Review of The Lucky Ones by Julianne Pachico

Well, I had a good run of ARCs that didn’t have something bizarre in them. No squid sex or unexpected aliens or guess what someone has multiple personalities and we’re like sixty percent of the way through the book before we even mention it once. I’d even started getting into The Lucky Ones. I wasn’t that enthused after the first two or so chapters (each one a self-contained slice of characters that are all inter-related somehow in Columbia’s many and varied civil wars/war on drugs/insurgencies/etc.), but then I got into the rhythm, wasn’t thrown off by the jumping perspectives, the changes in viewpoint, even the second-person (you, we, etc.) parts.

Then rabbits. On cocaine.

Not just rabbits on cocaine. Rabbits on cocaine from their perspective because, of course, their thoughts and everything would be exactly like humans. Word-for-word.

One of the rabbits smokes a crack pipe.

And so, my respect for the novel was pretty much ruined. I tried. I really did. I got to the end. I thought all the different connections between the characters were interesting. I could see it all in my mind, the locations, the people, the sounds, but, no matter what, this is a book where a rabbit smokes a crack pipe and my mind is so small and petty that that’s all I’m going to be able to associate with it.

The Lucky Ones by Julianne Pachico went on sale March 7, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.