Chasing Lucky by Jenn Bennett

The Quick Cut: A teen photographer finds herself returning to the hometown that her mother and she does from years earlier. Drama ensues when what she left behind comes with more emotions than expected. A Real Review: At a certain point in every kid's life, they stop seeing their parents as superheroes and see them instead as flawed people. While this happens to everyone, that realization can be more startling for some. For teen photographer Josie, she finds this to be the case when she returns to her hometown of Beauty. Josie has spent her teen years traveling with her mom from city to city. She's used to watching her mother make mistakes in dating and end up fleeing to some new location. Except now they're not fleeing to a new city: they're going back to the original one of Beauty. While Josie's grandmother flies off for a year, Josie and her mother return to care for the family bookstore. Except Josie fled this town and left behind a best friend. Will she find that her previous friendship has room for even more? Or will she instead discover that her current relationships are not as they seem? Jenn Bennett has a gift for writing great contemporary novels. While they do feature cute couplings, they always focus on some other plot point that speaks to an important truth about life. With this book, that truth is around realizing that everyone is flawed and that when we put people on pedestals, the fall tends to be catastrophic. Josie sees her mother has an absolute mess, but fails to ask the reason why. In turn, she starts out with the image that her father is a hero figure she can run to once she turns 18. Seeing the reality of her parents come crashing down unravels a litany of family secrets. It makes you relate to the chaos she feels, along with the confusion of just how easily we can get the wrong impression of people. Another big feature in the story is the family love curse. Too often books take these concepts too far, but here it was done well. It all ends in such a way to put a smile on your face rather than a sigh of annoyance due to a trope taken too far. A cute contemporary that will make you smile. My rating: 4 out of 5