For her second novel, Toronto writer Richelle Kosar imagines that life-altering event that we’ve all dreamed of at one time or another – winning the lottery. Appropriately, she uses this plot vehicle to discuss the relative riches received from money versus those gained by following the heart.

Most of the novel is set during the week that Mona and Jesse discover their winning ticket and go down to lottery central to claim their $6-million prize. The story is told in three female voices: Mona, an exhausted waitress and mother of this down-and-out Toronto family; Rebecca, the daughter in her twenties, who is focused entirely on using her beauty to catch a rich husband; and Cory, a high-school student, whose sections appear as diary entries.

Kosar runs into the most common pitfall of multiple-voice pieces – the characters tend to sound the same. Distinctions between the characters’ different ages and their imminent monetary windfall are emphasized, but the cadences and structure of their speech overlap too often. This is particularly true of the two daughters, who both repress growing crushes on different guys.

Rebecca, who has a surprise run-in at a bookstore with drama-geek Jimmie, says, “I actually felt slightly embarrassed to be caught holding Elle…. Can you imagine that? I mean, to care for one second about the opinion of a scruffy pizza jockey from Nova Scotia?” When Cory’s young suitor Karko goes missing one day, she writes, “I couldn’t help being sort of worried, God knows why. What’s it to me if Karko comes to school or not?” These self-berating questions, repeated throughout the novel, render the sisters’ voices almost indistinguishable and overly self-conscious.

Mona’s voice is the most natural, and her sections are the highlight of the novel. Mona is full of realistic contradictions, alternating between bitterness toward her deadbeat musician husband (who at one time abandoned the family) and persistent optimism that they can still rebuild their relationship. With a surprising and poignant ending, Kosar drives through the message that the millions do not just symbolize material or worldly wealth, but are a blank slate on which her characters reawaken their common dreams and their love.