Lucky Blue Character Analysis: The Lost Sister in Blue Sisters

Overview

Lucky Blue is the youngest of the four Blue sisters in Coco Mellors’ Blue Sisters. At twenty‑six, she works as a model in Paris, a career that began when she was fifteen and that has taken her around the world—and left her profoundly lonely. The prologue describes her as “sharp-witted and secretly shy,” a person who taught herself guitar but is too self‑conscious to perform in front of anyone. She keeps framed blue butterflies that her sister Nicky gave her above her bed, a symbol of the bond that defined her childhood. Lucky is also the sister most visibly gripped by grief: throughout the novel she numbs her pain with alcohol and drugs, and she has said “I need a drink” over one hundred times in the year since Nicky died—more often than she has said “I love you” in her entire life. Her arc moves from reckless self‑destruction through a devastating relapse to a fragile, tentative commitment to sobriety, culminating in the epilogue where she emerges from sixty days in rehab.

Plot Role and Chronological Arc

Lucky’s story unfolds in several key phases:

Prologue to Chapter One (Paris): The novel opens by establishing Lucky as “lost.” On the first anniversary of Nicky’s death, she wakes late for a couture fitting after a night of partying. She leaves a voicemail on Nicky’s phone, meets friends for drinks, and returns to the atelier drunk. While trying on a delicate ball gown, she vomits out a window onto the runway below. This incident costs her the job and symbolizes her inability to keep herself together.
Chapter Four (London): Lucky travels to Avery’s home in London. There she admits she lost her modeling job because of the runway incident, which was fueled by drugs and alcohol. That night she goes to a sex club, consumes cocaine and MDMA, and blacks out in a bathtub. Avery finds her unconscious, repeating “Not you. Not you too.”
Chapters Seven and Ten (New York): After a fight with her sisters, Lucky wanders New York. She resists the urge to drink but eventually relapses when a model pushes a pint of beer toward her. She has an intense encounter with Riley, a fellow model, during which she tries to use sex to avoid emotional intimacy. She admits, “I like to take drugs and drink until I black out.”
Epilogue (ten years later): Lucky completes sixty days in rehab and talks her way out of the facility to rush to the hospital where Bonnie is in labor. The sisters gather around newborn Nicole (named after Nicky), and the scene shows Lucky in recovery, having written a song and begun to rebuild her life.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Grief is the engine of Lucky’s behavior. She constantly calls Nicky’s voicemail, leaves messages, and tries to feel her presence—an amputee’s attempt to stand on a missing limb. Her drinking and drug use are explicitly described as a way to avoid memories. In Chapter Ten, a bouncer (BFG) tells her that people take drugs to “fall in love with life again.” Lucky wonders whether she was ever in love with life at all, revealing a deep, long‑standing disconnection.

Her father was an alcoholic, and she inherited his blue eyes and light hair. She believes having a bad dad “hardens you” and prepares you for a reality where “most men will hurt you if they get the chance.” This worldview shapes her defensive, guarded interactions with men. She resists Riley’s desire for a date, instead trying to use him for a quick sexual encounter—a pattern that reflects both fear of intimacy and a need to remain in control.

Lucky also displays a sharp, rebellious wit. She tells a story about faking conjunctivitis in Tokyo to get out of a shoot, which actually launched her editorial career. Yet her humor masks deep sadness; after the story ends, “the dark tide of sadness” returns. She is capable of kindness—she waves cheerily at a table of French women who frown at her—but she is equally capable of cruelty, as when she pours water into a man’s lap on the metro.

Relationships

Nicky: The most important relationship in Lucky’s life. Nicky called Lucky “my baby” and carried her everywhere. Nicky saw Lucky as a solitary swimmer crossing a dark lake, a metaphor that Lucky internalizes and that haunts her. Nicky’s death leaves Lucky without her anchor, and she struggles to find anyone else who can reach her.

Avery: The eldest sister, a former heroin addict who now works as a lawyer. Avery functions as a surrogate mother, but Lucky resents her controlling nature. The tension peaks in Chapter Four when Avery finds Lucky unconscious and says “Not you. Not you too,” revealing Avery’s fear of losing Lucky to addiction. Later, Avery tells Lucky she would have preferred Lucky to die instead of Nicky—a statement that drives Lucky to relapse. Yet in the epilogue, Avery and Lucky reunite by Bonnie’s hospital bed.

Bonnie: The second sister, a former boxer. Lucky and Bonnie share a father’s physicality, but Bonnie is more stoic. They bond during Nicky’s funeral, sharing “baby harmonicas” giggles. Bonnie’s harsh words in Chapter Twelve push Lucky away, but eventually they reconcile. Bonnie’s labor becomes the occasion for the family’s healing.

