Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - You Should Be So Lucky

Emotional and slow-paced, You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian is a perfect example of a queer romance book that transcends the typical limitations of the tropes it employs.

Review:

Marketed as a “slow-burn, grumpy-sunshine” 1960s sports romance, You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian follows a young pro baseball player named Eddie and a grieving news reporter named Mark. Mark is assigned to ghostwrite a series of diary entries for Eddie, who has had a rough start at the New York Robins—not only is he in a severe batting slump, but he’s also insulted his entire team and manager in front of the press. A clandestine romance blossoms between the unlikely pair, who must figure out how to navigate their relationship in an intensely homophobic culture.

Unlike many romance authors, Sebastian allows her two main characters to fully develop as people; this book is not mere fantasy fulfillment for one party at the expense of the humanity of the other. While Eddie and Mark certainly fit loosely into the categories of “grumpy and sunshine,” (with Eddie being the latter and Mark the former), Sebastian carefully builds these characters beyond the tropes. The result is a delightful romance between two characters who complement each other well.

The main barrier preventing their relationship from taking course is the homophobia of 1960s America. Some romance authors might use historical bigotry as a cheap and easy plot conflict, but Sebastian is not one of them. She beautifully and heartbreakingly conveys how bigotry creates unjust limitations for her characters; for instance, Mark cannot openly grieve for his dead boyfriend, and Eddie must keep his homosexuality strictly under wraps if he wants a career in baseball. By refusing to whitewash the struggles of closeted homosexual men of mid-nineteenth-century America, Sebastian does a service to the genre of historical romance. However, she also makes sure to include precious instances of joy, intimacy, and acceptance for her characters.

As a pure romance novel, You Should Be So Lucky represents one of the best the genre has to offer. The relationship between Eddie and Mark is slowly and impeccably developed; their HEA is earned rather than granted. As a historical fiction novel, the book perhaps leaves more to be desired; although not peppered with egregious historical inaccuracies, Sebastian appears uninterested in immersing the reader in 1960s New York City. Instead, she spends most of the 400 pages in the book exploring the emotions of her main characters. Many romance readers will celebrate the emotional slow-burn of the plot, but others might find the constant focus on the characters’ inner experiences a tad fatiguing. The author makes a couple of attempts to build out the plot and the lives of Eddie and Mark outside their relationship, but these attempts appear rather haphazard and half-baked compared to the central romance.

You might like this book if . . .

· You like emotional and well-written queer historical romances

· You appreciate historical romances that do not sugarcoat the social realities of the past

· You want to read a delightful opposites-attract romance between two complex but lovable main characters

You might not like this book if . . .

· You want to read a romance with a lot of explicit sex—the sex in this book is fairly tame and somewhat fade-to-black

· You don’t like reading books about closeted gay characters

· You like historical romances that are equal parts history and romance

· You prefer fast-paced romances or romances with a strong plot

Content Warnings

not_quimby's review against another edition

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emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

gondorgirl's review

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

wellgonomorearoving's review

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emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

When I tell you I love this book, I mean I LOVED IT. I laughed, I swooned, I cried, I left feeling warm and fuzzy. I think I highlighted 90% of it.

This is a story about a grieving writer who is kind but sharp edged and closed off, and a baseball player who is optimistic by choice and willing to fight for what he wants with cheerful tenacity. In 1960, Eddie is a ballplayer experiencing a terrible slump in his first year playing with the major leagues in NYC and Mark is a reporter reluctantly assigned to write about him. The following slow burn is tantalizing and perfect.

It’s a romance but it’s also a reflection on life, on the slumps we all face, the bad things that are bound to happen, and the people we need to carry us through those times until our luck changes, as it is bound to eventually. This is a story about the hits we can pull off if we keep trying, the runs we can score as long as we keep swinging.

This is my ideal historical fiction, where the setting is well thought out and clear in the story but the focus is about the people existing in that world. History is made up of actual people, and while this is fiction, I feel like the story genuinely reflects that concept. It doesn’t shy away from the fact that existing as a queer person in 1960 was hard (not that it’s easy now, but things were different) but it also doesn’t get hung up on the tragedy. It shows that of course queer people have always found a way to love one another, and of course queer people can find happiness despite the obstacles stacked against them. The side characters are rich and loveable and help to tell this story of getting back up and trying again, waiting for the tide to finally turn back in our favor, and relying on your team to carry you through until you can do the same for them in turn.

Anyway gonna go cry about baseball as a metaphor for life while you all buy this book okay thanks

(this is an ARC review)

Content Warnings

herelieshenry's review

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emotional lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

In the interest of full disclosure, this review is specifically regarding a DRC copy of the book from Net Galley, so while I imagine this eBook was pretty close to finalized, some details may have been changed between my copy and the official release.

