Two people, one hotel room, and all the choices and complications that make up a life.

After six years of a stolen hour here, another there, tonight is going to be different for Nick Holloway and Jenny Parrish. They’ve booked a room in a new luxury hotel in Manhattan, where they’ll spend the entire night together for the first time. Expectations are running high for this brief reprieve from ordinary life: they both need a good bout of ravishing sex and witty conversation.

But that’s not what they get.

Because they’ve barely gotten started when a smoke alarm goes off. Nick is annoyed, but not worried about what must be only a minor glitch. Jenny is anxious, guilty—is karma coming for them at last?

This existential page-turner seamlessly shifts between Nick and Jenny’s perspectives as the reality of their situation becomes apparent, and all their secrets, evasions and regrets come spilling out. Stripped of their defenses, disagreeing about everything, these two flawed, funny, very different people are forced to be honest—with each other and themselves—about what they want, all they stand to lose, and whether their affair is really as casual as it seems.

A masterful novel - blistering in suspense and humour - about marriage, infidelity, love, and a blazing hotel room . . .

Nick Holloway is forty-six. A successful partner at a law firm, he has a gorgeous wife, a precious daughter, and a big house. If he also has gnawing disappointments, secret yearnings, and a creeping sense of opportunities wasted, well, that's nobody's fault but his own.

Jenny Parrish is forty. She has two lovely sons, a devoted if somewhat hapless husband, and recently is hugely successful in her dream vocation. It's a perfect life! So perfect, she can't help but wonder sometimes whether it's all going to come crashing down.

For the past six years, Nick and Jenny have been meeting at least once a month and having sex. Lots of sex. Great sex. They do not discuss their spouses, they never spend the night, and they never ever talk about what their relationship means. Because this thing they have? It's casual. Uncomplicated.

When Nick books a night at a fancy new hotel, the two decide to break one of their rules and spend the whole night together. It's business as usual-until a fire alarm goes off. At first they think it's a false alarm. But as the fire closes in, fear strips away their defenses and justifications, forcing Jenny and Nick to be honest, with each other and with themselves, about how they ended up in this room, and what these six years have really meant.

A meditation on whether it's possible to live an authentic life, and whether we can ever show our true selves, Eliza Kennedy's Lucky Night is a literary triumph.