LUCKY IN LOVE

A teen discovers that winning the lottery has an inescapable downside.

Maddie’s one of nature’s caretakers, a worrier with plenty to worry about. Money’s tight at home; her unemployed dad and overworked mom fight all the time; her college-dropout brother sleeps all day. On her 18th birthday, a convenience-store clerk talks her into buying a lottery ticket, winning her a $30 million payout. Keenly aware her wealth’s unearned, Maddie’s impulse is to make generous gifts to her parents and brother. A relative she’s never met solicits investment in his real estate deal. As news of her win spreads, a popular classmate persuades her to buy a sports car from her dad, curating Maddie’s makeover and stylish do with blonde highlights. Maddie’s old friends feel discarded, but she’s overwhelmed as her generosity’s met with envy, resentment, demands, and betrayal, even from family. Money can’t fix what’s broken. Only Maddie’s friendship with Seth Nguyen feels uncorrupted. Artistic, genial, observant, confronting cultural bias with pointed humor, he’s her romantic anchor. Seth’s an American kid of Vietnamese-American, U.S.–born parents, a rarity in teen literature, but in their California region, where 20 percent of residents have Asian roots, he and white Maddie inhabit the same cultural mainstream. The romantic cover photo positions both side to, but while Maddie’s race, with her long blonde hair and fair skin, is clearly conveyed, black-haired, olive-skinned Seth's is more ambiguous—it's disappointing this Asian-American romantic hero isn't firmly announced as such.

There’s a wealth of profoundly topical, thematic territory to explore in lottery wins; this iteration, with its cast of culturally and economically diverse characters, is especially resonant.