Title: Chasing Lucky

Author: Jenn Bennett

Pub. Date: November 10, 2020

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Budding photographer Josie Saint-Martin has spent half her life with her single mother, moving from city to city. When they return to her historical New England hometown years later to run the family bookstore, Josie knows it’s not forever. Her dreams are on the opposite coast, and she has a plan to get there.

Determined to understand why Lucky was so quick to cover for her, Josie discovers that both of them have changed, and that the good boy she once knew now has a dark sense of humor and a smile that makes her heart race. And maybe, just maybe, he’s not quite the brooding bad boy everyone thinks he is… 

This will be a spoiler free review. Thanks to NetGalley for providing a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to love this book. I thought I was going to love it. My expectations were that I was going to love it. So, I’m really bummed that I didn’t.

I don’t even know if I can really pinpoint exactly what I didn’t jive with in this book. I want to say the characters, because I really didn’t buy into their relationship. I didn’t like Josie, and I didn’t really care for Lucky.

They kind of felt like caricatures of characters and they didn’t feel like teenagers.

Maybe if this book had been NA – even though I would say it’s Upper YA already – their characters would have made more sense to me.

But if I had to think about it, I think maybe my biggest issue were the emotional weights in this book. They felt like they were all over the place. I felt like I wasn’t feeling the right emotions at the right times and that kept pulling me out of the book. The weird emotional weights mixed with the characters just created a mess in my head.

For two teens, Josie and Lucky didn’t have the emotional maturity…immaturity of them. I get that they’ve both been through some stuff and those kind of things can cause you to grow up faster, but they felt juxtaposed doing typical teen stuff, with emotional ranges of adults…or how they thought adults felt, and it just felt wrong to me. For me, it didn’t work.

I also didn’t like how photography was such a huge part of Josies life, and other than a few moments, we don’t see her taking pictures. And Lucky’s whole I’m a bad boy shtick, felt like that, a shtick. Also, I kind of hate his name. Ultimately, I just wasn’t a fan of either of them. I really didn’t care for any of the characters, actually, now that I think about it. None of them made a truly lasting impression.

I will say that the formatting of the eARC I had was atrocious and made it a little difficult to read, so there could be a very real possibility that contributed to my dislike.

I’m so bummed I didn’t enjoy this book, and I think some of my irritation is stemming from that. This book wasn’t horrible, it wasn’t. It just wasn’t for me. While that sucks, I do recommend you check out this book when it comes out in November. This was my first Jenn Bennett book, and I’m definitely going to check out some of her other books. I enjoyed her writing style, and I felt like I was in New England, she brought the town of Beauty to life in my mind. I’m just sad this book wasn’t it for me, and that happens. So, check out Chasing Lucky when it comes out in November!