I’d recommend this book to people looking for a M/M historical romance that deals with topics of grief, visibility/erasure, and found family. For people interested in the love scenes, this book is definitely open door, but not very explicit. I think the strongest element of the book is the dedication the author had to crafting a believable, but optimistic, historical romance in the context of queer men in sports and journalism in the late 50s/early 60s. The weakest is the prose, which I’m assuming will probably be a lot more tightened in the final book. Overall, I think some line-by-line editing is what would benefit this book most. I wouldn’t mind reading more from the author, at some point.

Grammar and spelling were fine—consistent, and overall unnoticeable—while syntax and word choice were clear and straightforward. There’s a noticeable repetitiveness of names within sentences and occasional awkward phrasing. I think revisions paring down on repetition would polish the book off quite a bit. Otherwise, phrasing was very linear and easy to understand. Dialogue struck me as a little unnatural at times, particularly when the book is trying to be funny, but it’s solid enough and I imagine will be tightened up some more in the months before publishing.

The narrative is put together well enough, though it feels a bit less focused towards the end. The overarching structure, with dual point of view split between Mark and Eddie, each section being dictated by month and season, works well to show the passage of time without sacrificing pacing. Depth of perspective occasionally felt a little off: most of the time, it’s very anchored to the point of view character for that chapter, but a few times, it unmoored a little and had me double-checking whose chapter it was. I would have liked the secondary plots,

like Mark’s article, George’s health, whatever was going on between Tony and Constance, etcetera

to get a little more screen time. I think that would have also helped to fill out the passage of time without making things feel too rushed or too slow, especially towards the end of the book.

I appreciate that the author didn’t boil the characters down to individual tropes without depth. While this book is marketed as grumpy/sunshine, and it meets the qualifications, the characters extend beyond those labels, too. This book deals with an issue I have with a lot of grumpy/sunshine dynamics head-on: often the “sunshine” characters are infantilized by authors, other characters, and readers, without any acknowledgment of the fact. While this book definitely does show people infantilizing Eddie, there’s also a clear awareness in the narrative that he’s a grown man being infantilized.

While it’s not directly called that, this is one major conflict at play in his relationship with Mark; Mark has trouble allowing Eddie the dignity of risk regarding his sexuality, and this is something that gets addressed and resolved.

Especially considering Eddie seems to be coded as neurodivergent, I appreciate the effort made to avoid infantilizing him within the overarching narrative.

I think the author did a decent job at actually establishing dynamics that feel like found family here; so often that label falls flat, but there’s depth to those dynamics here. I think this is an extension of the fact that the extended cast are treated as characters with their own interior worlds and lives off-screen, which is something I wish more romance books had. I will say that I wish the rest of the baseball team beyond Eddie, Ardolino, and Price had a bit more screentime and development. I also wish there were more development put into

Mark and George’s dynamic—the skeleton of it is there, and it’s solid, but some more scenes of the two of them before the heart attack could strengthen the impact

As a disabled person, George Allen’s character arc around losing ability really resonated with me;

I would have liked to see more of George in the story.

I noticed several times throughout the ARC that the author only seems to specify a character’s race and ethnicity when they’re nonwhite. I understand lots of authors do this, but only acknowledging the identities of marginalized people and not that of cishet white people contributes to the misconception that privileged identities are the “default” and are to be assumed if not specified otherwise, so it’s worth pointing out, in my opinion. There is also a bit of implicitly ableist language utilized in a way that feels neither intentional or purposeful which I think could stand to be adjusted. The use of “slow” as a pejorative (as in “slow in the head”, a popular euphemism for the R slur) and negative use of the term “handicap” (which is not inherently bad when used to refer to evening the playing field for disabled people, but when used negatively to refer to detriments, it can do harm), are two instances that stuck out to me in particular.

I appreciate that, while the book is ultimately optimistic, it also doesn’t pretend that things were—or are—easy. I get why a lot of queer romance novels don’t focus on that aspect, and pure escapism has its place in art too, but sometimes, it’s just nice to feel seen in the more difficult moments. Along those lines, I often find that romances treat closeted characters (and by extension closeted readers) in a way that comes across as demeaning, judgmental, and cruel. This book, thankfully, approaches the closet with compassion and nuance, discussing the difficulties of being closeted and dating a closeted person without playing into harmful ideas about closeted people owing it to people to come out. There’s also a lot of empathy towards people experiencing addiction in this book, which was very refreshing to see.

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