Only If You're Lucky by Stacy Willingham

 

Margot is besieged by grief and guilt when her best friend Eliza dies the summer before they are due to start college together. In a bid to overcome her grief and escape the memories of her friendship she is surrounded by Margot decides to go ahead with the plans the pair made together. When she arrives at college she is befriended by the enigmatic Lucy. Things begin to take a dark turn, however, when Lucy is accused of killing Levi, the boy Margot blames for the death of her best friend.

Only If You're Lucky by Stacy Willingham is a slow burner, there's plenty of mystery from the very start but the layers of the story are uncovered very gradually, keeping you in suspense. The storyline jumps backwards and forwards over a two year period. We meet Margot as she starts college at Rutledge and you have lots of sympathy for her. Margot is an introvert, a loner. This is partly her nature but also down to the fact that she had planned to start college with her friend who was the outgoing one of the pair. It is understandable that Margot is entranced by the trio of friends she sees around her dorm. Lucy, Sloane and Nicole seem to be everything that Margot aspires to, particularly Lucy. Lucy is always the centre of attention, larger than life, a rule breaker. Margot is like an animal caught in a car's headlights when Lucy turns her attention on her and the trio becomes a quartet.

As we learn about Margot's first year in college and her fixation with Lucy the story jumps back to before college and we discover more about her friendship with Eliza. The pair shared an idyllic friendship with Eliza Being the ying to Margot's yang. The pair made plans to attend the same college and even room together. Everything seemed to be going to plan until the inevitable happened, a boy, Levi, came between them.

We slowly learn about the events surrounding Eliza's death, with Levi being the last person to see her alive at a party, a party Margot didn't attend, hence her guilt over not being there to protect her friend. The grief and guilt resurface when Levi turns up at Rutledge.

The other element of the story is what happens after Levi is murdered. The police suspect Lucy and want to question her but she has disappeared. Margot, Sloane and Nicole claim to have no knowledge of her whereabouts, and disappearing for days at a time is not unusual for Lucy. We, the reader, begin to realise that the friends are covering for Lucy and that secrets are being kept from the police.

At the beginning, the story has lots of appeal. The thought of college in America with dorms, sororities and picturesque settings feels like another world to UK readers. It is the details of college life and the budding friendship, combined with the jumps between time frames, that initially make this a slow burner.

As we get to know more about Lucy you have an unsettling feeling. From the outset, Sloane warns Margot that Lucy lies and manipulates people to get what she wants. Despite these warnings, you feel sympathetic towards Lucy, her home life hasn't been ideal and it's obvious she isn't as privileged as those around her. However, there is always that sense of unease, that she's dangerous. It is impossible to forget that she's "a master of manipulation, of misdirection and deceit".

I was enjoying the gradual building of the story until about two-thirds of the way through when the narrative took an unexpected turn which really elevated the nature of this novel. Pieces started to fall into place leaving me shocked that I hadn't spotted the clues that were dropped. Author Stacy Willingham shows how easy it is for us to jump to conclusions.

Only If You're Lucky by Stacy Willingham will be published on 1st February 2024 in hardback, ebook and audio format. My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollinsUK for a review copy.