After reading The Cows by Dawn O'Porter I saw this book was being released way back when and being the impatient person I am I bought it as soon as it was available, therefore I have the hardback copy. It then sat on my bookshelf for a very long time because I was daunted by its size! I finally told myself to get over it and pick up the dam book!
So Lucky is a story about modern women with modern problems. We have a new mum juggling work, motherhood and marriage. We have a woman struggling with self esteem while also trying to look after her daughter. Lastly we have an influencer portraying the perfect life but we see the comments she receives online, and is her relationship as perfect as it seems?
Having read one other book by Dawn I knew to expect bluntness and some crass language and she very much delivered! Firstly this is a book about not judging a book by its cover, which I am sure we have all done in the past. In the modern day its easy to share the things you want people to see while keeping the rest secret and of course this can be damaging and toxic for all parties. It teaches us to not look and judge someone's life as you really have no idea what is going on behind closed doors.
It covers a lot of things many females can struggle with on the daily and as always I really love how Dawn does not skirt over these potentially difficult topics. She talks about sex (both with a partner and with ourselves), she talks about breastfeeding and other things that come with motherhood, and also the tricky perfectly filtered online world we have all learnt to live in. It really is important women talk about all of these things as we all find out we are much more alike than we thought! We all wake up with crows feet one day, our fake tan may not be perfect, perhaps we haven't had sex in a while and we are not sure if it has changed. Maybe even our body hang ups are more common than we realised and maybe others are so caught up in their own hang ups they don't think yours is even that bad.
Secondly I really do think there is a huge lesson in social media that can be learnt from this. While its lovely to share a pretty picture every now and then I really do think about what it is I am sharing. My personal page is private and I try not to share too much. Those who know me will see my life as it is. However there are many people who feel the need to post all the time. Great! Good for you! You want to see those likes, follows and comments rack up. Well in this book we see comments from people that are less than favourable in the quest to be popular with all, and we also see the effort behind the picture, and the lies. Of course this isn't always the case in real life but I do think its more common than we think and honesty really is the best policy.
I had originally chosen this book for work book club to help encourage me to read it. After finishing it however I did decide to remove it from the list for others to read and replaced it with another. While I was ok with the language and the graphic sexual topics, I fear that the rest of my book club may not have appreciated it. Heads up there was a c-bomb dropped and some sexual activities are described in a lot of detail. I do feel these times in the book it really flattened the story. I love how real the language is and how it pushes the boundaries, but because of this I felt like I wanted something a bit deeper for a book club read, if that makes sense.
I cannot take away from it that it does have a great storyline, even if I saw some of it coming, and also has some real heartfelt moments that had me bursting with happiness. Girl power and all that! While I will recommend to some of my friends I will note this is not for everyone.
So Lucky by Dawn O'Porter
Pages - 400
Goodreads Rating - ⭐⭐⭐
