With a Little Luck, Marissa Meyer

I’ve always loved Marissa Meyer’s style–she’s lighthearted, clean, and always manages to infuse her books with a touch of the fantastical, even if they’re urban rather than futuristic or high fantasy. In many ways, this was the classic YA rom-com, but with a flair of the subtle supernatural.

Shy, nerdy Jude has spent most of his life crushing on popular Maya, but has never gotten up the nerve to talk to her before–while utterly oblivious to his best friend, Ari, who obviously has a thing for him. (The unreliable narrator on this was terrific, by the way: the story is told through Jude’s eyes, and he can’t tell Ari likes him, but even just by his external descriptions of Ari’s behavior, it couldn’t be more obvious to the reader.) But when Jude suddenly finds a pair of magical dice, a la Dungeons and Dragons (his favorite passtime), he suddenly finds that everything goes his way. Once he realizes that luck is with him, he wins tickets to a concert he doesn’t even care about, but that he knows Maya is desperate to attend, and asks her out. At last, the fantasy becomes his reality…

I liked how Meyer subverted expectations, though, and didn’t play into stereotypes. (Jude even said as much at several points in the story, as the narrator.) Maya isn’t the cheerleader, or a jerk, and when Jude discovers what she’s really like, he doesn’t find that she’s super shallow, either. But (I don’t think this is even a spoiler,) he has to both achieve the fantasy in order to learn that what he really wanted all along was right in front of him. And then he has to lose the luck, in order to believe that he’s good enough, just the way he is.

It’s not super deep or anything, but it’s a fun, clean, feel-good story with a happily ever after, just like YA chick lit ought to be.

My rating: ****

Language: none

Sexual content: none

Violence: none

Political content: none

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