Book Review: Only If You’re Lucky | Stacy Willingham

I had been waiting to read Stacy Willingham’s Only If You’re Lucky because it was the February pick for my book club, and it was worth the wait! I’ve read and enjoyed all of Willingham’s books, but this was my favorite. A twist-filled story about female friendships gone wrong!

About the Book | Only If You’re Lucky

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. (Synopsis from Goodreads)

Review | Only If You’re Lucky

This is the sort of story that so expertly drops tidbits into the narrative that you almost don’t notice them until suddenly you realize what a clever, wicked, twisted story this is! Only If You’re Lucky focuses heavily on female friendship and obsession, but presented in a fresh and inventive story told in dual timelines that speed towards one another with a shocking conclusion.

Margot is a shy freshman at her South Carolina university when she meets Lucy Sharpe. Having tragically lost her best friend Eliza the summer after high school, Margot spends most of her first year of college hiding in her dorm with her roommate, Maggie (who couldn’t be a more supportive friend). At their first dorm meeting in the all-girls dorm, Lucy steps forward and pulls out a backpack with a case of beer. She’s beautiful, magnetic, and funny. Margot can’t help but be reminded of Eliza when she observes Lucy that first year.

As fate would have it, Margot is on the lawn at the end of her freshman year when Lucy approaches her and offers her the fourth bedroom in a house on campus she is renting with two friends. Margot immediately accepts, and after an awkward parting with Maggie (whom she was supposed to be rooming with the following year), Margot moves into the house with Lucy and two of their floormates—Nicole and Sloane.

Over the summer, Margot is happier than she can remember in a long time. Lucy is as charismatic in friendship as Margot observed from afar, Sloane is sarcastic and witty, and Nicole is kind and dating the president of the fraternity that owns the house they are renting. The four become close, spending days and evenings curled up on the couch together, going to parties with the boys from the fraternity, and partying after hours at a local bowling alley where Lucy works. Life is good, and Margot can almost forget the hole in her life where Eliza was.

Things are going great, until one of the fraternity boys next door is brutally murdered. The campus is in a frenzy, hounded by the press and police trying to find out what happened to the student. Meanwhile, Lucy has vanished without a trace. Are Lucy’s disappearance and the murder a terrible coincidence, or are they somehow linked?

This book was gripping from start to finish. The timelines alternate between the events of that summer and the beginning of sophomore year and the days after the murdered student is discovered and Lucy’s disappearance. After moving out of her dorm with Maggie, Margot becomes more alive but also more disturbed. Her friendship with Lucy comes with binge drinking, occasional recreational drug use, and hangovers that can last days. All of this lends a small air of unreliability to Margot, particularly in the present timeline.

Margot’s grief is overwhelming for her, and throughout the book we learn more about Eliza and her death, particularly when a student at the fraternity is someone linked to Eliza from their hometown. He’s the last person Margot wants to see and a constant reminder of Eliza. And he also happens to be the student who winds up murdered, adding another layer of complexity and suspicion to Margot. People in her life seem to wind up dead, it turns out.

At the same time, Margot is vulnerable and meek. She has a strong desire to fit in, but in her head she questions so much of what she does. Margot explains at one point how she always feels invisible, but when she was with Eliza (or later Lucy), she felt like someone. People noticed her and they could place her. The friendships in this book are exciting and dysfunctional.

This is a dark and alluring portrayal of female friendship, but at the same time I think many women reading this will find a glimmer they can relate to. Those days when you’re young and your friends are the most important and exciting thing in your world. The feeling that you don’t want things to change or worry that someone new will come in and tear your friendship apart.

The sweltering heat of the southern campus becomes an atmospheric backdrop for this tantalizing story. The events of the book and the setting feel like a nod to southern gothic—where flawed characters swarm around a disturbing and twisted story. Each page adds to the tension, and the story becomes almost oppressive as Margot spirals further and further away from who she is. From the beginning the reader knows this is all heading towards a murder and a disappearance. But so many other pieces of the story are missing.

At about two thirds of the way through the book, Willingham begins to drop twists in that pick up seemingly forgotten loose threads and twist them together. By the end of the book the reader has the whole interconnected web of secrets and buried truths. The ending is jaw-dropping and one that completely surprised me.

A gripping and tantalizing story of obsession, loyalty, friendship, and murder.

About the Author | Stacy Willingham

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.