ARC Review: A Heartfelt and Terrifying All Too Realistic Must-Read
SynopsisLucky Day is the newest novel of terror from Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Bury Your Gays, where one woman must go up against the most horrifying concept of all: nothing.
Vera is a survivor of a global catastrophe known as the Low Probability Event, but she definitely isn’t thriving. Once a passionate professor of statistics, she no longer finds meaning in anything at all.
But when problematic government agent Layne knocks on her door, she’s the only one who can help him uncover the connection between deadly spates of absurdity and an improbably lucky casino. What’s happening in Vegas isn’t staying there, and the world is at risk of another disaster.
When it comes to Chuck Tingle, the only thing more terrifying than a serious horror novel is an absurd one…
Release Date8/12/2025
Overall Rating5/5
Spooky Rating3/5
Gore Rating3/5
Quick TakeLucky Day by Chuck Tingle is at once a terrifying and heart wrenching portrayal of what staring into oblivion feels like, paired with invalidation of one’s sexuality, and finding some meaning despite a sense of despair and powerlessness. To say that this novel is timely is an understatement.
Tell Me MoreLucky Day is the epitome of what cosmic horror should be.
This book came into my life at the perfect time, in an incredibly weird way. I started reading it on the same date that the main catastrophic event in the book occurs. If this wasn’t eerie enough, I feel like the main character’s mindset matches my own. I marked so many quotes within the book that I could probably just quote the entire thing.
Where Chuck Tingle gets the ideas for his books, I’ll never know – but this one solidified him in my top 5 favorite horror authors. While Bury Your Gays is one of my favorite books of all time, this one is right up there with it.
Lucky Day begins with an event called the Low-Probability Event, where everything that could go wrong goes wrong in the most bizarre way. The event, in turn, causes countless deaths, many of which our main character witnesses firsthand. The book focuses on Vera, a bisexual woman, who is a statistics professor and has just published a book. As a neurodivergent person, I felt like Vera may have been coded in this way. Statistics were her passion, and she relied on them for control and understanding of the world. But after the event occurs, and she witnesses countless deaths, she loses the ability to find meaning or purpose in anything. She feels like everything she ever thought she knew was wrong, and this sends her to a very dark place.
The nihilism, grief, and depression representation cut me to my core because I felt like I was seeing myself reflected on the page. Spending time with Vera’s character made me feel less alone at a time when I am also having a hard time finding the point in anything.
Throughout the book, Vera struggles with her sexuality being invalidated, which makes her feel like her true self doesn’t exist at all. While Vera struggled with her mother invalidating her, I liked how Tingle included a fellow queer character invalidating her sexuality. Unfortunately, this is all too common in the queer community – especially of late. He did so well tackling the difficult subjects of a world gone wrong and feeling meaningless against oblivion. While there was humor and wit, I will never forget a lot of the gory (and inexplicable) imagery included. However, the fear of everything we ever thought to be a certain way not being true, and losing that sense of control, filled me with mind-numbing terror. This also made me realize why cosmic is one of the few sub-genres of horror left that never fails to terrify me.
Lucky Day is too complex to sum up in a review without going on and on, so just go ahead and read it when it comes out. I promise you it won’t be a comfortable read, but the best books aren’t.
Rating Scales for Reference(Click images to zoom in)
*Thank you to Tor Nightfire for the ARC!
