Swapping Lives - Hardcover

Green, Jane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670034800 ISBN 13: 9780670034802

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2006

Synopsis

Longing for a traditional family life in the country in spite of her successful career and many friends, magazine director Vicky Townsley participates in a contest that has her switching places for one month with Amber Winslow, a busy wife and mother. By the author of The Other Woman. 150,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Jane Green is the author of eight bestselling novels, including The Other Woman, To Have and to Hold, and Jemima J.

Reviews

This fun but familiar novel from Green (The Other Woman) follows the seemingly perfect lives of two women—one married with children, one single with a high-powered job—who wish to see how the other half lives, only to have the misfortune to get what they wish for. When Amber Winslow, a wealthy Connecticut housewife replete with wealthy husband, full-time nanny and golden retriever, grows tired of her town's vicious social scene, she responds to British magazine Poise!'s search for a subject to swap lives with one of the magazine's London editors, Vicky Townsley. Serious and successful, Vicky is longing for the husband and children she doesn't have. While both women leave home on a yellow-brick-road quest to find the missing piece of their lives—a sense of purpose for Amber, a suitable mate for Vicky—what they find instead is the saccharine obvious: they already have everything they really want. Green's latest, like her more inspired ventures, is hard to put down, thanks to affable leading characters and interesting, if not particularly revealing, commentary on the cross-Atlantic cultural gap. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Reality shows and contests are a hot topic for fiction these days, and Green (The Other Woman, 2005) is the latest writer to jump on the bandwagon. Green's vehicle is a Poise! magazine contest that gives a married woman the opportunity to switch places with Poise! features director Vicky Townsley, who at 35 is professionally fulfilled but unhappy that she's not yet found a man. She's hoping she may have met the one in Jamie Donnelly, a handsome Irish comedian who has a reputation as a womanizer. Across the pond in Highfield, Connecticut, Amber Winslow has what seems like the perfect life with her husband, Richard, and her two adorable children. But Amber is tired of keeping up with her competitive friends, and she sends a letter in to Poise! never expecting to win. Readers probably won't be surprised that Vicky and Amber learn to appreciate their own lives thanks to the switch, but they will enjoy watching Green peel the layers of the women's lives back, highlighting that both women have issues they need to change and others they need to accept. Green is a popular chick-lit writer, so expect demand. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670034800
• ISBN 13: 9780670034802
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 410