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So Lucky: The latest bold, brilliant and funny Sunday Times best selling book from the author of The Cows
£6.80£8.50 (-20%)
*Dawn O’Porter’s brand new novel, CAT LADY, is available to buy now! *
*The Sunday Times bestseller and Richard and Judy Book Club pick*
‘A total joy’ Matt Haig
‘Unputdownable’ Marian Keyes
Fearless, frank and for anyone who’s ever doubted themselves, So Lucky is the straight-talking new novel from the Sunday Times bestseller.
IS ANYONE’S LIFE . . .
Beth shows that women really can have it all. Ruby lives life by her own rules. And then there’s Lauren, living the dream.
AS PERFECT AS IT LOOKS? Beth hasn’t had sex in a year. Ruby feels like she’s failing. Lauren’s happiness is fake news.
And it just takes one shocking event to make the truth come tumbling out…
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Additional information
| Publisher | HarperFiction (9 July 2020) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 400 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0008126100 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0008126100 |
| Dimensions | 12.9 x 2.54 x 19.8 cm |
by zoe
This book takes you along with the characters. Very funny and upfront style. Worth a read!
by Miss RCD Foster
This is a very sweet story about female friendship and personal acceptance. I found it easy to drop into the lives of these women and found something relatable in all of them. It was a much shorter read than I expected and managed the whole book over a quiet weekend. Wonderful.
by AnaZhe
The book isn’t awful but far from believable and not well written. At the core of the plot is the interconnection of three women but there are a lot of problematic points that sat very wrong with me, aside from obvious typos and a weird flow. Ruby’s storyline is most believable and frankly I’d just read a book about her, her relationship with her daughter and mother – she is the most relatable character who actually grows and develops unlike all the others. There is very little about Lauren apart from IG post descriptions that I really don’t know if I like in a book and no first person perspective which makes it a bit one-sided. Beth’s storyline is just crazy and feels thrown together as a mix Hollyoaks and 50 Shades of Grey. The book is also far from funny, more like ridiculous. The dialogue is especially bad from Risky, who says “boss” in every sentence? She seems neurotic and deranged (“my vagina needs respect” who says that?) – she’s just not okay and acts 16 not 26, I’d be letting her go after an hour at the office.
Caution: some spoiler alert
Sexual Content at Work
Who in a world would be okay having sex with a client in your boss’s office in 2020? Or telling a colleague about masturbating at work? Sharing a used vibrator AT WORK? Or going to a naked spa with your assistant? So many red flags here, it’s not female empowerment, it’s misconduct.
Sex with strangers? Okay that’s fine but the way it’s written makes it sound so random, ridiculous and like something you’d find in those fake made up Cosmo columns. Makes Hampstead Heath sound a lot more exciting than it really is. And I lived there. No men in fox masks with erect penises, sorry.
Also, while I did obvisouly get that Beth and her husband have issues with sex life in their marriage, forcing your partner to have sex isn’t a solution. In fact if this was the other way around it would be nearly marital rape. The author lacked finesse describing the situation and did the characters no favours. I probably felt more understanding for Humbert in Lolita than I did for Beth trying to seduce her husband. And that says something.
Not believable plot points.
Lauren was on a cusp of killing herself, Ruby wants to stop her by revealing her secret – BUT Lauren is taking pills? I’m sorry it’s not like she’s popping cyanide, a much better way to help would be to leave her, get help and break the bathroom door if necessary. I’m not an expert but it’s not exactly a quick way to go! Why couldn’t she stand on a ledge or something to make the scene believable? Yes what Ruby did was brave but the way it was described as an “urgent life saving step” just didn’t translate and that was the climax of the entire book, so that was a fail.
Predictable.
A lot of foreshadowing that’s far from subtle makes the book dull as you know what to expect quite a bit in advance. It would be much better to leave a lot of VERY obvious tips out.
Depiction of money.
Who pays a retoucher £4k for a day or work? Some research into the industry would be nice because that’s how people get ideas that those who work in arts are on crazy salaries. Judging by Ruby’s attitude to luxury bags she acts like a millionaire. Also, at the end we see 4 women coming together to get back at a man who wronged one of them – but yet the chat about who will be paid £5k and who will be paid £10k for “woman to woman” help (apparently) reminds you that you are reading a piece of garbage with undeveloped and unrealistic characters that know quite little about female empowerment beyond buying YSL bags, anal and having bad husbands.
2 stars because I did finish it and I liked Ruby’s plot line mainly thanks to her daughter/parenting perspective.
by Midgebear
4.5 Stars
Thinking back on this book there are only a few things I can remember about it and I am left wondering why I rated it so highly in my notebook. However, as that is filled in directly after finsihing a book I have to figure there is a reason for it. I can still remember so much about my previous Dawn O’Porter read, The Cows, which I completed in September 2018 that it concerns me how little of this one I remember. Certainly the characters haven’t stayed with me at all.
All I can remember is one of the characters is an Instagram Influencer and I did like her storyline as it does give an insight in to just how manufactured the whole thing is. Like we don’t know that already but whatever, I’ll go with it. Then we have a Wedding Planner who has a new baby and a useless husband. I could kind of empathise with this character but found myself getting frustrated with her and the way she flip flops in her relationship and certainly her actions with a random stranger made me so angry. Yes, I appreciate that this is how some women react but that doesn’t make it a viable or sensible choice. The third, and I would argue main character, has an extreme case of a condition that I personally suffer from. The thing that really annoys me about this is that her “condition” must be somehow taboo as it more or less takes until the end of the book before we find out what is wrong with her. When it is revealed I was shocked as none of it tallies with my personal experience and the experiences of other people who suffer with this condition that I have had dialogues with.
What I do remember is that more or less everything is taken to the nth degree. So a lot of hyperbole and over reacting goes on. I must have enjoyed all the drama though because I gave it a slightly higher rating than The Cows. Yet, thinking back I preferred that book to this one. Who knew what I was thinking – it is 2020 after all!
This review has been a long time coming. I actually read this book between the 3rd and 7th August 2020 so my memory is a bit foggy about all the plot lines. Fortunately, I have a notebook where I jot some initial thoughts on the book and an overall ranking so between the book blurb and that I did have a reasonable handle on what I thought at the time of reading.