Three friends get drunk one night and buy a lottery ticket together, and then they win. Kate Clayborn’s series, A Chance of a Lifetime follows Kit, Zoe and Greer as they navigate their lives a few months post win. Most of us dream of what we would do if we had a large chunk of money – pay off debts, buy a nice house, support family, and so on.
Kit said, “A house,” but what she thought was, home.
Zoe said, “An adventure,” but what she thought was, forgiveness.
Greer said, “An education,” but what she thought was, freedom.
In the first book in the series, Beginner’s Luck, Kit is trying to keep her changed circumstances a secret. Other than buying a money pit of an old house, she has kept her job and her old clunker of a car. Kit wants to grow roots in her city and to give her brother the stability he always tried to give her during their peripatetic childhood. Ben Tucker enters as a recruiter for a large company that wants Kit to come work for them. Ben is on family leave taking care of his father, but agreed to approach Kit thinking the groundwork had already been laid. Things do not go well. They keep meeting and gradually form a friendship and then start an affair.
“Kit,” I call, once she’s a few steps away. She turns to look at me, a question in her eyes. I should not, I should not say what I’m about to say, but I guess almost always say the wrong thing around Kit, so at least I’m being consistent. “What I said before, about you being the gem?”“Yeah?”“You’re that—you’re that, anywhere. Even if you don’t go to Texas.”
Their initial mutually exclusive objectives make for a bad foundation. Kit and Ben are more interesting than I am making them sound, and the book is a lovely way to spend time. I first read this in May and have since reread it a couple of times, so I really did like it.
I skipped over Luck of the Draw when I finished Beginner’s Luck the first time because it sounded like a more painful story than I was interested in reading at the time. I had also only read one of Clayborn’s books and didn’t trust her yet to handle emotional high wire acts with grace.
Sure, winning the lottery allows Zoe Ferris to quit her job as a cutthroat corporate attorney, but no amount of cash will clear her conscience about the way her firm treated the O’Leary family in a wrongful death case. So she sets out to make things right, only to find gruff, grieving Aiden O’Leary doesn’t need—or want—her apology. He does, however, need something else from her.
When I finally read Luck of the Draw a couple of weeks ago, it became my favorite of the three books. All the angst, sure, but none of the romanticized pain porn I was worried about. There are so many ways that a story of two wounded people finding each other could go wrong, especially when there is an emotional debt and between them. Zoe and Aiden are both still caught by grief. Zoe’s is older, but she is holding herself accountable for not living up to what she thinks are her father’s standards. Aiden has the accumulated and fresh grief of losing a brother to addiction. They both feel enormous guilt for what they were unable to fix. Luck of the Draw explores grief, guilt, redemption and forgiveness.
That’s the truth about making mistakes, about making the wrong choices. You live with them, and if you’re lucky you get enough perspective to see where you went astray. You figure out what you can do to repair the damage, and you figure out how to do better going forward.
Clayborn infuses Zoe and Aiden with humor, intelligence and heart. Aiden also has one of the best I Love You speeches since Captain Wentworth sat down to write Anne Elliot a letter.
In Begginer’s Luck, Greer meets Kit’s brother, Alex. We find out that Greer was attracted to him, but prioritized her friendship with Kit over her attraction to Alex. The friendship between the three women is central to who each of them is and central to the books.
Here’s a thing most people don’t think about: how a granite countertop feels on your forehead after you’ve been facedown on it for fifteen minutes, confessing to your best friend what you’ve just done in the dark with your other best friend’s brother. It’s pleasantly cool, particularly if you make occasional shifts, setting your warm skin on some untouched region, like flipping over your pillow in the middle of the night. But it’s also punishingly hard, a brutal reality check for your face, all your bones sharp and jutting and in the way.
Greer has been more sheltered than Kit and Zoe. She had a condition as a teen that kept her out of school for periods of time. In addition to the normal over protectiveness a family would develop around a teen with an illness, there is guilt because for a long time her symptoms were dismissed. Greer has struggled for her independence from her family. She is close to finishing her degree and starting a career as a social worker which will give her more freedom from her family’s concern. Having a romance, temporary or otherwise with her best friend’s brother isn’t part of her plan. Alex has been globetrotting as a photographer, but he needs time off to deal with some issues. The two of them have to struggle with what they think they want versus the relationship they are creating. It’s a lovely book and Greer is truly the toughest of the three friends.
Clayborn’s Love Lettering is coming out on Tuesday and along with A Chance of a Lifetime series, it was one of my favorite reads of 2019. If you haven’t read this author yet, she would e a good new author for 2020.