Eddie has to be careful, otherwise he’s going to open his mouth and give this man five paragraphs of lunacy, starting with “You’re pretty” and ending with “Are you always this bad at your job?” with maybe some “Can I touch your suit?” thrown in there to maximize the horror.
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So LuckyIt’s not just the burden of continually lying, it’s keeping your existence a secret. When the world has decided that people are supposed to be a certain way, but you’re living proof to the contrary, then hiding your differences is just helping everybody else erase who you are.
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So LuckyThere’s nothing natural or peaceful about hitting a projectile that’s coming for you at nearly a hundred miles an hour. There’s a violence that baseball, at its best, disguises in a way that other sports leave out in the open. Baseball has a way of looking like fun even when it’s grueling. Eddie thinks that he had to get to the root of the ugliness in order to play the game again. He had to see it for what it is. Maybe he had to find something to fight.
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So LuckyNow he knows who he is exactly and what he wants, and he knows exactly how high a price he’s willing to pay for those things. He’s tired and he’s angry, and his contentment is something heavy and sharp, a prize that he fought for. He wouldn’t exchange it for anything.
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So Lucky
This is a story about grief.
As it is also a romance, it is about learning to let people in so that a simple conversation no longer feels like your heart and guts are getting sucked out of your chest by a hand vac with a blinking battery light.
Mild spoilers for the first book set in this universe, We Could Be So Good.
After losing his long-time partner, Mark closes himself off from everyone except for four friends who are also his coworkers at the newspaper. We go through most of the book not knowing what happened to his partner (William), except that Mark inherited their shared apartment and dog, a wire-haired terrier named Lula.
As an effort to increase readership, Andy, heir to the Chronicle and Mark’s boss, asks Mark to write an article for the inaugural edition of the Chronicle’s new Sunday magazine, which will debut in October.
Andy wants Mark to do a profile on the outspoken and problematic baseball player Eddie O’Leary. Upon learning that he’s been traded to the newly formed team, the New York Robins, Eddie goes on a tirade about how rotten the Robins and their management are. If that wasn’t bad enough, Eddie cannot get his swing back. He proceeds to strike out at every at-bat for over a month.
When we meet Mark and Eddie, they are both grieving. Mark approaches his assignment with Eddie as a necessary evil to retain one part of his life (his job) that hasn’t yet completely gone to hell. Mark is less than enthusiastic about this assignment. To start with, he does not cover sports. But Andy hints that if Mark writes this feature, he can justify keeping an office for him on the fifth floor of the Chronicle.
Eddie is completely ostracized by his team. He thinks the New York fans all hate him and he’s not entirely wrong. He hasn’t even moved into a real apartment, preferring instead to live in a hotel next to the stadium. Convinced that his failure to perform will result in him being traded at the end of the season, he puts his head down and focuses on his swing and blocks out everything else.
Mark and Eddie are at their own personal rock bottoms and believe that they have nothing to lose. Soon, they discover – to Eddie’s delight and Mark’s dismay – that they enjoy one another’s company.
Mark tells himself he can get close to Eddie because it is part of his job. He goes from trying to learn about Eddie for work to performing a few misguided attempts in order protect Eddie from himself. If Mark is outed, the stakes are relatively low. But, now that he knows that Eddie is queer, news like this could end Eddie’s career.
Mark was William’s deep, dark secret. He tells himself that nothing is worth going through that again. Not only did he lose William, but he was unable to grieve him the way a heterosexual couple could. As long as he and Eddie have a thing, he has to stay away to avoid suspicion by the fans or the press.
Eddie is loving and tender and is a perfect counter to snobby Mark and his quiet kindness.
I’m giving this three stars. We Could Be So Good is nearly perfect in my opinion. You Should Be So Lucky is lovely and low-stakes, but it wasn’t as heart-warming or laugh-out-loud funny as We Could Be So Good.
Oh! I almost forgot. This is a love letter to baseball. I’m not a sports fan in general, but there is something humbling and calming about sitting under the sky on a perfect day and watching a baseball game.