“What would you do if you won the lottery?”
Cece Reviews the Read
Book Reviews: No. 7: Just My Luck, by Adele Parks
It is a dream come true, the kind that so many of us, friends, families and colleagues have talked about over our pre-COVID cubicle walls, or around dinner parties after several bottles of wine, or beside roaring fireplaces on a frosty winter night. It is a question I dare say we have all asked ourselves while immediately entertaining gorgeously grandiose answers.
“What would you do if you won the lottery?”
Quick, shout out five things you would do or buy if you won the lottery.
That was fun wasn’t it!
But the actual odds of winning a lottery are higher than seeing certain members of your family attending church services on a steamy Saturday night – right after exiting the confessional box. In other words, the odds are (pretty much) stacked against us.
But hey, somebody has to win, and this is exactly what happened in Just My Luck for three lovely English couples who had been playing the same six numbers for over 15 years.
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Winner! Winner! Gagnon! Gagnon!
And with the roll of the numbers, all of a sudden we have six newly minted millionaires, who are about to share the £17.8 million pound sterling jackpot.
Which in Canadian currency translates into $30,516,555.83.
You would think that news like this would be the firecracker event of these three couples’ lives.
Right?
Wrong.
This is where it gets messy. It seems that a little argument among the couples the very (!) week before the big win, ended in the dissolution of their lottery partnership due to some drunken words gone wrong and some judgemental and oh-so-personal insults and swipes.
Twists and turns. Twists and turns.
Lexi, the person in charge of collecting the monies to buy the lottery tickets had in fact soldiered on, and was, with her husband Jake, the sole ticket holder of those six magnificent winning lottery numbers.
Before she had barely gotten through her front door to announce the news, however, Jake was in full out spend mode. We’re talking Full Out. The keys to a new Ferrari are already dangling in his head, and their kids – Emily and Logan’s want lists are like runaway rolls of wrapping paper.
Of course, the other two couples, a study of four people in manipulative scheming mode, are not taking what they consider a ‘mistaken misconstrued message that they had said they were pulling out of the lottery’ well. At all.
I mean would you?
Better yet? What would you do if you were Lexi and Jake in this situation?
I can tell you one thing – it begs the $30 million dollar question. (All funds Canadian)
Has everyone been hiding their true colours these many years of friendship?
What rolls out next is a delicious master class in human nature.
Philandering, lies, deceit, greed – did I mention lies and deceit?
Just My Luck is quite the metaphor for the spin out that occurs between two very unlucky couples and one very smug twosome.
And really – luck is relative, n’est pas?
Adele Parks’ skill in weaving the reader through the ins and outs of who is telling the truth and who is creating their own versions of things that may or may not have happened climaxes in an ending that had me clapping my hands at the sheer cleverness of it all.
I truly didn’t suss out the finale of finales and I’m usually pretty good at guessing even the most twisted of outcomes.
Just My Luck is truly an intriguing romp of a read.
Bet on it.
Cece is the feature cover writer for several prestigious publications and is an informed, connected and enthusiastic book blogger at cecescott.com. Her first book, The Love Story, was published in 2019. Her second book will be coming out in the spring of 2021.
Cece is also working on a book of Daily Reflections for Auto Immune Condition Warriors.
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