The Good Luck Girls (Good Luck Girls, #1)

by Charlotte Nicole Davis

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from BookCon 2019 and Tor Teen in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I was on board with this book as soon as I found out it was a YA fantasy western. I didn’t even need to know the plot – I knew I was there for the aesthetics alone and the rest would come after.

I gotta tell you guys, the world Charlotte Nicole Davis built here is AWESOME. You get hints of a western feeling world in the post-apocalyptic dystopias like LIFEL1K3 and Gunslinger Girl, but The Good Luck Girls isn’t a dystopia and the world stays constant. I grew up watching old-school westerns with John Wayne and Clint Eastwood and while YES these are largely problematic, the genre has so many unique elements to it… I’m really excited to see it come back into modern fiction in a non-problematic way. Charlotte Nicole Davis has all the elements: ghosts, horses, rattlesnakes, saloons, the equivalent of U.S. Marshalls… but there’s the unique element of subtle magic, the vernacular of the world, and the class systems. She really captured the feel of a traditional western and it is ON POINT.

For whatever reason, I thought The Good Luck Girls was going to follow Clementine, but most the story is told from her sister Aster’s POV. Through the five girls and Zee, we learn about five very different backgrounds. Their stories are spread throughout the book, and it’s written really well. I never felt like there was an information dump. Each girl has a unique story that led her to the welcome house, and a unique skillset she offers the outlaw gang. I honestly couldn’t pick a favorite – Aster’s leadership and drive, second guessing Violet, Tansy’s kindness, or Mallow’s ferocity. I felt like Clem was the least developed, and while Zee was interesting, he wouldn’t take the top spot. Regardless, there are a lot of faces to fall in love with here.

Some plots were predictable, but the details never ended up quite the way I expected. For example, I figured out part of Violet’s story early on, and while I was right on the where, I wasn’t right on the what. This is such a wonderful debut and Charlotte Nicole Davis did such a great job of balance. There were exciting scenes, and there were gentler, more touching scenes. There were a lot of little plot twists and everything really felt like it went the way it had to go. This is a concerning world, and for once, I’m going to say that The Handmaid’s Tale x Westworld elevator pitch makes a lot of sense. But it’s a lot more Westworld. I see Delores in Aster for sure.

I had the opportunity to briefly meet and speak to Charlotte Nicole Davis as Book Con at the Fierce Reads Breakfast (which is where I got this ARC) and it was so cool how casual/excited she was about this novel. Each author only had a heartbeat to talk about their novel, and she simply said it had all the things she loved: westerns, girl gangs, ghosts. I am here for all of it. These are also things I love to see in book. I’ve gotta tell you – I had really high expectations for The Good Luck Girls… and I loved it.

I hope to see The Good Luck Girls making a splash across the community – it’s a strong, original book with an exciting storyline, great themes, great characters, great diversity… it’s good all around y’all. I know I’m going to be shouting about it, so I hope others will jump on board and read it, too! If you want that Old American West aesthetic with a fierce girl gang fighting injustice, you HAVE to read The Good Luck Girls.