"So Lucky" by Dawn O'Porter

An audio book.

• Ruby (43) is a single mum with a separated partner Liam and a 3.5 years old daughter. Her job is touching up photos. She's very hairy, needing regular all-over depilation. She's never let her daughter Bonny see her when hairy ("like a bear") until now. She also has sudden, heavy periods. Liam ruined her life forever on their wedding day. There's a mouse in the kitchen.
• Beth (36) has 4 month old Tommy and 44 year old husband Michael. They had sex monthly before the child. Now it's less. Her sex drive is still high. She has her own company, organising events for rich people. She learns that one of her employees, Riski, masturbates in the office toilets - "better than a Mars bar". She's put on 2 stone. She thinks of ways of interesting Michael in sex - sending him seductive selfies etc.
• Lauren is an influencer (2.1 million Instagram followers) with rich, sexy Gavin (who's often in TV). We get the texts of her posts, telling us about products and her lavish life-style. We get comments of admirers and detractors. A fan writes "I'd wear Gavin's eyes as a bra".

I'm 18% through the book and am wondering whether to stop. The same points are repeatedly made (about self-image), and the humour (mostly in the Instagram comments - few surprises there) doesn't compensate. I liked the Mars bar line, but that's about it.

Beth meets Lauren to organise her wedding. Independently, Ruby is employed to be at the event to touch-up photos on the day for Instagramming.

• Ruby starts chatting to a man on a park bench who's lived through personal tragedy - his daughter had died. She tells him about her past (mothers of the main characters in this book are sad characters, one way or the other). She struggles with getting childcare. Bonny suddenly has separation anxiety. Ruby feels guilty about her non-feminist job.
• Beth's borrowed vibrator is found by her shocked mother-in-law. Beth gets turned on by an accidental voyeur open-air episode. Then returning to the office she catches her colleague having sex with Gavin's brother on her desk. Then returning home she catches Michael watching porn. She uses it as an opportunity to seduce him but it fails. He cries. Beth meets a nice man in a pub and has sex with him.
• Lauren reveals a vulnerable side - but is she just being trendy? While Ruby touches up her old images she increasingly thinks than Lauren's anxiety and low self-esteem is just another pose.

On the wedding day Riski catches Gavin having sex with Lauren's mother. Lauren starts overdosing but stops when Ruby exposes her naked hairy body. Both realise that they've let themselves be defined by their bodies. The man who Ruby's been talking to on a park bench is the same man as Beth had sex with - Lauren's father! The wedding's cancelled.

• Lauren gets Ruby to fake a photo of Gavin with her mother and threatens to publish it if Gavin continues to be unfair to her, blaming her for the break-up. Her dignity's restored. She tells the world about Verity - her sister who died young.
• Beth confesses her infidelity to Michael, saying that he drove her to it. She leaves him.
• Ruby was happy to have falsified an image for a good cause. She is open with Bonny about her hair problem. She takes her on the train to Cornwall to see her mother who's in a bad way, threatening suicide again. On the bench that's dedicated to her dead father on the beach she phones Liam, suggesting a reconciliation. Lauren had helped her see that his wedding day speech exposé of her hairiness wasn't just teasing her - he wanted to show he was ok with it. Perhaps she was really angry with her mother

Other reviews

• Amanda Barrett (She presents three different character explorations, but the narration is mostly shared between Beth and Ruby, with excerpts from another character Lauren’s Instagram posts. ... O’Porter presents us with a full set of themes in So Lucky. These include marriage, relationships, parenting, child care, motherhood, family estrangement, friendship, infidelity, sexuality, women’s health, body image, and mental health. Each issue is presented within a frame of insight and sensitivity, while also allowing the reader to play an active role in considering their moral compass on these important areas of everyday life.)
• goodreads