Good Luck and Other Lies by Catriona McKeown

Title: Good Luck and Other Lies

Author: Catriona McKeown

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Wombat Rhiza

Published: 7^th June 2025

Format: Paperback

Pages: 296

Price: $21.99

Synopsis: Imagine being one of six high school students who win a 50-million-dollar lotto prize. What would you buy first? The latest phone? A new wardrobe? A fancy car to learn to drive in?

Cassie and her friends get to do exactly that – until they find their lives spiralling into a web of secrets, deception, and danger. Past suspicions are renewed, blurring the truth, and they are left struggling to protect one another from the outside world that threatens to take away their new-found freedom.

In this heart-pounding tale of wealth, deceit, and moral reckoning, the millionaires club find themselves entangled in a treacherous game where the price of fortune is higher than they ever imagined. As they attempt to shield their newfound riches, they begin to realise that luck can be far from good, and lies, once buried, have a way of clawing their way back to the surface.

~*~

Cassie is in year eleven, a loner, and has been told she has to move to Sydney to live with the mother she hasn’t seen since she was a toddler. All so her father and stepmother can give their kids more space. But Cassie doesn’t want to. She’s always helping her family, even though sometimes she is the one forgotten and left out. And sometimes she feels like she’s been pushed aside with each kid that’s come along. Nor does she really want to change schools so close to the end of her final years.

So when the kids in her maths class hatch a plan to enter the lotto, she joins in and puts the money in to enter with them. If they win, they’ll split the winnings equally. None of them expected to win the full first division prize of fifty million dollars though. Winning is huge. It means independence, a chance to have some nice clothes, a new phone, and to find her own space. But will spending the money attract unwanted attention and lead Cassie and her friends into a high stakes mystery that none of them ever thought they’d be part of?

Cassie, Luke, Kye, Meg, Harriet and Alex are the least likely bunch of friends at the start of the novel, with past secrets playing a role in what happened to fracture the group and destroy the connections they once had. Connections that could be reignited again after the win, even if they’re superficial at first. Everyone trusts whatever Luke tells them at first, until he starts making demands or changing his mind. Cassie is starting to wonder what is really going on, but only really starts questioning things when her sister Elli, and friend George do.

It’s a crime or mystery book that explores promises, lies, and the role of A.I. in society and how it can be used to manipulate things to get a desired outcome, or work out how to game the system. Something felt off from the moment they won, almost like it was all too easy. There’s more going on than the group choosing the right lottery numbers. Everyone is hiding something from other people. Secrets have the potential to hurt people; money has the potential to change people. It felt like Luke was running this as a kind of social experiment, like he was dangling something in front of vulnerable or impressionable people for his own enjoyment.

This cleverly written mystery engages with crime in a different way. It’s about the way people get involved in something illegal, and how it is framed. How does one person frame something that could get them into trouble to people who don’t want to get into trouble, but just want small changes in their lives? It’s all about manipulation and how you present yourself and information, and shows just how easy it is for certain people to get away with things and leave everyone else to clean up the mess. It’s also true to form, showing that not every crime has easy answers or is wrapped up easily or fairly for everyone affected or involved.

And I think it has an important message about the abuse or misuse of technology and knowledge, serving as a reminder to perhaps never trust everything we’re told or to always see things like A.I. as the answer. It can fail. Technology can fail. Sometimes, doing things the long way, with some analogue aspects, can get us to where we want just as well as an easy win.