Kasie West

Maddie doesn't believe in luck. She's all about hard work and planning ahead. But one night, on a whim, she buys a lottery ticket. And then, to her astonishment -- She wins! In a flash, Maddie's life is unrecognizable. No more stressing about college scholarships. Suddenly, she's talking about renting a yacht. And being in the spotlight at school is fun... until rumors start flying, and random people ask her for loans. Now, Maddie isn't sure who she can trust. Except for Seth Nguyen, her funny, charming coworker at the local zoo. Seth doesn't seem aware of Maddie's big news. And, for some reason, she doesn't want to tell him. But what will happen if he learns her secret? With tons of humor and heart, Kasie West delivers a million-dollar tale of winning, losing, and falling in love.

Lucky in Love

My first highlight on Literal (despite having been here for ~10 months) and it seems fitting that its something that I can very much relate to.

Devansh Patil

I held my phone in my hands, staring at the group text I’d brought up.

Did I really have to beg my friends to come over? I shouldn’t have to

remind them. I had sent them a fancy invitation. We’d just talked about it

If they weren’t here, there was a good reason. They both had some sort

of family emergency. That had to be it.Wait. What if that was it? I swallowed my pride and sent a text.

Are you both okay? Should I put the candy away or are you just running

When there was no reply five minutes later, I sighed. I could feel sorry

for myself. It was my birthday, after all.

I would get high on sugar and have a party for one. I scanned the candy

again. There was nothing I wanted. I hadn’t even bought Reese’s.

alexandra

THIS BOOK. IS SO CUTE. MY EMOTIONS ARE EVERYWHERE AND I JUST *FLAIL FLAIL FLAIL* there were so many things i loved about this book and i can't stop smiling. full review to come!

Victoria

That was a really boring one. But it was an easy read so, okay. 

Everything from the characters to the plot was so meh, I just couldn’t.

Sweetest book I've read in a very long time.

Nicole

Actual rating: 2.5 

Yes, this was very cute, but it was very disappointing in comparison with the other Kasie West books I've read.

Fátima

Una vez más Kasie West y sus libros adorables. Aaah <3

Sí, es predecible. Y sí, a veces quería agitar a Maddie y pedirle que reaccionara y dejara de ser tan irresponsable con su propio dinero. Pero no importa, fuera de eso es la clase de libros que te hacen pasar un buen momento.

Seth es lo más adorable del mundo y él y su massive crush con Maddie me tenían fangirleando todo el tiempo. Es muy encantador, y todas sus conversaciones me encantaban. Los shippeo intensamente. Alguien por favor que me consiga un Seth!

This was such a cute, quick read! I love reading a contemporary right after I dive into a huge fantasy book, it’s a quick reset and Kasie West Books are exactly that. This one is a pretty in pink meets can’t buy me love... nothing too in depth, very simple plot line, easy to follow but super cute, nothing mushy! Which for me is a good thing lol.

Lauren Tabor

*3.25
Definitely not one of my favorite’s. This one seemed really slow and the characters seemed very one dimensional. Over all the story didn’t have much depth, but towards the end I enjoyed it a bit more. I don’t like when lying and deceit is a big part of books, so maybe that’s why I didn’t like t as much. A cute ending though.

This wasn't my favorite of her book but I did enjoy it. I liked the ending but the romance wasn't there much I was wondering if the book even had much, to begin with, but once I really got into the book it started to develop and the drama came in. In all, it was a good read.

Emi Gilmore 

1.5/5 stars

  
    "Sometimes regardless of what we want, reality takes over." 
  

Okay, so imagine you are me. Not the lame, tries-to-be-funny-but-fails me, but the awesome me who likes to read and thinks she's as cool as Inej Ghafa. Now imagine how devestating it is to you that in the past six months, you’ve only read five books because you are stuck 50 lightyears deep in a pit you have dubbed The Great Reading Slump of 2017™. But it's New Years Eve and you are waiting for the year to change over, which is a lie. I actually fell asleep at 9pm NYE becasue I'm a lame nut but I need to set the scene here, when all of a sudden a light turns on inside of you as you realize that this is your year. There's nothing around to stop you from rocking that Goodreads Reading Challenge. So, to prove this to yourself, you pick up the book that your friend wants to buddy read with you and set out on the path towards 150 books in 12 months.

But the book you happen to pick up is this book. 

Yes, this is how devestating my life is. 

And it's not like the fact that this book sucks is brand new information to me. I still frequent Goodreads. I've seen the reviews. But I knew it was going to be such an easy read that I decided to ignore everyone on here. 


  #Confirmed:
Emi is the worst and she refuses to listen to any of you.

Before I start complaining, just a heads up that on my profile it mentions that my reviews are all a mess and that 100% applies to this one as well. I'm sorry. 

Let's just jump right into why I had problems with this book, shall we? But, since I imagine that the next 1,000 words of this review is just me ranting about the characters, let's just l start with the problems with the book I had that I will definetly forget to mention

•Stiff, unrealistic dialogue
•Unrelateable, bland characters
•Underdeveloped romantic plotline
•"You should like this character because Maddie does, just ignore everything they are doing to make you hate them" and then times that by 7

Now the biggest problem of them all: Madelaine (pronounced the French way) aka Maddie aka just let me spontaneously combust right now please, I want her out of my life forever. 

