Hello, everyone! Today I’m reviewing You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian. I adored last year’s We Could Be So Good by Sebastian, and I was so stoked to see that there would be another book set in the same time period and world. You Should Be So Lucky is available now wherever you get your books!

An emotional, slow-burn, grumpy/sunshine, queer mid-century romance about grief and found family, between the new star shortstop stuck in a batting slump and the reporter assigned to (reluctantly) cover his first season—set in the same universe as We Could Be So Good.

The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s life. He can’t manage to hit the ball, his new teammates hate him, he’s living out of a suitcase, and he’s homesick. When the team’s owner orders him to give a bunch of interviews to some snobby reporter, he’s ready to call it quits. He can barely manage to behave himself for the length of a game, let alone an entire season. But he’s already on thin ice, so he has no choice but to agree.

Mark Bailey is not a sports reporter. He writes for the arts page, and these days he’s barely even managing to do that much. He’s had a rough year and just wants to be left alone in his too-empty apartment, mourning a partner he’d never been able to be public about. The last thing he needs is to spend a season writing about New York’s obnoxious new shortstop in a stunt to get the struggling newspaper more readers.

Isolated together within the crush of an anonymous city, these two lonely souls orbit each other as they slowly give in to the inevitable gravity of their attraction. But Mark has vowed that he’ll never be someone’s secret ever again, and Eddie can’t be out as a professional athlete. It’s just them against the world, and they’ll both have to decide if that’s enough.

Cat Sebastian has done it again! You Should Be So Lucky gets ALL THE STARS. These characters had my whole heart, and I don’t just mean the main couple. Every single character in this story was well-developed and added something significant to the exploration of the themes. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Nick and Andy pop up from time to time.

The plot of You Should Be So Lucky was incredibly slow, but I just fell right into it and let it consume me like a vat of molasses. lol. The romance was the slowest of slow burns, and the grumpy/sunshine energy was absolute perfection. I honestly could have read about these characters doing anything, or nothing at all, and still been completely transfixed.

In addition to the fantastic characters, the author did a great job of creating the setting in You Should Be So Lucky. I could tell that Sebastian did her baseball research, and the dialogue and writing made me feel like it was truly 1960. The descriptions of the stadium, apartments, and different parts of New York were all immersive, and it seemed like I was right there alongside the characters.

Sebastian is a master at using characters to explore powerful themes. You Should Be So Lucky had so much depth, and the portrayal of dealing with loss and grief had me in my feelings. Each character seemed to be reeling from some type of loss and trying to figure out how to move forward with their new reality. The story was extremely sad at times, but it also had so much hope.

Additionally, You Should Be So Lucky gave a window into the queer experience of the mid-20th century. The characters struggled to navigate the risks and benefits of keeping their relationship a secret, which was incredibly salient for Eddie since the news getting out would destroy his career. They also grappled with an important question. How can the people important to me truly know or love me when I must hide such important parts of myself from them? I loved how the couple made things work for them, and I appreciated the realistic, yet hopeful, tone of how these issues were addressed.

Overall, You Should Be So Lucky is a beautiful and sad and hopeful masterpiece that illustrates how love and life go on after loss. I cannot recommend it enough. Therefore, I give it a rating of 5 out of 5 stars!

Have you read You Should Be So Lucky or any of Cat Sebastian’s other books? Let me know your thoughts on them down in the comments!