First: I got fired. For emailing a website with hundreds of pictures of breasts to every single person in our company. Even the CEO and chairman of the board. Even the summer interns.
Looking back, I may have been ready to leave my job. I’d like to give myself the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes the crazy things I do are actually very sensible. And sometimes, of course, they’re just crazy. – from the ARC of Get Lucky, page 3 –
Sarah Harper has a great job. She lives in New York City. She has just finished up a huge bra advertising campaign and is looking at a promotion…that is, until she sends an inappropriate email to everyone in the company. Jobless and disillusioned, Sarah jets off to her hometown of Houston to spend some time with her sister Mackie and within 24 hours comes up with an idea to fulfill her sister’s dream of having a child. Sarah offers to be a surrogate for her sister and brother-in-law…and although her heart is in the right place, she has no idea what she has gotten herself into.
Get Lucky, Katherine Center’s latest novel, is about mothers and daughters, the love between sisters (with all the conflict that entails), and searching for meaning in one’s life while dodging the pitfalls. Center has hit a home run with Get Lucky, a novel with pitch perfect dialogue, wonderful characters, and Center’s signature humor. There is no other author out there who does women’s fiction better.
What I especially loved about this book was the relationship between Mackie and Sarah – two sisters who are still grieving the death of the mother who they lost in childhood. Mackie is the older sister…married to the perfect guy and longing for a baby which has alluded her due to endometriosis. Sarah is the achiever, well put together, but with issues around intimacy – specifically she avoids it. Different in temperament and lifestyle, Mackie and Sarah are also more than best friends.
I should mention that my sister and I were close. We weren’t best friends exactly, though – because a best friend is a person you choose. A best friend, in most cases, is a temporary person, too, until she moves away, or gets a promotion and starts working too hard, or just drifts off. Friends depend on a certain amount of convenience. With friends, you have to have their number handy, or work in the same office, or live in the same city. With sisters, none of that matters. And in the end, for me, that would be a lucky thing. – from the ARC of Get Lucky, page 15 –
Center captures the relationship between sisters perfectly, with the small nuances which most people might miss…and this is something I love about Center’s writing: I feel like I know these people. Center takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary through believable dialogue and the ridiculous nature of life which often leaves us in situations which only later make us laugh. She keeps her readers reading because they can see themselves and the people they love within the pages of her novels.
It was not just the relationship between Mackie and Sarah which engaged me. Center also introduces an old high-school boyfriend of Sarah’s…and despite a bit of predictability, I loved the tension and conflict, the dodge and parry, between these two characters. Some of the scenes between these two were the funniest in the book, and in the end, I found myself rooting for them.
Center’s novels work because they touch on the real issues and emotions which women face. In Get Lucky, there is laughter, tears, drama and, finally, wisdom.
Of course, kisses can’t change your personality. Or anesthetize life’s pains. Or bring your mother back to you. Life is always a struggle between who you are and who you’d like to be. It’s always a negotiation between how you want it and how it is. There’s no changing that. – from the ARC of Get Lucky, page 261 –
I loved this book…by far, my favorite of Center’s three novels (although they are all great). Readers who enjoy women’s fiction will not want to miss this novel. Trust me.
Highly recommended.
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Read my tour of the book.
FTC Disclosure: This Advance Readers Edition was sent to me from the publisher for review on my blog.
