Becky's Great Book Reviews Lucky Night by Eliza Kennedy

An on-going illicit love affair. A luxury Manhattan hotel. A couple, each married to other people and with children, takes a whole night (for the first time) to be with each other in a brand new skyrise suite. Lucky Night by Eliza Kennedy turns out to be anything but for Nick and Jenny.

A fire alarm alerts Nick and Jenny that something may be wrong early in the book. The rest of the narrative unspools from there, taking place all in the span of hours as they react to their situation. They're reassured by hotel staff that it's a false alarm, but social media and local news are telling them otherwise. When they eventually try to leave via a stairwell, smoke forces them back to their room and to their harrowing experience.

Dialogue-heavy and relationship detail specific, this decidedly R-rated novel unfolds at a speed almost to the point of exasperation. About three quarters of the way through the plot accelerates and this reader was hooked. The situation of this novel is utterly propulsive. One simply has to learn what happens to Nick and Jenny.

Eliza Kennedy's characters are people that I would love to hate because of being cheaters, but Kennedy lets us in to their psyches in such a way that makes that impossible. Nick and Jenny come to a point where they have to decide whether to call their families so they can say goodbye. Obviously, this will give them away and the anguish the characters feel over their fates is rivalled by the anguish they know their families will feel learning the truth of their unfaithfulness.

At one point, Nick references "the boundless capacity of human delusion", and Lucky Night features its characters taking turns being delusional about what is going on around them and taking turns being the comforter. Eliza Kennedy makes us simultaneously want their rescue and want them to be punished somehow for their transgressions. The culmination of this story left me almost breathless, and I give Lucky Night four stars out of five.