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An emotional, slow-burn, grumpy/sunshine, queer mid-century romance about grief and found family, between the new star shortstop stuck in a batting slump and the reporter assigned to (reluctantly) cover his first season—set in the same universe as We Could Be So Good. The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s life. He can’t manage to hit the ball, his new teammates hate him, he’s living out of a suitcase, and he’s homesick. When the team’s owner orders him to give a bunch of interviews to some snobby reporter, he’s ready to call it quits. He can barely manage to behave himself for the length of a game, let alone an entire season. But he’s already on thin ice, so he has no choice but to agree. Mark Bailey is not a sports reporter. He writes for the arts page, and these days he’s barely even managing to do that much. He’s had a rough year and just wants to be left alone in his too-empty apartment, mourning a partner he’d never been able to be public about. The last thing he needs is to spend a season writing about New York’s obnoxious new shortstop in a stunt to get the struggling newspaper more readers. Isolated together within the crush of an anonymous city, these two lonely souls orbit each other as they slowly give in to the inevitable gravity of their attraction. But Mark has vowed that he’ll never be someone’s secret ever again, and Eddie can’t be out as a professional athlete. It’s just them against the world, and they’ll both have to decide if that’s enough.
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**I was provided an electronic ARC from the publisher through NetGalley.**
Cast Sebastian returns to the universe of We Could Be So Good with You Should Be So Lucky, a companion novel set in 1960s New York. Readers follow Mark, a reporter for the Chronicle who is making his way through his grief from the death of his partner over a year ago. When Mark is assigned to ghostwrite the ongoing diary entries of a hot-headed baseball player, he is less than thrilled with the assignment. Eddie O'Leary is a baseball player in the worst slump of his life. He was transferred unexpectedly to the Robins in NYC, far away from his home in Omaha and everything he knows. And now he can't even play decent baseball. As Mark and Eddie meet to discuss Mark's publications, they grow increasingly closer, and Eddie has to decide what things he values most in life.
Cat Sebastian has done it again. All of her books pay beautiful homage to the time period in which they're written, including the struggles for the queer characters that live during those times. Despite the time period associated difficulties, I would argue that every Sebastian book centers queer joy and building of relationships in ways that are sustainable for characters given their circumstances. Each book builds not only a relationship between our MCs, but also builds a community of support around them.
The stars of any Cat Sebastian book are her characters. What amazes me is not just that Sebastian manages to build characters that are easy to root for and perfectly flawed in a way that is utterly human, but also that in all the books Sebastian has written, her characters are highly differentiate from one another. Sebastian is not a one-trick-pony author who repeats the same successful dynamic. She establishes characters that are uniquely themselves and invites them to come together in ways that suit them as characters, even if it might not work for others. Specific to this novel, I loved the acerbic and cynical reporter Mark coming together with cinnamon roll country boy Eddie. Mark and Eddie are absolutely a lovely grumpy sunshine dynamic but are also far more than the trope.
As always, I am happy to have had the opportunity to read You Should Be So Lucky early. I look forward to going through Sebastian's extensive backlist as well as any future work she writes.
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