Lucky In Love

by Jeanne McCann

It was September of 1970 when Laura and Danette became college roommates while attending the University of Washington. After several months of living together the two fell deeply in love. This was the first serious relationship for both girls and they soon made a lifetime commitment to each other. After three years of shared hopes, dreams and plans for the future, Laura abruptly left and went back home to New York. Laura left Danette a letter of regret and a shattered heart, made worse by Laura's marriage several months later to a much older man. Now, twenty years later, Laura's beautiful, newly married daughter moves to Seattle, and is bound and determined to reunite Laura and Danette. Laura's daughter has no doubts and will stop at nothing to bring them back together.

Genres: Romance

154 pages, Paperback

First published December 27, 2000

About the author

Jeanne McCann has published nine novels. She resides in the Pacific Northwest with her partner of many years.

Reviews

[Jamie (TheRebelliousReader)]

4 stars. I love finding older sapphic books like this. This one is 23 years old and I think it holds up pretty well. I liked the writing. It’s easy and accessible and made for a quick read. The characters were all endearing and likable. Laura and Danette were roommates in college and fell in love and then Laura runs off leaving only a note. She gets married to a man and her and Danette don’t see each other again until twenty years later. It was a really good story and I liked the romance and chemistry between them. I especially loved how Laura’s daughter, Carole, was adamant on getting them back together. The ending was lovely and this was just an overall feel good read. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Sandy]

I enjoy reading some of the older books that are one or two decades out of date. I find it gives me perspective on how far we have come. This book is a generally sweet romance about love found, love lost and love re-found. There wasn't a great deal of passion evoked on the page . I liked the premise about women finding their love 20 years later, but most of the book didn't deal with that. It spent most of the time reliving the college romance they had. It also did a bunch of time jumps from one sentence to the next without breaks which made it hard to follow. Still, the story is sweet and an easy read.

[Zeni]

Got this book in a mystery grab bag, not a great book but it was interesting to read a sapphic story centered around UW/Seattle written 24 years ago

[Angie]

One thing you know for sure you'll always get with a Jeanne McCann book is lots of heart, so much so that if you're even slightly the romantic, you'll be sighing, reaching for tissues and wishing this kind of stuff happened in real life.

McCann's books sometimes seriously lack strength in dialogue (often, each character sounds like the other) but the love found within her novels is so amazingly sweet and sincere you are willing to overlook any weaknesses if you're reading for escape and romance, not literary depth.

In Lucky In Love the reader meets Danette in the present, where you soon learn she keeps regular contact with a private detective who has been reporting on her ex's activities for the past twenty years. Creepy, right? It would seem so, yet once we get a nice back story (the heart and soul of the book) it becomes a lot less so.

Danette and Laura, the love of her life, first meet in the early 70s as college roommates. Their friendship, soon turning to something even richer and more deep, becomes the center of both their lives until (unbeknownst to Danette) Laura's family interferes and things turn very bad and sad.

Years later, Danette still doesn't know the real reasons Laura left, but she has never stopped loving her nor wondering whether she is truly happy or not.

Through Danette's own orchestrations (again, this could be very creepy, but somehow isn't) Laura's daughter works for Danette's company and has decided she is going to reunite the two women. She's so darn earnest and likable as pretty much _everyone_ in Lucky In Love is (minus Laura's prehistorically educated parents) you just know how things will end.

The destination, as with most romances, isn't why you keep reading. The journey (fueled by the very sincere and sweet love between Danette and Laura) is the glue that keeps this sometimes uneven book together. What Jeanne McCann sometimes lacks in writing chops, she more than makes up for in a sincerity you don't find often in fiction.

[~ * K E L L I E * ~]

Unlike Hawaiian Love which took me a week to read, I flew through this book in a number of hours. It certainly held my attention and the supporting characters were entertaining also. Great book!

[Kay]

The only objectionable concern about this sweet gay romance is the grammnar and subject/verb agreement, or lack thereof. I hate to be a grammar snob, but it truely was intrusive in reading.
Worst example is on page 32: "Your right."