really liked that I did not havethe final reveal figured out. I had
half, but the other half wasa surprise to me and I didn't see
it coming exactly. And I reallyenjoy when that can happen, because you
know, I usually can guess ita lot of the times. So the
author always gets extra bonus points ifI can't do it. I also like

(02:29):
that there aren't really any likable characters. For me, it's not necessary to
like the characters to get enjoyment outof them, and I'm good with that
because sometimes it tells a better storywhen no one is likable and no one
is the perfect character, no oneis the good quote unquote character. All
of these characters are kind of gray, and there are reasonings for doing things

(02:52):
and how they go about doing things, so they're morally gray. Some things
are bad, but that doesn't makethem bad people necessarily, and I think
that is something that is a strongtheme in this book. So sometimes regular
decent people do really bad things,and kind of this is the fallout of
that as well as some people arejust bad, and that is also in

(03:13):
this book as well. I alsotend to like unreliable characters as a theme
or a plot device, and Ithink that Willingham has successfully done that here.
I think that Marco and Lucy areboth pretty unlikable and unreliable, and
for some people that's a myths.They don't like that, but I thought
it was really helpful to the storybecause it kept you in this neutral place,

(03:37):
you know what I mean, Soyou didn't really root for either of
them in a specific way because itwas really just a story unfolding, and
these people are taking place and livingin this story. And to get through
that to like kind of sort outwhat happened and figure out how we got
to a to Z, it doesn'trequire you to like them or be reliable

(03:59):
on their stories, because you know, there are two sides to every story
and it all comes out in theend, which is the best part of
it. I do like that therewas some character growth here. For our
main character, Margo. There wasdefinitely a lot of character growth in her
second year of college versus the firstyear, where she was pretty depressed for
most of it. As the synopsisindicates, she lost her friend and she

(04:20):
struggled that first year. After shemeets Lucy, she kind of gets out
of her box and she grows leapsand bounds, especially when they have to
figure out what happened. You know, they start digging into who's lying about
certain things, why are they lying, what's going on? And she gets
really smart really quickly when she needsto. And I like that about the

(04:43):
character. Now, what things didI dislike. I felt that the book
was a little why a feeling,And by why a feeling, I mean,
while these are college aged women,the freshman when she was a freshman,
Margo I think was seventeen at thebeginning, and even though like some
hard things are happening in her sophomoreyear, it still felt why A.

(05:04):
And I don't know how that's possiblefor something that has a lot of some
hard things happening, but it stillfelt young. It's like, in some
ways Margot was really delusional about people'smotives and how they could do things,
and about her own engagement with things. But on the flip side, when

(05:26):
she had to get really smart aboutsomething and think on her feet, she
was able to do it. Somaybe it's because all the bad things were
kind of off the page. Ihaven't exactly figured out why I felt like
it felt why a, but itjust did. To me. It felt
young, you know, it wastold from a young point of view,
not a very mature point of view. That's it. I also did not

(05:47):
like the pacing. I felt thatit was a little slower than my preference.
I do like high speed reads whereI can just binge it in two
days and this wasn't the case here. I had to pay it out a
long amount of time. I thinkit took me almost a week to finish
this, just because the pacing wasslow. I think if I had to
officially say how the pacing was,it was like slow to medium, right.

(06:12):
And I have read books that weremedium pace and still got enjoyment out
of them. But I think thatthe pacing being slow took away from the
story. I feel like there werethings that the author could have done to
make the action happen faster, getto what's happening faster. It took a
lot of dredging through to get tothe juicy part of the story. Now

(06:35):
let's dive into the narrator part ofthings. I think Chris Evecker did an
excellent job, as she always does. She's really good about, you know,
flexing her voice so you can tellthe different women, you know,
when they are speaking to each other, because there are four women in this
story that share space, so whenthey're talking to each other, you have

(06:57):
to tell the difference when you're havinglike convert conversation and conversing back and forth.
And Chris so was able to dothat without any confusion Also, when
there were men speaking, she wasable to flex her voice a little bit
and we could tell the difference there. Not that she was using this deep
tenor voice or anything, but sheadded just enough inflection or something that just

(07:19):
you made it easy to tell whowas speaking, which I appreciate. That
sometimes can be a problem when thereare a lot of characters with a lot
of dialogue. But it didn't seemto be a problem here at all,
So I definitely recommend Chris of Actor'snarration. I was able to listen at
one point five speed and I hadzero problems. I enjoyed it a lot.

(07:39):
I think that if you like tolisten at two x speed on the
regular, you won't have any problemshere either. I think if I were
to listen to to x speed,I could have enjoyed it as well.
But you know, I was tryingto pay attention to a lot of little
details, So one point five xis what I ended up doing. Let's
jump to the rating. So howdid I rate? Only if you're lucky,

(08:01):
I've rated it three out of fivestars. Three out of five is
a good rating for me if you'vebeen around and then you know that it's
really middle of the road. Ididn't love it. I didn't dislike it.
It was good, right if Iqualify as a good read. While
I like the book, the threestar rating reflects the problems I had.
You know, I read the otherbooks by Stacy Willingham, and I believe

(08:22):
I enjoyed those a little more.I would recommend this book for those that
like stories that take place on collegecampuses, young adult type stories with a
lot of drama, unreliable characters,and stories where the characters aren't likable either.
If you are into fraternities or sororities, I think this might be a

(08:43):
fun read for you because you geta little bit of that life you know,
blended in and we all know thisdrama we hear about fraternity and sorority,
so it's a little bit of thatin there. Of course, a
murder to be solved. Should youadd this to your digital or physical shelf
or should you borrow it from thelibrary or a friend, or should you

(09:03):
skip it? I think it's atoss up totally one hundred percent forrow this
from your library, borrow it froma friend if it's available, if they're
willing to lend it, but alsoif you have a spare audible credit lying
around. I do think this isa book that is worthy of the credit.
It's a good listen. If you'renot into audiobooks, you can always
pick up the ebook version or eventhe paperback version. I do think it's

(09:24):
worth it. You know, it'sa very interesting story if you're cool with
slower paced books. If you haveno problem with that, I think you
will enjoy this a little bit morethan I did. So give it a
try. We are at the end, you guys, let me know how
you rate it this book. Shareyour thoughts on this title or today's episode
by answering my question or poll directlyon Spotify. If you're listening on Spotify,

(09:46):
you can share with me your feedback, thoughts, or questions with the
tap of your screen. That's itfor today's shelf Fite. If you enjoy
today's episode, please like and shareit with your bookish friends. To reach
out to me, you can findme pretty much everywhere at shelf. Until
next time, happy reading, takecare of yourselves. Bye, guys.

(10:09):
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(10:56):
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Review of Only If You're Lucky | Shelf Byte

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