The Fortune Flip

Jessen (Yin Yang Love Song) offers up a charming mix of romance and philosophy in this well-crafted contemporary. Perpetually unlucky data analyst Hazel Yen is having an awful day: her apartment building’s pipes burst, she’s laid off, and her divorce is finalized. She impulsively heads to a fortune teller, hoping for reassurance about things to come—only to have the reading interrupted by a drenched man in tie-dye walking a cat on a leash. He’s Logan Wells, a perpetually lucky carpenter, and he offers Hazel half of what turns out to be a winning Powerball ticket as an apology for barging in. Their unexpected win causes their fortunes to flip, with Hazel experiencing a run of good luck and Logan bad, setting them on a quest to understand the very nature of luck—and each other. Though their initial meet-cute feels a bit contrived, the central couple is easy to root for: Logan is a golden retriever of a hero who gradually learns from overly honest Hazel how to work through the negative instead of ignoring it; meanwhile, Hazel learns to set boundaries with her gambling addict father and wannabe-influencer brother. Readers will be well-pleased with this insightful romance between two people who, in discovering more about each other, discover a lot about themselves. (Mar.)