So Maddie is this recently 18-year-old girl who doesn't know that student loans exist who life is so hard. Her parents fight because her dad is unmotivated and her mom doesn't seem to stand up for herself. Her brother's a major douchebag. She doesn't know how she's going to pay for already amazing dream school of UCLA. Except her friends don't want her to go to UCLA, they want her to go to the even more amazing Stanford. But how could she afford that? And be 6 hours away from her bickering assturds of a family? She has the possibility to be accepted to two really amazing schools and this is the biggest problem in her life. She's practically Troy Bolton in HSM3 but without all the basketball and singing. 

But anyways, I'm getting off topic. And none of that probably made any sense. *Shrugs*


So it's Maddie's birthday and things suck. (view spoiler)[ Her brother eats her cereal that for some reason she only eats on her birthday. Her parents take her to a restaurant and can't even afford the bill. And to top it all off, her BFFs for life stood her up.  (hide spoiler)] So, to make it up to herself, Maddie goes to the local gas station and buys a lottery ticket on a whim. And surprise! surprise!, because this is a YA contemporary novel, Maddie finds herself $30 million dollars richer.

I think, if I won the lottery, I would hire someone to go tell Maddie that money doesn't buy happiness. I don't think she's heard of this before. As she seems to throw money at anyone who moves just because.

Actually, no, I think I would do something a little more reasonable if I won. Buy myself a nice townhouse that I can spend a few years in and put a lot of books into, a bigger cage for my guinea pig, pay off my student loans, and then put the rest of that into a trust account set up for me by a nice, trusting financial advisor so I can make sure that money lasts the rest of my life. 

But wait! What does Maddy do with that money? Well, my friend, let me list it out for you.

(view spoiler)[•Rents a yacht she can throw a stereotypical high school party on 
•Gives a million to each of her douchbag family members
•WHich he brother gambles it all off
•which wasn't a shocker at all
•Buys a $70,000 car
•$70,000!
•SHE'S 18 YEARS OLD
•I've been in a high school parking lot. No 18 year old is a good enough driver for a $70,000 car
•Buys super expensive pizza
•Gives $500,000 of it away to a family memeber SHE HAS NEVER MET BEFORE to invest into real estate 
•Which is a scam
•Again, shocker
•Spends a lot of it at Ikea
•WHich I actually understand. Ikea is cool
•Other stupid stuff, i started blocking it all out at this point
 (hide spoiler)]

just urgh

And, the one thing EVERY FUCKIGN PERSON HAS BEEN TELLING HER TO DO THE ENTIRE BOOK, (view spoiler)[GET A FUCKIGN FINANCIAL ADVISOR (hide spoiler)], DOESN'T EVEN HAPPEN UNTIL THE LAST CHAPTER. 

SHe's so stupid. Urgh. 

(view spoiler)[ AND WHEN THAT FINANCIAL ADVISOR AT THE END OF THE BOOK IS LIKE, "WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WITH THIS MONEY WHEN YOU DIE"

mADDY STARTS TALKING ABOUT THIS ANTEATER

AND HOW SHE WANTS TO GIVE MOENY TO THE ANTEATER

I just can't

I can't

 (hide spoiler)]

Also, Maddie's best friends are assholes but I don't want to talk about them right now. Let's talk about love interest, shall we? 

So Maddie works at this zoo,  and seems to work super closely with the animals which is just something I ignored the entire book bc I'm pretty sure you need a zoology degree just to be able to walk into their cages like she does but idk what do I know about zoology?  and she works with this guy named Seth who is very obviously madly in love with her. But she doesn't notice because she's too madly in love with this anteater that Kasie West does a really good job at not getting the reader emotionally invested in. 

The first time we met Seth, he was like, "I got grounded for playign golf at midnight" so I automatically knew he was going to be lame. Which I was right about. But he was also the most reasonable character in the entire book. ALso, he never mentions golf again in the book so obviously golf is super important to him. 

Well anyways, Maddie really likes Seth too, but she's 18 so of course she never admits that to herself. Instead, she spents the entirety of the book lying to him about how she won the lottery. 

(view spoiler)[ EXCEPT HE KNEW. LIKE WHAT A JERK. All he had to do was be like, "hey congrats on winning all that moolah now let's go clean up poop together."  (hide spoiler)]

And that's about all I remember about Seth, tbh. He was kinda forgettable. 

THere's so much more that I want to go on about, but my blood pressure is through the roof right now. It's been a very, very long time since a book has pissed me off this badly. 

Until next time peeps. 

I'm gonna go read Six of Crows or something

 Buddy read w/ Scrill whom I abondened and finished this book days before her. Sorry.

chloe mcpherson

I listened to the audiobook.
I usually love Kasie West books, whenever i need a cute quick read, however this book didn't do it for me, it was painfully long to get through because I had to keep putting it down because I was getting so annoyed.
Maddie was just so annoying, she was so naive when it came to people and just so annoying when it came to the money.
For a character that was smart she was pretty dumb.