Riley: A fellow model from Kentucky. Riley is open, eager, and genuinely trying to connect. Lucky resists his attempts at a date, but his persistence and vulnerability eventually draw her out. Their bathroom encounter in Chapter Ten is both desperate and tender; Riley says “I like you” and Lucky responds with brutal honesty about her addiction. Riley becomes a small but meaningful figure in Lucky’s tentative steps toward connection.

Parents: Lucky’s father is a functioning alcoholic who kept his job but whose moods controlled the household. Her mother, a former gallery worker, was emotionally distant and left child‑rearing to Avery. Lucky feels abandoned by both. At dinner in Chapter One, she says, “My parents didn’t know shit. Still don’t.”

Key Decisions and Consequences

Decision	Consequence
Getting drunk before a couture fitting	Vomits on the runway, loses her modeling job, and is put on probation by her agency.
Going to a sex club and blacking out in London	Avery finds her unconscious in the bathtub; the family confrontation escalates.
Drinking a pint of beer after a period of abstinence	Relapse deepens the rift with her sisters and leads to a shame spiral.
Attempting sobriety after the fight with Avery and Bonnie	She writes a song, begins to process grief without substances, and eventually completes rehab.
Leaving rehab early to be with Bonnie during labor	Demonstrates commitment to family and signals that recovery includes real‑world presence, not isolation.

Themes and Symbolism

Grief and Loss: Lucky’s entire arc is a study in how grief manifests as addiction. She is unable to confront the reality of Nicky’s death; drinking and drugs offer temporary escape. The blue butterflies above her bed symbolize the fragile, preserved memory of Nicky.

Addiction and Recovery: Lucky’s addiction mirrors Avery’s past heroin addiction. The novel suggests that recovery is possible but not linear. Lucky’s relapse in Chapter Ten shows how environmental triggers (a beer in front of her) can undo weeks of effort. Her eventual shift toward sobriety is tied to honoring Nicky: she realizes that “the best way to honor her sister would be to live life the way Nicky had wanted to, wide‑awake and not numbing any part of it.”

Sisterhood and Family Bonds: Despite conflict, the Blue sisters keep finding each other. Lucky’s story emphasizes that even when she is lost, her sisters are the only people in the water with her. The epilogue’s image of the three sisters holding baby Nicole is the novel’s strongest emblem of renewal.

Identity and Reinvention: Lucky is known for her beauty, yet she cut off most of her hair and bleached it white without agency approval. She quits modeling and begins to write songs. Her path toward sobriety is also a path toward defining herself beyond her appearance and her grief.

Moral Egoism vs. Duty: Lucky frequently acts only for herself—drinking when it hurts her career, sleeping with people she doesn’t care about. But her decision to attend the birth of Bonnie’s daughter and her final song both represent a shift toward duty and love.

Questions and Answers

1. Why does Lucky call Nicky’s voicemail on the anniversary of her death?

Lucky calls to feel connected to someone she has lost. The act of hearing Nicky’s message and leaving her own is described as an amputee trying to stand on a missing limb. It is a daily ritual of grief that shows she cannot let go.

2. What leads Lucky to vomit on the runway in Chapter One?

Lucky drinks heavily beforehand—beer, vodka, and more drinks with friends—to mask the pain of the anniversary. She arrives at the fitting too drunk to stand, and the act of stepping into a tight ball gown compresses her stomach, causing her to vomit. The incident symbolizes how her grief and drinking have made it impossible for her to hold anything together.

3. Why does Lucky relapse in Chapter Ten even though she had been trying to stay sober?

The relapse is triggered by two factors: first, the painful memory of Avery saying she would have preferred Lucky to die instead of Nicky, which makes Lucky feel worthless. Second, the immediate presence of a cold beer in front of her when a model offers it. Combined with her conviction that her sisters don’t care about her, the temptation becomes impossible to resist.

4. What does the metaphor of the solitary swimmer mean for Lucky?

Nicky once told Lucky that she was the swimmer crossing a dark lake alone. Lucky understands this as her fundamental loneliness—she is always apart, always swimming through a wide, dark lake of isolation. The only time she feels someone is with her is when she is with her sisters.

5. How does Lucky change by the epilogue?

Ten years later, Lucky has completed sixty days in rehab, has written a song, and is no longer modeling. She talks her way out of the facility to be with Bonnie during childbirth, showing a new prioritization of family. Holding her niece Nicole, she participates in a ritual of healing that honors Nicky’s memory without needing drugs. The epilogue suggests she is still in recovery but has begun to live “wide‑awake.”