Anna Godbersen

Bright Young Things by Anna Godbersen, author of the bestselling Luxe series, introduced the girls of 1929, girls with big dreams and big secrets in the big city of Manhattan during the Jazz Age. Each girl had a different fate. One would marry. One would find fame. And one would die. Lucky Ones, the thrilling conclusion to the glamorous Bright Young Things series, reveals the destinies of Broadway baby Letty Larkspur, bootlegger’s daughter Cordelia Grey, and flapper Astrid Donal. Letty’s dream of fame is within her reach. Cordelia is the midst of a whirlwind romance with celebrity pilot Max Darby. Socialite Astrid is a new bride. But secrets and scandals could destroy their happiness as the last summer of the 1920s reaches its peak.

The Lucky Ones: A Bright Young Things Novel

While Cordelia Gray's high-profile romance with celebrity pilot Max is threatened by secrets, ambitious Letty becomes a target in cutthroat Hollywood and newlywed Astrid finds herself in the company of a man other than her husband.

Laura

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we are at our first series ender of the year. This series has been a ton of fun, and I'm a bit sad it's over. 

This was my least favorite cover of all of them. I feel like this cover was when whoever made the covers just decided to stop trying. I mean, long hair? Really? Sadly, my thoughts on the cover reflect my thoughts on this book as a whole, since this book was definitely my least favorite book of the series.

This was when the plot fell into ridiculousness (as if the first two books weren't, though). I feel like so many of the characters and the character relations we had been building for the last two books just fell apart. I liked Astrid and Charlie, I didn't like Victor- to me, he just kind of swooped in as the love interest. Astrid and Charlie worked in their own strange way. They kind of reminded me of Daisy and Tom, even though I never liked Daisy and Tom together. My feelings towards Letty and Valentine were the same; I thought Valentine just kind of swooped in there. I was actually happy with how that love story turned out, because I adore Grady. Max and Cordelia were hands down my least favorite, though. I found myself skimming through so much of her parts, because I didn't give a damn about either of those two. Probably because I preferred her and Thom, since I'm a sucker for those Romeo and Juliet stories. They spent the entire book swanning around each other, and there was little to no fun bootlegger action.

And I love me some bootleggers. The best parts of these books were those parts. They were action packed and utterly unputdownable. There was some other good in this book, like Godbersen's ear for authentic-sounding dialogue. And the fact that the paparazzi reporter's name was Mr Carrion. And the clothing porn, though there's not as many here as there usually is in her work. And Astrid. I loved Astrid. She's as dumb as a post, but ended up being my favorite character, with Letty next and Cordelia last. I would have liked Cordelia more, but she had the most ridiculous storyline and also the most wasted potential. Seriously, she was given her own speakeasy to run and almost all her chapters were dedicated to romantic drama. I don't even need to tell you how disappointing that is to me.

I noticed a ton of flaws in Godbersen's writing, too. While she does have a good ear for authenticness, and I noticed very few anachronisms, she does have a heavy hand when it comes to writing characters who we aren't supposed to like. Every character who we shouldn't like is a nativist, isolationist, supporter of the Prohibition, and Godbersen ignores the (valid) reasons why people in the 1920s supported these movements. People, women especially, were for temperance because of the problems with alcoholism. I mean, if you're a woman who gets beaten every night because her husband is a drunk, and you've finally got the right to vote, the first thing you're probably going to vote for is for the ratification of the 18th Amendment. And nativists and isolationists were against immigration and American interventionism likely because of the horrors of WWI. I don't necessarily agree with either of those thoughts, but they weren't evil because they believed those things.

The only thing I will mention about the ending was that it was a disappointment. I mean, it was very prettily written, there were some nice quotes I could pull, and I like who the narrator turned out to be, since I liked that character, but other than that, just disappointing. Like this book. I also got the characters right for the "one was married, one was famous, and one was dead" thing, so that was another good thing, I guess.

This is a better series than the Luxe for sure. The quality of writing is better, the characters are more interesting, and the setting is a lot more fun. I wish this was a four-book series and not a trilogy!

The Lucky Ones: A Bright Young Things Novel

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