However this will not deter me from reading her other works.

Courtney ✿ @librarycutie

ohmygosh! 
 i got a little halfway through this book and thought it was going to have to rate it 2.5 or 3 stars and that last bit of the book has seriously redeemed itself, maybe it was the adorable zoo date that got me interested.

this story was a new twist on contemporary, maddie just turned 18 and decided to try the lottery because the annoying cashier lady wouldn’t stop bothering her about it, and luck was on her side because she won! (not a spoiler, the synopsis has this in the first few lines.)

maddie had her life planned out, almost freakishly, but that changed after she won the lottery. her parents were happy and getting along finally, her brother wasn’t lazy and depressed, she was making friends with the popular kids, and zoo seth seemed to be interested in her more! though she didn’t even realize she was buying their love until things started going wrong and finally the truth came out.

i like that maddie was a school nerd, focused and determined with school, and i thought it was realistic that after winning the lottery, she lost sight of that, not completely big enough. but she didn’t have to worry about college funds, so no big deal… right?

SETH WAS SO CUTE, YOU GO ZOO SETH!

this was such a good read, it was sitting in my ibooks for the longest time and i just wanted something to read at work since i have barely any cell service there, and i was surprised at how i flew through this. i found myself relating to maddie and her anxiety about being a perfectionist and being nervous or afraid when things do go the way they should. i loved the cute romance between a certain 
  boy
, and that she always had him to go to when life was overwhelming.

after reading this, i might try out some of kasie west’s other books!

Sofie

I love Kasie West. That is a known fact if you follow my Goodreads reviews. But something about this book... I can't put my finger on it. It seemed a bit juvenile compared to her other novels. The writing style, the naivety of the characters, the simplicity of the conflict... it felt like a book for middle schoolers. Which is all fine! It just wasn't geared toward "Young Adults" like most of her other novels. Still, I will continue to read her books because they are fluffy and make me feel warm inside. I just wish they read a little older.

EDIT:

I think one of the main issues has to do with the fact that these are some of Kasie's oldest characters (18, college bound as opposed to 16), and yet the book reads much younger than those with younger protagonists.

In this new contemporary from YA star Kasie West, a girl who wins the lottery learns that money can cause more problems than it solves, especially when love comes into the picture.

Lucky in Love (Point)

Destiny J Tamayo

*2.5* 
The romance was really cute but there were a few things that really bothered me that I felt were not really addressed by the end.

laura

I found this book really cute. But it has handled alot of harder topics and how money even though winning the a ton of money does not save everything. I really did like Maddie as a lead character. I also found the book boy friend to be super cute. I wanted to see a little bit more of the boy and Maddie interaction in the book but i got threw it so fast. It made me think about what i would do If i won all that money. It was a really quick read and i def. want to read more by her in the future.

Alexis 

This book was just alright, It was a nice easy contemporary book. I'm finding that all of the books I've read by this author are all right, nothing really sticks out when I read them. I felt like the main character was too easily swayed into spending her money and doing things she didn't want to do because of some sort of validation and popularity. overall its an okay book, a quick and easy read.

Alejandra Bran

I got stuck at some point in the story... I almost stopped. Fortunately I persevered and I ended up liking it a lot! Love Seth!

Part of Point Paperback's launch season! Kasie West tells the story of a girl who wins the lottery and learns that money can cause more problems than it solves, especially in love.

Manon van Heumen

Stefie 

It’s def my least fav Kasie West’s book. 
I am kind of disappointed with this one. 
Like I honestly enjoy the story overall, but I found myself annoyed at Maddie. 
I really like Seth though :)

I don’t know. It’s an okay read and again I enjoyed it 
The ending does not really “bite” like the other Kasie West’s book. So yeah.

Giulia 

Summer Bibliothon 2017 - Read a book you've seen somewhere other than booktube
Booktube a thon 2017 - Finish a book completely outdoors

Okay... ehm... NON RIESCO A SPIEGARMI COME QUESTO SIA POTUTO ACCADERE! 😭 amo i contemporary di Kasie West, li ho letti tutti e li amati con tutto il cuore, ma questo... credo sia il primo buco nell'acqua che mi dà quest'autrice. Per carità, può succedere che il tuo autore preferito esca con un libro che a te non convince... ma era una cosa così strana per me non connettere con la protagonista che mi sembrava di essere io quella strana. 
Maddie l'ho odiata dalla prima all'ultima pagina, sembrava un stordita (scusate il termine ma non riesco a trovare altro modo per descrivere questa ragazza). Cioè, com'è possibile per una persona che non fa altro che studiare, quindi dovrebbe essere intelligente, non accorgersi che tutti intorno a lei la stanno prendendo bellamente per i fondelli?! Dai è assurdo... 
Seth, povera anima, è stata l'unica nota positiva di questo libro. Non scherzo, le amiche di Maddie le avrei impiccate. 

Dovrò venire a termine con questa delusione :(

Lucky in Love

Reviews

Highlights