Kate’s Review: “Lucky Day”

This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend.  Read the full disclosure here.

Book: “Lucky Day” by Chuck Tingle

Publishing Info: Tor Nightfire, August 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Lucky Day is the newest novel of terror from Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Bury Your Gays, where one woman must go up against the most horrifying concept of all: nothing.

Vera is a survivor of a global catastrophe known as the Low Probability Event, but she definitely isn’t thriving. Once a passionate professor of statistics, she no longer finds meaning in anything at all.

But when problematic government agent Layne knocks on her door, she’s the only one who can help him uncover the connection between deadly spates of absurdity and an improbably lucky casino. What’s happening in Vegas isn’t staying there, and the world is at risk of another disaster.

When it comes to Chuck Tingle, the only thing more terrifying than a serious horror novel is an absurd one…

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for sending me an eARC of this novel!

This may be a bit of a strange revelation, but I take three annual trips a year, in general. The first is to the North Shore on Lake Superior, and my husband, kid, and I like being on the lake and just having chill family time. The second, of course, is ALA, no matter where that may lead. The third, and more out of character one, is going to Las Vegas every year for my husband’s birthday celebration. Las Vegas is a weird town to me. It’s overwhelming and very self indulgent, and I’ve seen things there that remind me while Randall Flagg in Stephen King’s “The Stand” chose it for his home base. But I generally have a good time because I can make it into whatever I want it to be (aka poolside in the shade, a fun couple of nights out with friends, and in bed by ten with my stack of books). But I was cackling a bit as I was reading “Lucky Day” by Chuck Tingle, as a good deal of the action takes place in Las Vegas, and Tingle doesn’t hold back on the absurdity and arrogance of this city. Oh, and there are also existential ruminations and some “Final Destination”-esque deaths, making for a strange and entertaining read!

Chuck Tingle continues to surprise me as an author. I had been expecting another horror novel, and while there are certainly horror-esque moments in this book (with lots of gore and outlandish slasher-y deaths), this to me seems more like a Science Fiction story than an outright horror tale. Usually when this kind of thing happens I find myself unable to connect with the book (Science Fiction, man, it’s not really my bag, baby), but in the case of “Lucky Day” Tingle mostly kept me interested and I felt like I was reading a story that could have been in “The X-Files”, and I meant that in the most complimentary way. I love the concept of messing and tweaking with luck and fate and having to have an offset in some way, with a huge and absolutely devastating “Low Probability Event” (LPE) leading to millions of deaths in the most improbable ways (fish falling from the sky causing accidents, a chimp running loose through a diner in Chicago and mauling people, spontaneous combustion, and more!) and a survivor and a shady Government agent teaming up to investigate. I love how Tingle tweaks and twists with the idea of manipulating luck through various inter-dimensional means, but then showing an offset and a cost that is INCREDIBLY high.

And I enjoyed the time spent in Vegas as our survivor Vera and Agent Layne start to investigate the head honchos of a casino that promises their gamblers the best luck on the Strip. It is such a nailing of Vegas and the glitz, the gilded glamour, and the way that people can convince themselves that they, too, can be lucky and everything will work out, without seeing or dealing with any consequences of it (what happens in Vegas, after all). Until you have to deal with it because disaster after disaster is happening. The portrayal of Denver, the head of the incredibly lucky casino, is spot on to what I would expect from a powerful player in a Vegas casino in the modern age, and her disingenuous nature and plastered on smile and charm made her easy to root against but was a fun characterization all the same. I also really liked Vera, our traumatized but still quite logic based statistician who lost so much in the LPE as she has to force herself to care again, and gets sucked more and more into probabilities, dimension rifts, and Nothingness versus Everything. Layne was a little more of a mixed bag for me character wise, and I felt like we got some reveals that didn’t make as much sense as they could have, but that’s a quibble when other parts of this were so strong.

So perhaps it was more Sci-Fi than I was anticipating, but I still found “Lucky Day” to be creative and enjoyable. I’m trying to get my husband to listen to the audiobook on the way to Vegas for his birthday in a few weeks.

Rating 8: Incredibly existential, out there, and creative, “Lucky Day” is the boldest story from Chuck Tingle yet!

Reader’s Advisory:

“Lucky Day” is included on the Goodreads lists “Bisexual Books of 2025”, and “2025 Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction”.