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A review by mousewitched
You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian
4.5
Thank you to NetGalley and Avon for a copy of this ARC!
Let me start by saying this: I am probably not uniquely qualified to review this book, but I am 1) gay and 2) a baseball fan since the womb, which I think gives me a leg up on, say, someone who knows nothing about baseball and is also straight.
You Should Be So Lucky feels a little like a love letter to baseball. It feels like watching the A League of Their Own series (and the movie, but in a different way). It's so familiar while telling a fairly unique story - to me, at least. I'll add here that I probably would not have reached for this if it was written by anyone other than Cat Sebastian; I trust Cat with my queer reader life.
The story follows Eddie O'Leary, barely out of a stellar rookie year and now sucking the life out of an already dead team, and Mark Bailey, who really no longer has a life, as far as he's concerned. I won't go into too much detail into their love story, because frankly that was less interesting to me and there are so many other excellent reviews that sing their praises. For me, this is about people falling in love, whether it be for the first time or in a new way, with baseball.
There's a passage later in the book where Mark remembers a conversation he had about a novel where baseball is a metaphor for life and how he complained about it. His partner responds "that nobody has ever written about baseball without it being a metaphor of some kind or another." Everything clicks for Mark in that moment, in that passage, a secret, much needed batting practice, and to me? That's the romance in this book. Mark, falling in love with someone but understanding the love that baseball inspires in others, even a little bit himself; Eddie, falling back in love with baseball after it let him down and makes him feel othered; George Allen, loving something so much he doesn't want to let it go, even as he gets older. Tony Ardolino and Sam Price, fighting for the sport they love to accept others.
And I think Cat Sebastian gets that - there is clearly so much accurate detail in the novel that can only be described as a labor of love. Mentions of the Philadelphia A's, prior to the KC A's, and the quirks of the Polo Grounds really got me good. Like I said, I trust her with my life. She hasn't let me down yet.
If you love baseball as much as I do, see the love story in the long suffering bad seasons and the elation of a playoff run, I think you'd enjoy this book. I know I did.
(Did I take .5 off for erasing the Mets? The world may never know.)
Let me start by saying this: I am probably not uniquely qualified to review this book, but I am 1) gay and 2) a baseball fan since the womb, which I think gives me a leg up on, say, someone who knows nothing about baseball and is also straight.
You Should Be So Lucky feels a little like a love letter to baseball. It feels like watching the A League of Their Own series (and the movie, but in a different way). It's so familiar while telling a fairly unique story - to me, at least. I'll add here that I probably would not have reached for this if it was written by anyone other than Cat Sebastian; I trust Cat with my queer reader life.
The story follows Eddie O'Leary, barely out of a stellar rookie year and now sucking the life out of an already dead team, and Mark Bailey, who really no longer has a life, as far as he's concerned. I won't go into too much detail into their love story, because frankly that was less interesting to me and there are so many other excellent reviews that sing their praises. For me, this is about people falling in love, whether it be for the first time or in a new way, with baseball.
There's a passage later in the book where Mark remembers a conversation he had about a novel where baseball is a metaphor for life and how he complained about it. His partner responds "that nobody has ever written about baseball without it being a metaphor of some kind or another." Everything clicks for Mark in that moment, in that passage, a secret, much needed batting practice, and to me? That's the romance in this book. Mark, falling in love with someone but understanding the love that baseball inspires in others, even a little bit himself; Eddie, falling back in love with baseball after it let him down and makes him feel othered; George Allen, loving something so much he doesn't want to let it go, even as he gets older. Tony Ardolino and Sam Price, fighting for the sport they love to accept others.
And I think Cat Sebastian gets that - there is clearly so much accurate detail in the novel that can only be described as a labor of love. Mentions of the Philadelphia A's, prior to the KC A's, and the quirks of the Polo Grounds really got me good. Like I said, I trust her with my life. She hasn't let me down yet.
If you love baseball as much as I do, see the love story in the long suffering bad seasons and the elation of a playoff run, I think you'd enjoy this book. I know I did.
(Did I take .5 off for erasing the Mets? The world may never know.)