You Should Be So Lucky

You Should Be So Lucky (2024) Cat Sebastian

Set in NYC in 1960

Eddie O’Leary made a mess of things when he reacted badly to being traded. Now his teammates hate him, the fans hate him, as far as he can tell everyone in NYC hates him. And now he can’t hit a baseball to save his life.

Sportswriters are the reason everybody hates Eddie. Okay, Eddie’s big mouth is the reason everybody hates Eddie, but he might have been able to keep it a secret if it hadn’t been for the reporters.

Mark Bailey has been coming into the paper to write so that he won’t have to be at home, surrounded by all the reminders of what he lost.

(T)he waitress is tilting her head to the side and regarding Mark quizzically. “You’re pork chops and applesauce. Where’s mister lamb with mint jelly?”

Mark looks—there’s no other word for it, he looks stricken.

Mark’s boss has given him an assignment: write a series of “diaries” about Eddie O’Leary, and see if that will help sell some papers. So Mark interviews Eddie, enjoying the distraction if nothing else.

That doesn’t seem to be what Eddie wants at all. It seems like he wants someone to talk to. The fact that he’s choosing a reporter is yet more proof that Eddie O’Leary has dangerously terrible judgment, and he’s just lucky that Mark isn’t a monster.

This is a story about grief and loss.

(H)is fingers automatically close around the handles of two mugs, and he goes still. It had taken him weeks—months, maybe—to break himself of that habit, and now here he goes again. He rests his head against the smooth wood of the cabinet door and tries again. One mug. He drops in the teabag, pours in some water, and calls it a success.

Both Mark’s loss of his partner and Eddie’s loss of his security and his swing.

There are things that should probably matter more to Eddie. “But it’s been ten years. I’ve spent ten years hardly thinking about anything other than this game and how to get better at it. And this is the first time there hasn’t been an answer.”

But out from the center of Mark and Eddie are other characters. There’s George.

Junior is not Andy but rather Andy’s seventy-year-old father, because George is old enough to have worked for Andy’s grandfather.

…

“And you don’t want to retire?”

“I’d rather walk into traffic.”

And Price and Ardolino.

Mrs. Price steers Ardolino toward the dance floor. Sam Price stays behind long enough to pour out half of Ardolino’s drink into Eddie’s glass.

“Where’s Price?” Mark asks, realizing that he rarely sees Ardolino without Price.

“He says getting arrested isn’t as fun for him as it is for the rest of us,” Ardolino says. “He’s sitting this one out.”

It’s baseball after Jackie Robinson, but not that long after.

It’s people making messes of their lives and trying to crawl back out of the holes they’ve dug themselves into.

And it’s two men slowly falling in love, despite the danger.

…(T)he fact that Mark just said that, out loud, on a telephone where operators could be listening in.

I didn’t think I wanted to read a story set in the US in the 1950s.

I was wrong.

Characters: Edward James O’Leary, Mark Bailey, Andrew Fleming III, Nick, Lilian, Maureen, Lula, William, George Allen /Jacob Apfelbaum, Cindy Wertheimer, Frank Fendall, Constance Newbold, Tony Ardolino, Buddy Rosenthal, Luis Serrano, Sam Price, Mrs. Price, Carmen and Bobbie Iglesias, Pete, Kathleen Brodowski

Cover by Elle Maxwell

Publisher: Avon

Rating: 8.5/10

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