Customer Reviews

Otherwise Engaged

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

How many times have you wanted something your best friend had? Or thought, "If I had her life..."? In Eileen Goudge's wonderful Otherwise Engaged, NY journalist Jessie Holland gets to live out these fantasies-- and learn a lot about life, love, and herself in the process. Jessie is a great chracter-- she is dynamic and interesting, and I really couldn't help but root for her throughout the book. Jessie is given an assignment from her magazine, "Can you go home again?" and, as such, she starts thinking about her own home in rural Arizona. At the same time, Jessie's long time best friend, Erin, who runs a bed and breakfast in their hometown, is facing marital problems. Jessie and Erin then develop a plan that permits them the opportunity to do what so many sisters and best friends before them have dreamed of: they switch places. For six months, Erin comes to live in Jessie's New York apartment while she sorts through her marriage. In turn, Jessie works on her assignment in Arizona while returning to her roots and embarking on quite a few adventures. The book is just so well-written-- Eileen Goudge writes really detailed, descriptive passages that bring you right into the action of the story and make you feel like you've known her characters forever. I won't give away the rest of the story, but I would recommend that anyone who loves a good story with great characters pick up a copy of Otherwise Engaged.

I agree with what this reviewer, DlynB, said "While this book was entertaining it lacked depth. There was so much going on, the main characters swapping lives, possible divorce and family problems with Erin, Jesse's past coming back to haunt her, the Navajo culture and then the water company destroying Willow Creek. With so many problems the author was left with little time to go into real depth concerning any of them. Throughout the entire book I was left wanting to know more."

I wish the author DID write more about the two women exchanging lives rather than going into details about other things that don't really go in this story. There should have been more depth, like the person I quoted said. This book would have been a lot more enjoyable if it had more about Jessie and Erin in the everyday daily activities. I would have liked to have been there when Jessie almost birned down the Inn. Things like that should have been included rather than being mentioned.

While this book was entertaining it lacked depth. There was so much going on, the main characters swapping lives, possible divorce and family problems with Erin, Jesse's past coming back to haunt her, the Navajo culture and then the water company destroying Willow Creek. With so many problems the author was left with little time to go into real depth concerning any of them. Throughout the entire book I was left wanting to know more. Every problem had a nice simplistic ending, except Mike, poor guy - why was he in this story? This book reminds me of my young students' writing. When they tell me a story they want to bring along all 12 of their best friends, but they don't tell me anything about them. At the end of their story their solution, they all go home and go to bed.

I was really into this book for the first 100 pages or so, but then it started to get extremely confusing jumping back and forth between the two characters. I also found the story line very redundant. How many times were Erin and Skip going to almost fix their differences and then fall apart? I, too, found myself skipping through some of the descriptions further into the story; the wedding Jess went to with Hunter. I only gave it three stars because the premise of the story was a good one and it did start out alright, but then it just fell apart.

Plot Summary:
Jessie and Erin are best friends with youthful dreams for their future; Until events alter the path each intended. Jessie is a single and an aspiring journalist living in the big city. Erin is a married mom running a bed and breakfast with her husband. Both women have achieved some measure of success in their respective lives. But, now as adults, they each face personal challenges that make them reconsider the path not taken. Jessie and Erin agree to experimentally swap roles in hopes of finding the answer to "What if ..."? For Jessie, the path not taken means going back home to face her past while discovering a more domestic side of her. For Erin, the path not taken means heading to the big city in pursuit of the career she never realized. Along the way Jessie and Erin have to decide whether what is missing from their outwardly ideal lives and relationships, is really worth having.

Review:
I enjoyed this book and would recommend it. The plot is engaging because we've all pondered the "What if..."? question at some point in our lives. I found it refreshing that Ms. Goudge didn't need to create clich? character extremes to make the story more dramatic and because of it, I related to the characters more and felt as if I knew them. I also liked the fact that Ms. Goudge didn't rely on the overused clich? miscommunications and misunderstandings to create the conflict. The conflict is represented by the yearning to discover that which makes us happy and complete.

While all the characters are distinct and have their own imperfections, the story was credible and interesting to me because I'm familiar with characters and situations just like those she writes about. These are normal people experiencing real personal dilemmas. Ms. Gouge does introduce several subplots which are not explored at length but then I didn't expect it to be an epic saga when I picked up the book. I think she did a good job of fleshing out all of the characters in a way that provided a fairly balanced story so I was still left satisfied after reading her book. The various subplots she revealed served their purpose: to provide some background which sheds light on the character's motivations, to illustrate the character's personalities and to reveal the nature of their relationships; This was sufficient depth for me. I liked this book and recommend it as an enjoyable read.

What if you had the chance to re-visit a part of your life that you thought was lost forever? For Jessie Holland and Erin Delahanty, the chance to live out a real life "what if" presents itself.

Writer Jess is in going nowhere relationship with a single father not willing to commit; innkeeper Erin's husband just left her and their teenage daughter after a quarrel. While commiserating with her editor, Jess jokingly mentions that she and Erin should change lives. Her editor, seeing an interesting story hook makes it happen and soon Jess is back in her small Arizona hometown avoiding the fiancé she left at the altar while Erin is pounding the pavement in the Big Apple looking for a job for a novice chef. Erin's daughter encourages her mother's trip, hoping to bring her parents back to each other.

This is just the separation that Jess needs from her boyfriend Jonathon - she figures that her absence will make his heart grow fonder. She does not count on falling for a sexy environmentalist. Meanwhile, Erin gets a job as a production assistant on a cooking show, and when the co-host is a no-show, she fills in and makes quite a splash. Soon she is filling in as host of another cooking show while the regular host is on maternity leave. Her upstairs neighbor shows more than a passing interest, which she does not want to act on, even is she believes that her estranged husband Skip has been unfaithful.

