“You don’t owe anyone anything. They help you because they love you. Why else does anyone help anyone? Letting someone help you is the nicest thing you can do for anyone.”

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How Lucky by Will Leitch: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis of How Lucky by Will Leitch

Daniel is your typical twenty-something male with a job in social media, a love for football, his hometown of Athens, Georgia, and a best friend who is more like a brother. He considers himself to be a pretty happy, pretty normal guy; despite the fact that he suffers from a terminal and debilitating illness that has left him unable to speak or to move without the use of his wheelchair.

Daniel’s life is pretty ordinary. Until one day he realizes he’s the sole witness in a kidnapping, and the only person in communication with the lead suspect. How can the one person with any knowledge of what really happened help when he’s trapped in his own body and quickly becoming a target himself?

My Thoughts

Oh my heart. How Lucky was clever, poignant, and a breath of fresh air. I laughed, I cried, I laughed and cried simultaneously, and then I hungrily turned the pages for more. In How Lucky, we get to meet Daniel, a young man living with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a degenerative disease that is similar to ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

Diagnosed when he was a child, Daniel’s life has been split between living as normally and as fully as possible, while slowly watching his capabilities decline. Confined to the limitations of his body, the one thing that has remained strong is his mind.

Getting to know this character was an absolute treat; I found myself constantly cheering and wanting to know more about his life. This was definitely not my typical book choice, but it is, by far, the best book I’ve read in 2021. I get that I have a handful of months left in the year but it’s going to take a Jodi Picoult 19 Minutes meets My Sister’s Keeper meets The Storyteller of a story to get me to change my mind on rating this my best read of 2021. I don’t hand out five star ratings easily, and this book more than deserves it.