Name: Sarah Sammis's review of Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen
Item: Lucky You
Rating: 2
Author: Sarah Sammis

Carl Hiaasen

Saturday afternoon in Grange, Florida. Virtually unnoticed, JoLayne Lucks stops by the Grab'n'Go to play the same numbers she's played every week for five years. 17-19-22-24-27-30. Each lotto number marking the age she dumped a tiresome lover. She doesn't know it yet, but the discarded men in JoLayne's life have finally amounted to something. 28 million dollars and whole swamp full of trouble... 'Barrels along with the crazy logic of a Tarantino movie ... the funniest, most unputdownable read to have come my way in years' Daily Mail 'Peppered with some of the funniest one-liners and situations Hiaasen has ever devised' Daily Telegraph 'Crime fiction at its most entertaining' Mail on Sunday

Lucky You

Sarah Sammis

I was given this by a coworker who said she thought it would make me laugh -- and it did, for maybe 5 of its 350 pages; around page 40 I got bored and just wanted this misery over with.

The plot of a woman winning the lottery while a few miles away, two hateful, unsavory rednecks also win and want her ticket so they can double dip? Alright, not bad! But the problems begin pretty fast and do not stop until you've forgotten this book exists.

I don't find JoLayne Lucks (real nice, Carl) to be a good character. She's kind to nature in all forms, so we the stupid audience know that means she's automatically a good person -- just ignore that her tongue is relentlessly barbed and she will not ever shut up about race, chomping at the bit to make any situation a cringey one. She is a personality void, but she is also one of the book's few "good" people. You will sadly root for her and, by the hate, resent yourself for emotionally investing anything in her journey.

Tom Krome starts as a sort of renegade reporter who has some Han Solo-energy to him. He's screwing a judge's wife and when his boss tells him what to do, he tells that bastard to pound sand. What a guy! Don't worry: he immediately (figuratively) flatlines and will now exist solely to just be there in the room while JoLayne rambles. Seriously, as soon as he gets on the road towards the action, he contributes zero. Why was his ex-wife even a character?

The rednecks, Bode and Chub. Hey, those are funny names. With names like that, we know these guys can never be clever! Well, they actually are, whenever the plot needs them to be. Realistically, these total morons are never finding the other lottery winner; I am quite confident Bode has a tough time finding his own ass. By the end, everything they do is so embarrassingly stupid you wind up almost feeling bad for these clearly struggling man-children. They're so inept that JoLayne and Tom may be committing hate crimes by targeting the disabled.

There are way more characters and they are all bad. There are far too many of them, too; Carl Hiaasen clearly believes if he crams a short story until it is overflowing with characters, it will feel like it has more life to it. He is incorrect.

I never felt invested in the waste-of-space that is Grange, Florida. Everyone in this story outside of the previously mentioned names needs either an overhaul or deletion. This book is 70 pages of story with several hundred pages of "world building" that is as interesting as the bottom of a sandy flip flop.

I've read that Carl has written some other books that are better; nobody brought up "Lucky You" when they mentioned their favorite Hiaasen. Are his other books worth reading? Possibly. I saw some talent here, but I also saw an editor that fell asleep at his desk and let this book go through untouched to print. So, so much of this needed rework, I can't believe this is a finished product.

Evan

Just empty junk.

  

I was given this by a coworker who said she thought it would make me laugh -- and it did, for maybe 5 of its 350 pages; around page 40 I got bored and just wanted this misery over with.

The plot of a woman winning the lottery while a few miles away, two hateful, unsavory rednecks also win and want her ticket so they can double dip? Alright, not bad! But the problems begin pretty fast and do not stop until you've forgotten this book exists.

  

I don't find JoLayne Lucks (real nice, Carl) to be a good character. She's kind to nature in all forms, so we the stupid audience know that means she's automatically a good person -- just ignore that her tongue is relentlessly barbed and she will not ever shut up about race, chomping at the bit to make any situation a cringey one. She is a personality void, but she is also one of the book's few "good" people. You will sadly root for her and, by the hate, resent yourself for emotionally investing anything in her journey.

Tom Krome starts as a sort of renegade reporter who has some Han Solo-energy to him. He's screwing a judge's wife and when his boss tells him what to do, he tells that bastard to pound sand. What a guy! Don't worry: he immediately (figuratively) flatlines and will now exist solely to just be there in the room while JoLayne rambles. Seriously, as soon as he gets on the road towards the action, he contributes zero. Why was his ex-wife even a character?

The rednecks, Bode and Chub. Hey, those are funny names. With names like that, we know these guys can never be clever! Well, they actually are, whenever the plot needs them to be. Realistically, these total morons are never finding the other lottery winner; I am quite confident Bode has a tough time finding his own ass. By the end, everything they do is so embarrassingly stupid you wind up almost feeling bad for these clearly struggling man-children. They're so inept that JoLayne and Tom may be committing hate crimes by targeting the disabled.

  

There are way more characters and they are all bad. There are far too many of them, too; Carl Hiaasen clearly believes if he crams a short story until it is overflowing with characters, it will feel like it has more life to it. He is incorrect.

I never felt invested in the waste-of-space that is Grange, Florida. Everyone in this story outside of the previously mentioned names needs either an overhaul or deletion. This book is 70 pages of story with several hundred pages of "world building" that is as interesting as the bottom of a sandy flip flop.

  

I've read that Carl has written some other books that are better; nobody brought up "Lucky You" when they mentioned their favorite Hiaasen. Are his other books worth reading? Possibly. I saw some talent here, but I also saw an editor that fell asleep at his desk and let this book go through untouched to print. So, so much of this needed rework, I can't believe this is a finished product.

  

I do not recommend "Lucky You".

Two people win the Florida lottery and they are total opposites: one's a racist militia man; the other is a female black environmentalist. The heroine of the story just happens to be named JoLayne Lucks. Lady Luck's new found fortune brings her in league with Tom Krome a reporter who just wants her story no matter what she does to him.

It could have been another cute story set around one of Florida's many environmental issues but it didn't catch my attention. The situations felt contrived at best and forced at their worst. Hiaasen was trying for an irreverent tone in the vein of Christopher Moore but he didn't make me laugh or connect with any of the characters. Ms Lucks is so abrasive throughout the book that I didn't care if she succeeded in her environmental quest.

Lucky You is the last of the Hiaasen books I have on my to be read shelf and I think I'll keep it that way for a while. I'm not giving up on him completely as I have enjoyed two of his books tremendously: Hoot and Basket Case.

Sarah Sammis &
Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen

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Sarah Sammis &
Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen