Lucky Day
As someone who unironically uses the phrase "statistically significant" in her day job several times a week, I was drawn to Lucky Day's concept, and, in true Chuck Tingle style, it delivered.
In Lucky Day, we are told the story from the point of view of statistics professor Vera as she witnesses part of what becomes known as the Low-Probability Event in which 8 million Americans were killed in a single day of freak accidents, which brought to my mind some of the bizarre deaths from films like the Final Destination series.
The next 4 years sees Vera in a depression, but this is where Tingle's writing talent shines. Through Vera, he never uses any version of the word depressed or sad or mourning. Instead, Vera tells us what she does each day, and we are left to identify through her actions - and through her reveal of how much time has passed - what her mental state is.
In "Much Ado about Nothing", Leonato tells Dogberry, the malapropisms-spewing watchman, that he is "too cunning to be understood," and sometimes I feel that way with Chuck Tingle's novels. There are times that he's halfway through a sentence, and it feels like, as the Doctor (Doctor Who) says, "it got away with [him]." That's not a criticism, by the way, because the language is beautiful and lyrical, and fortunately, Tingle doesn't indulge too much before winding his way back.
Thanks to a government agent, Layne, Vera is pulled from her depression as he needs her help investigating an improbably lucky casino, and she is drawn into a mystery of Eldritch proportions and finds that she may have to save the world from another potential LPE.
I came primarily for the horror, and I got horror. Layers of it, like an onion. Besides the in-your-face descriptions of body horror and violent events, there is the horror that comes from his perfectly skewered satirical view on American society, from how we react in national disasters to how we hold (or fail to hold) those in power accountable for their actions.
The audiobook was excellently narrated by Mara Wilson.
Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. Pub. date: 8/12/25
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