With A Little Luck by Marissa Meyer Book Review

Oh, the sweet throwbacks to nightmares we have in the school system, feeling like we’re the biggest unworthy screwups. 

Our hero in this fun little book is Jude Barnett, and for those unaware, this is a companion sequel to Instant Karma, that book being about Jude’s sister Prudence earning the ability for bad luck to happen to those she felt deserved it. It was also about how she was paired up with a boy for an assignment, who she thought was carefree, truant and rude, and when she goes to volunteer at his family’s sea animal shelter to convince him to redo that assignment after a bad grade, she finds her expectations about him were quite wrong.

Here, it’s the same neighbourhood, different bedroom. Jude loves to play Dungeons & Dragons with his closest friends and doing art that he’s too scared to submit to the world. But he truly is good at drawing. There was a similar conflict with Audrey in Pride & Prejudice & Pittsburgh. One day while helping at his parent’s records store in Fortuna Beach, which is getting a bit of a boost in sales thanks to Pru’s dedication and business plans, he comes across a D&D dice, but it’s red like a ruby. He ends up accidentally rolling a 20, which is the highest and luckiest in the game. And then before he knows it, things are working really well for him.

His art gets accepted by a magazine, he’s acing tests, he’s avoiding screwups, and he’s winning tickets and gets a chance to ask out a girl he’s always had a crush on. Things seem abnormally good for him right now. And where will all this good luck end up taking him and those closest to him?

For starters, you don’t need to have read Instant Karma before this, but if you have, it makes the book even more welcome. Being able to reunite with characters you were with before is something I wish happened more often in universes authors make. Jude is also an enjoyable narrator, especially with the additional goodies of having some illustrations in this book (won’t spoil what they are), or the few times he winks at us as the reader, asking us if we can relate too or if we’re having a good time with the book. Maybe I should try out this style.

Jude’s love interest, Maya, stands out as a character. She’s one of the most popular and put-together people in the school, so we think we automatically know what she would think about some of Jude’s interests, but we get surprised by what’s beneath the surface. There’s also a heartwarming scene about some, but only some, of Maya’s friends embracing their inner nerd to support Jude when things get tough.

And when things do get tough, it’s easy to relate to him and feel bad.

The book is admittedly sometimes predictable. We see where the story is going pretty clearly. It’s also sometimes slow and not very much of a page turner. But With A Little Luck is a solid enjoyable return to the Barnett family and Vintage Vinyl, and it cleansed me of Cursed, one of Meyer’s recent works that I really did not enjoy.

My rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5