How Lucky

Storygraph recommended this novel to be and I am glad of this as I enjoyed it as much as any novel I've read or listened to recently. The first person narrator is endearing, honest, insightful - and funny! The supporting friends of his are well drawn and loveable too. I enjoyed the setting in Athens, GA - as the author captured the light and the dark of a football weekend in a southern college town. The mystery/suspense was the right amount to keep me turning the pages as I blew through this relatively short novel quickly. Recommended highly also as it helped me better understand what life with a degenerative physical disease/disability might be like. Again - so glad I found and read this story!??

It was a fast paced book that hooks you from the start. However, it ended up being just “okay” for me. It was cute and educated me on SMA but otherwise parts of it seemed juvenile/silly/unbelievable. Overall, I enjoyed my time reading it but would not pick it up again

4.5/5 stars

A good story from a unique perspective. I finished this book quickly and it got me out of my reading slump.

The narrator was very chatty, I don't mind that but there was a chapter that was Q/A style that I thought was a little cheesy and too much tell. But other than that one chapter, I really enjoyed the book.

I'll be honest, I had mixed feelings about this one. I felt like nothing about the novel really stood out to me, or truly EXCEEDED my expectations. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of good things about the book— the characters were funny and well thought-out, the mystery was compelling and exciting (who took Ai-Chin? Is she dead or alive?), the pacing/writing style was enjoyable, and the cast showed some really good diversity.

However, I felt like all of the aspects that made the book “good” to me, fell short in pretty crucial ways which prevented the book from being a truly GREAT read. For example, our main character, Daniel, suffers from Type 2 Spinal Muscular Atrophy, or SMA. This debilitating disease prevents Daniel from living his life without assistance. While clearly Leitch did his research on SMA, the fact that Leitch himself is able-bodied (for me) made the writing feel a bit inauthentic. Now, of course we can argue for days on the “can authors write characters from backgrounds different than their own?” Question, but it's not even that I felt like he SHOULDN'T write from this perspective. Instead, it just felt like Leitch's approach to the character and his SMA needed to be about five layers deeper to be compelling.

The killer/kidnapping/Ai-chin storyline also felt... about five layers less deep than it needed to be for me to TRULY get behind it. Like, Ai-chin is supposed to be an international student visiting in the US from China. Ok great, but what about it? With only passing mentions of her race/background as an international student (“her English is bad, but she's working on it” kind of thing), it felt like her character was kind of one-dimensional, and was only international to be hip with the times.

That being said, I did enjoy the book, and recommend it as a beach/airport read for folks looking to pass the time. Nothing about the book was overtly offensive from my perspective, it just felt like it wasn't quite a DEEP read. But that also could very much be the whole point and I'm just some overly sensitive blogger ;)