I just finished listening to the audiobook of Lucky in Love by Kasie West. It was a fun read. I’ve listened to a few of West’s books, and she has a knack for writing rounder characters and deeper plots than I expect from that genre. If you’re one of the four people in my audience who wants to read it after the earthshattering shattering recommendation of “fun,” click off now, and come back when you’ve read it because I think that there’s something interesting to be said about the ending which involves major spoilers (what isn’t a spoiler is that the main character wins the lottery).
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They’re gone now; we can speak openly.
The major character development that our protagonist, Maddie, faces throughout the book is learning how to relinquish control of people and allow them to make their own choices for better or for worse. Maddie starts the book trying her best to hold her fraying family together, selflessly working to keep the ship of her family and friends afloat, like Spiderman does with the ferry in Homecoming.1 She does that with her time and energy before her big lotto win, and after that, she tries to do it with money, giving her family huge sums, hosting a giant party, and trying to use her newfound cash to control the lives of the people who, quite frankly, would actually be better off if she was in charge.
Everything in her life is fixed.
And then it isn’t.
While money can fix a lot of problems, surface level and even deeper, it can’t stop her parents from fighting, can’t make her brother an upstanding citizen2, can’t buy loyalty, and can’t buy love.3 At the end of the story what we see is Maddie learning to let go, to know that her parents need counseling not cash, that her brother needs to face the consequences of his own (moronic) action, and that she can’t force anyone to be her friend.
That point in particular is what I really liked in this story. The plot starts out with Maddie and two close friends, with the popular girl far and above their social standing. Come Maddie’s windfall, the popular girl enters the picture, but West is willing to buck the cliche and writes someone who appears as genuinely friendly. When Maddie’s spending habits make the tabloids, she suspects someone of selling her story to the press, while her friends blame the popular girl who’s been hanging around a lot more now that she has cash.4
At the conclusion, Maddie confronts all three and demands answers and it turns out that both the popular girl and one of her two close friends both talked to reporters, though neither had ill intent. The conclusion leaves a brink between the original three, not repairing the damage done. Say what you will about how exactly the plot point is set up, but the choice both surprised me and also did an excellent job of bringing the books theme full circle. I fully expected her brother to end up how he did, and her parents fighting after wealth wasn’t a surprise either, but the breakup of friends was a genuinely compelling writing choice that I must commend West for making.
Now for some other random thoughts I had after reading some Goodreads reviews:
You’ll notice that I didn’t talk about the romance at all in this and there’s a reason for that (besides it not being relevant to my main point), there’s isn’t really anything to say. The only real purpose I saw to the romance in the (supposed) romance novel was to give me time to recover from the string of absolutely terrible choices that Maddie made. Seriously, she rented a party yacht. Bruh.5
The love interest was Asian, and you knew because every so often people would try to identify what kind of Asian he was in embarrassing ways. There’s no resolution or broader implications to the plot, just Maddie saying variations on “that sucks” every time it happens. It’s unclear what value was added. There’s nothing wrong with making that a conflict or theme in the story, but the way it was handled prevented it from improving the book.
Final note, I haven’t checked to see when this was published, but apparently when it was, five hundred grand was enough to buy a condo in a gated community in LA. Cursory research indicates that while still almost possible (the cheapest I found was still a bit more than that), there is no way that the condo that the book portrays costs that much now.
If I’m being honest, instead of reading this book, maybe just pick up Crazy Rich Asians.6
Footnotes
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I could extend this metaphor further, but like a rope made entirely of twizzlers, the longer it gets, the less weight it can hold. ↩
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This description isn’t quite fair. Her brother is an idiot, a liar, and probably did legitimately violate the law at one point, but those crimes came after he had the money. Before he got the money, he was just a bum (and the dad might have been too, that part was unclear). ↩
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Though there is an amusing case to be made that it does end up buying love, I don’t think that the fifty cents in the finale was meant to be taken that way. ↩
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The two are mutually unlikely because the popular girl (Trina) is filthy rich like, disturbingly, “why is she going to public school,” rich. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that her wealth was an oversight so that West could write the makeover scene with designer clothes while showing that Trina isn’t taking advantage of Maddie by paying for her own clothes. ↩
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At some point I lost the emotional energy to scream at screen “GET A FINANCIAL ADVISOR YOU NINCOMPOOP” and just waited for the pain to end
That being said, it did seem like a lovely party yacht ↩
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Genuinely unsure how I got to the point in my life where I am reviewing YA romance and pointing people in the direction of Kevin Kwan instead.
Further reflection on this while pasting this into the website tells me that I still have no idea how I got here, but that while my advice isn’t terrible, most young adult readers also shouldn’t be reading Crazy Rich Asians, so I’m not sure to whom this is addressed. ↩