Mikayla Leskey | Arts & Entertainment
“You Should Be So Lucky” by Cat Sebastian is the baseball romance you never knew you wanted. It’s a queer historical romance between a should-be star baseball player, Eddie O’Leary, and a grumpy journalist, Mark Bailey, forced to cover Eddie’s first season as a Major League Baseball player.
Set in New York in the 1960s, readers are immediately put into a world that refuses to accommodate queer existence. We enter the life of Mark Bailey, a grieving journalist who lost his partner, yet only four people ever knew they were in love.
We watch as Mark tries to mourn someone he wasn’t allowed to love all the while forming a crush on a should-be star baseball player. He is even a sports journalist, but his boss, one of the few people who knew about his partner, asked Mark to write a baseball player diary about Eddie O’Leary.
Mark was extremely hesitant, but he only agreed because he could’ve lost his office. It was the one place he was able to go rather than just sit at home, haunted by his dead partner’s items and his dog. With the idea of actually confronting his grief, Mark agrees.
That’s when we meet Eddie O’Leary, a mid-western boy traded to a New York team, The Robins, and everybody hates him because he had a tantrum on live TV when he found out. From his teammates to his friends, Eddie can’t catch a break. He was one of the best players on his old team, and now he can’t even touch the ball. The two first meet in the Robins locker room. Eddie’s getting the silent treatment from his teammate when he notices a cute brunet reading a book of all things, in their locker room.
This is the start of their blossoming relationship. We go on this journey with them, of Mark figuring out his grief and guilt with loving someone new, and Eddie figuring out his queerness and how his mental health impacts his game. Their relationship is slow but worth it as they learn how to lean on each other and be what the other person needs to be.
It explores queerness in the 1960s, allowing the reader to understand what it was like. How to live all the while hiding your identity. That was one of the main themes of the book, one that still makes me realize how lucky I am to be living in this day and age. I can’t even imagine what it must’ve been like for Mark, not being able to publicly grieve his partner despite being in heart-shattering love with him.
He doesn’t understand how he’s able to fall for Eddie while he’s not even over his dead boyfriend. He’s afraid to love him and thinks everything is out to get him, he refuses to allow himself to love again, even as he’s catching feelings for Eddie.
Meanwhile, Eddie is finally coming to terms with his queerness. It’s always been there, at the back of his mind, but he doesn’t fully come to terms with it until Mark. He slowly but surely falls in love with the man, and wants to shout his love for him across the rooftops, even though Mark won’t let him. Considering it is the 1960s and Eddie is a public figure, Mark’s probably right, even if Eddie insists that he doesn’t care.
“You Should Be So Lucky” is a stunning piece of fiction, it’s been months since I’ve read it and I still can’t get it out of my head, clearly. It explores queerness, inherent homophobia, mental health, and silent mourning in such a captivating way it’s hard to put down. It tells a story of how every queer character has built a life for themselves. That as much as the state and country have tried to shut them down, they are still living and they will not stop living; no matter who they are or their class, or their job. Queer people will always exist.
Comments