Title: With Any Luck
Author: Ashley Poston
Series: The Improbably Meet-Cute #5
Genre: Romnace
Rating: 3.00
Pub Date: January 23, 204

T H R E E • W O R D S

Brief • Magical • Progressive

📖 S Y N O P S I S

Audrey Love is cursed to be the person before you find your soulmate, the girl you dump for your true love. So when her best friend disappears hours before his Valentine’s Day wedding, Audrey fears that she did the unthinkable and kissed him at last night’s bachelor party. With help from the best man, she retraces her steps to find the missing groom and, with any luck, a true love of her own.

💭 T H O U G H T S

With Any Luck is the fifth novella from The Improbably Meet-Cute collection and I was looking forward to this one as well. The concept definitely reminded me of Just For the Summer so I was a tad apprehensive given how much I loved that book earlier this year.

This one falls in the middle of the road. There were parts I liked, however, it really didn't feel like it offered anything new or unique. At times the two main characters really weren't the focus and I was confused who I was supposed to be rooting for. I didn't really feel their chemistry, especially given they'd spent a wild night together in the past. One thing I really did love was the move away from traditional gender roles at weddings - it was great to see.

Overall, With Any Luck was an overly ambitious undertaking to develop over the span of so few pages. It's simply a case of trying to do too much in such a short amount of space. Despite not loving this one as much as I had hope, I still plan to continue reading Ashley Poston's full length novels.

📚 R E A D • I F • Y O U • L I K E
• wedding settings
• character who have met before

⚠️ CW: sexual content, alcohol, cursing, infidelity

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"Sometimes when you love someone, you both have to do shit you don’t want to." 

Bring | Borrow | ✨Bypass✨

Notes: The 5th in the "The Improbable Meet-Cute" novella series (6 stand-alone novellas released around Valentine's Day 2024), and probably my least favorite, which makes me SO SAD because I love Ashley Poston! (Do not let this novella turn you away from her novels!) I think we just tried to put way too much into way too short of a novella, and it's always hard to do anything any kind of love-triangley in such a short span of pages.
 

While this short story had a fun and creative concept it was not as well executed as I had hoped. The characters did not have much of a bond together in the short page count. I was left wanting more, I felt the kiss of it all was not fully resolved. 

I didn’t really feel like I had enough info to understand the initial dynamic between the mfc and mmc, and why the mfc didn’t like the mmc. The resolution was predictable and kinda lame in execution. There was also the wonderful hint of sexism that the bachelor party would be wild and the bachelorette party would be mild and boring. 

This was a short, cutesy, mildly enemies-to-lovers copy of The Hangover.