"Otherwise Engaged" is a bittersweet tale cautioning that you ought to be careful what you wish for. Neither protagonist leaves a particularly thorny situation, but their continued absence from the ones they love could result in more than thorns.

Erin Delahanty and Jessie Holland have been best friends since grade school. Jessie is single and wants desperately to get married and have children. She is a successful magazine writer living in New York City. Erin and her husband Skip, run the Darby Inn in Willow Creek, Arizona, where she and Jessie grew up. Jessie actually left Skip's brother Mike at the altar years ago. Jessie is struggling with her relationship with her current beau Jonathon, a recently divorced father of two. Jessie calls Erin one night to discover that Erin and Skip have separated. Worrying about her best friend, and her own situation, Jessie and her editor of Savvy magazine come up with the idea of Erin and Jessie "switching places" for six months. Erin becomes the single career woman without a family or a business to constantly worry over. Jessie goes home to Willow Creek to run the inn, be a mother to Erin's daughter Kayla, and re-establish a relationship with her own mother. Jessie and Erin both discover what is truly important to them. The flashbacks sometimes are confusing. However, you laugh and cry with many of the characters and understand their struggles to find happiness.

Everyone always wonders "what if", to live with no regrets is nearly impossible, so what if you had the chance to test it out?

Erin is a rural inn owner in AZ. Her husband is walking out on her, and her relationship with her daughter is becoming strained. Jessie is a NYC writer who years ago left the rural life and a guy at the alter...
The Idea- these best friends switch lives and cities.
Erin leaves her life and family behind to move to NYC become a PA on a cooking show. Jessie moves home to run Erin's inn.

These two women, torn between the possibilities- what their life could have been life if they had chosen a different path- venture out to decide if "the grass is greener". Through issues with work, love, and relationships they both test out a different life, and different loves, wondering where it could take them. And what could have been... and must live with the consequences of their final decision.

You have to enjoy romanance-novel-writing to get through this book. Lines like "His smile broke as slowly as the sunrise..." and "Glancing about, she took in the marble fireplace and parquet floors..." (um... it's your own living room!)

The premise of a life swap sounded interesting, but the two main characters were absoutely horrible. Both selfish, self-centered, demanding - one a nag of a wife, the other on the fringe of and/or a failed career woman.

Erin the wife decides to ditch her husband daughter, business, and home when she realizes she drove her supposedly charming, extra-handsome husband out the door, and that it's easier to leave than to actually talk to him.
Jessie decides to ditch her fabulous New York City life, apartment, career and supposedly charming, extra-handsome boyfriend because.... well, because she seems to have nothing better to do.
Together they write a utterly lame "column" for a magazine that is crass from Jessie's side-she speculates on sex lives- and Erin's part is some drivel about being now being Robin Quivers-famous.

As the six months of life swapping pass (I'm still wondering what kind of woman -Erin- dicthes her husband and child for 6 months), Jessie justifies sleeping with another man, cheating on her fiance with the most selfish excuse possible: she's not put first, complaining "why did he seem to have all the time in the world for his kids?" (I wondered if a man who ignored his newly divorce-suffering kids in favor of a new lover would be more her style?)
To bring it all to a head, Erin's upset/angry/confused daughter runs away, and when Erin returns, she and hubby go off to bed to have make-up sex, because they're so "worried" about her?? And they lived happily ever after.

Anyway, the characters were not remotely likeable, (what a couple of b*'s I kept thinking) though naturally they get more than they deserve in the end, wealth, fame, glory, love, etc. etc. etc.

Premis of this book: a city career dweller (Jess) and a country inn owner (Erin) swap lives for 6 months. Both women are in the midst of relationship problems and want to see if they made the right choices in life.

This book was very tedious to get through. I found myself skipping entire pages of activism crap, Navajo culture, and teenager to godmother conversations. Too much of these tertiary plots! Also, every male in the book is given the simple, boring description of being so incredibly handsome that every woman in sight swoons. How cliche. A sign of lazy writing, and is no fun to read. Oh, poor Jesse has to choose between the really hot Jewish New Yorker, or the really hot Navajo school teacher. Erin needs to decide if she should try to work things out with her very hot husband, or get it on with the very hot neighbor. And don't forget, there are lines of women waiting for any of them to be freed! Please.

[...]Nothing was written that suggested that Erin genuinely loved running that inn. It seems that both her and her husband got more out of creating the inn than maintaining it. Yet when she runs to NY, she finds the sort of instant success that only occurs in fiction. I don't know why she'd run back to that life there. Sure, she's got a child who she loves, but I don't believe sticking around in what is clearly an unhappy marriage and an unfulfilling career is going to give the kid what she needs. I was happy with the resolution though. It seems like she did end up getting the best of both worlds. But don't even get me started on Skip. If my husband treated me the way he treated her, he could stay gone. Twice in the book they had a serious conflict, and both times he storms away instead of talking it out. That's a mature, healthy relationship.

Jesse's character was flimsy as well. Other than learning how to make French toast and waking up in the morning, we saw nothing in the way of character growth for her. She only didn't care that her fiance was blowing her off for his kids because she's going to dump him anyways, not because she actually matured as a person. Not that he was any prize. He let his children and his parents be flat out insulting to her. When they get engaged, it seems more like Jesse's arm twisting before she left and Erin's constant pushing. Nothing for the reader to get emotionally invested over.

Do yourself a favor - save your time on this one. If you must, check it out from the library.