So Lucky - Dawn O’Porter - Book Review

It’s been four long years since I’ve attempted to write a book review. My last one being ‘The Cows’ (also by Dawn O’Porter). Coincidence, I think not (I love her!) It’s not that I haven’t read anything since 2017, I have, but they’ve all just been books I’ve either read before/books I've never finished or books that at the time I just didn’t feel like writing about. The Saga of Darren Shan for example, a 12 book series I started when I was around 12, I’m now 29 and had only ever gotten as far as book 9, I finished it recently and was too annoyed by the ending to consider writing about it. I’ve also still definitely been riding the high of THEE Dawn O’Porter reading and replying to my last review of her book. I remember I nearly fell off the couch when the tweet came through and I thought nothing is going to top this, so I may as well quit while I’m ahead.

I have just finished my MA course in Surface Pattern & Textiles, which involved a lot of academic writing and it made me realise how much I’ve missed writing. So now that I’m back, it seems appropriate that my first review in three years is a Dawn O’Porter book. So Lucky, like The Cows doesn’t give much away on the back, except that it follows three women’s lives, Ruby, Beth and Lauren. The few lines it does give are enough to get you to open up the front page and start reading. While it’s a completely different story to The Cows it has a similar go-between of characters, telling the story of their lives at the same moment in time, all struggling to navigate family life, relationships, careers, just life in general. Ruby is a detached mother struggling with a personal issue (it took me way too long to realise what it was), Beth is a new mum juggling her business and home life with a husband who is quite frankly a gobshite. Lauren is a social media influencer about to marry the love of her life and for the majority of the book she is mainly projected through Instagram posts that keep her quite distant and soulless. Slowly but surely their lives intertwine and O’Porter is very clever about the way she brings them together. 

I don’t like to give too much away in reviews and I always question how journalists/others who write reviews for a living manage to walk that fine between giving enough of the plot without spilling too much. With this book it’s not so much about having a plot, I don’t believe you necessarily need one either, as from the beginning you are plonked in the middle of these women’s lives when things are tough or not quite right and you need to find out why. I mean it is obviously not a thriller but you become so invested in these women’s lives that you read it as if it were one, scrambling to get to end hoping for a happy resolution. The way the characters evolve throughout, you find yourself rooting for them. I won’t lie, despite rooting for them there were times I did struggle to relate being 28 years old and childless, however it didn’t lessen my enjoyment of the book in any way. One of the main points I took from the book and it reflects back to the sentence on the cover is, “Don’t judge a woman by her cover’. Something the women in the book are guilty of doing and something I’m sure most people at some point are guilty of, but it’s an important message to be reminded of. We never know what someone is going through and what people choose to project to the outside world is not always an indication of what’s going on inside. 

After reading both The Cows and now So Lucky I strongly believe everyone should read O’Porter purely for the way she writes women. I don’t know anyone else that’s writes them the way she does, almost as if she’s sitting right next to you telling you about these women. I’ve also watched enough of O’Porters instagram stories (@hotpatooties follow her if you don’t already) to have been able to imagine her voice reading certain parts of the book, which makes for a more hilarious read. There are also very few people on this earth that can get away with saying “a comment like that can send a clitoris sailing to the ground like an unopened parachute. Thud.” but Dawn O’Porter is one of them. The bottom line, if you’re looking for a laugh this will definitely provide one.