Publishers Weekly
03/22/2021
Deadspin founder Leitch (God Save the Fans) attempts to fuse a thriller onto a hopeful story of a man living with a degenerative disease, with surprisingly bland results. Daniel, 26, who uses a wheelchair and is unable to speak because of his spinal muscular atrophy, lives in the college town of Athens, Ga., where he works from home for a regional airline responding to tweets from angry customers and spends time with his perky Pakistani caretaker, Marjani, and stoner buddy Travis. One morning, he sees a young woman get into a tan Camaro outside his home. He later learns college student Ai-Chin has gone missing and believes he had witnessed Ai-Chin’s abduction, then gets way in over his head trying to track down her abductor in a plot combining Daniel, Travis, and Marjani’s Hardy Boys–style sleuthing with Daniel’s obsessive, increasingly dangerous Reddit posts about Ai-Chin and the Camaro. The thriller plot is weakened by long digressions about the effects of Daniel’s disease, frequent musings on subjects such as college football, and the implausibility that Daniel would blithely put himself in harm’s way. The well-intentioned portrayal of what it means to live with a degenerative condition fails to compensate for the absence of convincing characters and plot. Readers can safely take a pass. Agent: David Gernert, the Gernert Co. (May)
From the Publisher
"I'm reading a fantastic novel by Will Leitch called How Lucky. Publishes in May, I think. It's suspenseful and often wildly funny. You are going to like this a lot, and I think a lot of you are going to like it. It has that Where the Crawdads Sing vibe." — Stephen King
“An absorbing thriller with heart.” — People
“What’s more thrilling than a fictional character speaking to us in a voice we haven’t heard before, a voice so authentic and immediate - think Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Mattie Ross - that we suspect it must’ve been there all along, that we somehow managed to miss it? Daniel, the protagonist of Will Leitch’s smart, funny, heartbreaking new novel How Lucky, is just such a voice, and I’m not sure it will ever completely leave my head, or that I want it to.” — Richard Russo
“Not many writers can shift gears from hilarious to heart-rending to harrowing, all on the same page. Will Leitch does it again and again. How Lucky is one of the most original thrillers I've read in years, with an improbable hero that no reader will ever forget.” — Carl Hiaasen
“It's a testament to Will Leitch's ability that he can blend seemingly disparate elements – mystery and illness and humor and football –and come away with something so winning. How Lucky asserts that "the world is a terrifying place these days" and the novel explores those terrors quite convincingly, yet I was heartened by the depth of Leitch's writing, his obvious love for the world and what it could be. He imbues his hero with a kind of hopefulness that comes from seeing the worst and finding some way to keep living.” — Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here
“How Lucky is a gem: a riveting plot and a narrator who is charming, engaging, and downright inspiring. Will Leitch brilliantly juggles hilarity and horror. I loved this novel — every page.” — Chris Bohjalian, #1 Bestselling Author of The Flight Attendant and Hour of the Witch
“A lovely book. Set in Athens, Georgia, the novel is a model of verisimilitude. It is also beautifully written and suspenseful, at the same time being all about goodness and caring without once being sappy, or, well, sentimental. And that is a rare feat in fiction.” — Booklist (starred review)
“A touchingly imagined portrait of friendship and community.” — Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“Witty, vigorously written. . . . How Lucky succeeds on more than just luck . . . Leitch builds his cast beautifully. . . . Gives us an authentic, compelling portrait of a narrator who motors through the obstacle course of his life with grit and grace” . — Hamilton Cain, Washington Post
People
An absorbing thriller with heart.”
Chris Bohjalian
How Lucky is a gem: a riveting plot and a narrator who is charming, engaging, and downright inspiring. Will Leitch brilliantly juggles hilarity and horror. I loved this novel — every page.
Stephen King
"I'm reading a fantastic novel by Will Leitch called How Lucky. Publishes in May, I think. It's suspenseful and often wildly funny. You are going to like this a lot, and I think a lot of you are going to like it. It has that Where the Crawdads Sing vibe."
Sam Sacks
A touchingly imagined portrait of friendship and community.”
Kevin Wilson
It's a testament to Will Leitch's ability that he can blend seemingly disparate elements – mystery and illness and humor and football –and come away with something so winning. How Lucky asserts that "the world is a terrifying place these days" and the novel explores those terrors quite convincingly, yet I was heartened by the depth of Leitch's writing, his obvious love for the world and what it could be. He imbues his hero with a kind of hopefulness that comes from seeing the worst and finding some way to keep living.
Booklist (starred review)
A lovely book. Set in Athens, Georgia, the novel is a model of verisimilitude. It is also beautifully written and suspenseful, at the same time being all about goodness and caring without once being sappy, or, well, sentimental. And that is a rare feat in fiction.”
Hamilton Cain
Witty, vigorously written. . . . How Lucky succeeds on more than just luck . . . Leitch builds his cast beautifully. . . . Gives us an authentic, compelling portrait of a narrator who motors through the obstacle course of his life with grit and grace” .
Carl Hiaasen
Not many writers can shift gears from hilarious to heart-rending to harrowing, all on the same page. Will Leitch does it again and again. How Lucky is one of the most original thrillers I've read in years, with an improbable hero that no reader will ever forget.”
Richard Russo
What’s more thrilling than a fictional character speaking to us in a voice we haven’t heard before, a voice so authentic and immediate - think Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, Mattie Ross - that we suspect it must’ve been there all along, that we somehow managed to miss it? Daniel, the protagonist of Will Leitch’s smart, funny, heartbreaking new novel How Lucky, is just such a voice, and I’m not sure it will ever completely leave my head, or that I want it to.”
Kirkus Reviews
2021-03-06
The lone witness to an abduction tries to get skeptical police—and a skeptical society—to see past his wheelchair.
Like most residents of Athens, Georgia, 26-year-old Daniel looks forward to the escape of Game Week, when the University of Georgia plays football at home. Unlike most of them, however, Daniel has spinal muscular atrophy, a progressive genetic disorder that attacks the body from the core out. He can still move his left hand, which he uses to operate his wheelchair and type on an iPad that interfaces with his voice speaker and allows him to work on social media for a commuter airline. One morning Daniel sees a familiar young woman climb into a tan Camaro. After she's reported missing, he posts what he saw on Reddit and begins an email exchange with someone claiming to be the car’s driver. The members of a well-drawn, if spare, cast play supporting roles—Marjani, Daniel’s overworked caregiver; Travis, his lifelong best friend, who's “like a stoner Ichabod Crane”; Jennifer, the grad student who is “suddenly the matriarch of this weird little family”—but the story belongs to Daniel. He’s funny, often self-deprecating, and cleareyed about how many people perceive “someone who doesn’t seem to have control of any element of his body,” but he wants people to “remember there’s a person in here.” Leitch, who is abled, drew inspiration from his young son’s friend who was diagnosed with SMA as a toddler, and the best parts of the book are the reflective, informative passages when Daniel is discussing his ever evolving relationship with his condition. The resolution of the mystery is neither surprising nor terribly realistic, but it’s not really the point here.
A lightweight thriller contours an earnest, sincere portrait of a hero whom many insist on seeing as a victim.
