Review - Get Lucky by Katherine Center

Summary: (via Goodreads) Sarah Harper isn’t sure if the stupid decisions she sometimes makes are good choices in disguise—or if they’re really just stupid. But either way, after forwarding an inappropriate email to her entire company, she suddenly finds herself out of a job.
So she goes home to Houston—and her sister, Mackie—for Thanksgiving. But before Sarah can share her troubles with her sister, she learns that Mackie has some woes of her own: After years of trying, Mackie’s given up on having a baby—and plans to sell on eBay the entire nursery she’s set up. Which gives Sarah a brilliant idea—an idea that could fix everyone’s problems. An idea that gives Sarah the chance to take care of her big sister for once—instead of the other way around.


Review (with a small spoiler): Get Lucky is a chick lit novel about Sarah, a semi-happy 30 year old workaholic, who has decided to devote her life to building that reputable NYC career everyone dreams about. Suddenly, things turn from great to grim, when an unfortunate lapse of judgment gets her fired. Uncertain about what to do next, Sarah decides to take a trip back home to Texas, where she discovers that her older sister Mackie has been facing a dreary predicament of her own: the inability to become a mother. Heartbroken over the situation, Sarah decides to solve the seemingly impossible problem in a very interesting way; it’s a decision that transforms her from a big city hotshot into a pregnant, hormonal, jobless single woman in about a month’s time.

            Okay, at this point, there is a chance you’re feeling slightly dismayed over the whole pregnancy factor about the story. Certainly, not everyone’s interested in reading about gestation and morning sickness when they turn to the chick lit genre. But I strongly advice you not to be alarmed! Even though there are some important physiological changes that the book discusses during Sarah’s nine months of “community baby” bliss, the story’s focus lies more in the non-physiological inner changes that happen to our heroine. In many ways, she’s a broken woman when she arrives in Houston. This pregnancy was her way out, a way to reinvent herself into a kinder, more altruistic person; it was also a way for her to restore the closeness she once shared with her sister. But, this being the chick lit novel that it is, things have a way of turning out exactly the opposite to how they should. Having to share her body with someone else’s babies was supposed to be difficult for Sarah, but having to deal with being jobless, single and increasingly prospect-less (in both those departments) in conjunction to the growing belly, starts to become increasingly disagreeable (and also hilarious.) Raging hormones contribute to the roller-coaster of emotions and impulsive actions that start to ensue, which will have you oscillating between laughter and pain.  

             Essentially, Get Lucky is a book that chronicles the process of creating a life, while also rebuilding one’s life. The best part of the story is Sarah’s honesty. She has made a lot of mistakes in her life, and continues to make more as the story moves along, but being 30 means that she also has to find ways to deal with everything. And so she does. Sarah’s solutions to her predicaments are nothing if not interesting, but with the advertising background that she has got, you’d be foolish not to expect her to think outside the box. She’s a great character. I loved her and I even loved the vicarious pregnancy experience she gave me.  

Lit Snit Verdict: A