Life's Lottery

 

Absolutely buy this book - buy it now. It's brilliant.

Originally published in 1999, it was re-released in 2014:

A role-playing novel that reveals how small decisions can have monumental consequences. If you choose the right possibilities you may live a long happy life, or be immensely rich, or powerful, or win the lottery. If you make other choices you may become a murderer, die young, make every mistake possible, or make no impression on life at all. The choice is yours.

As you know, I was a huge Fighting Fantasy fan in my youth, so I have a soft spot for choose your own adventure books. I didn't realise that's what this was at first, but the moment I did I was grinning with expectation.

I couldn't review it better than  Aliya Whiteley, so go read her review for an in-depth opinion. As she puts it:

There’s no surviving Life’s Lottery because the adventure is life. And life only has one outcome. But what you do before you reach that inevitable outcome is a matter of nature and nurture, of choice and luck. Life’s Lottery is an adventure game book for adults that puts you in the shoes of one Keith Oliver Marion from the moment of his birth in Reading hospital in 1959. There are many paths to choose on the journey of Keith’s life, ranging from becoming either a victim or a perpetrator, winning the lottery or living with nothing, having successful relationships or being drawn to people who will ultimately let you down, or even destroy you.

The thing that really surprised me about Life’s Lottery is that choosing what might seem to be the obvious path to a great life never works out that way.

It's devilishly clever and highly addictive. 

The only down side is that it's absolutely impossible to read on a Kindle Paperwhite. If you're going for it, opt for the paperback version.