Swapping Lives (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "This is not a straightforward story of romance..." (more)
Key Phrases: swapping lives, speed sex, desperate housewife, Jamie Donnelly, Miss Cynthia, Amber Winslow (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.

From Booklist

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

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 410 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition, First Printing edition (June 13, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670034800
• ISBN-13: 978-0670034802
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #437,895 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, August 17, 2006

By	K. Huff (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Swapping Lives is a story whose theme covers an often-discussed topic: what would it be like to step into the shoes of someone else?

Vicky is 35, has a job as Features Editor at Poise Magazine in London, and seems to have the perfect single life. Deep down, however, she's unhappy. She wants to be married, to have the comfort and safety of a large country home.

On the other side of the pond is Amber, a housewife in Connecticuit who keeps being compared to the characters from Desperate Housewives. She's married to a Wall Street broker and has two children, and spends her free time doing events for the local Ladies' League. She also has a huge wardrobe full of designer clothes. Her life, too seems perfect. But Amber is tired of keeping up with the Joneses, and wants to have a taste of what its like to be single again.

And idea is hatched: Poise will hold a Life Swap, in which Vicky will switch lives with a housewife for a month. She'll wear the women's clothes and do all the tings the housewife would normally do. When none of the candidates from England proove to be acceptable, Vicky responds to a letter from Amber--and ends up falling in love, briefly, with the life she leads. Therein follows a string of interesting occurences in which Vicky tries to be the typical American housewife and mother and Amber attempts to live the life of a single woman in London--in the process fending off Vicky's old admirers.

This book had several major flaws. First of all, it took until more than halfway through the book for the swap to actually occur. Jane Green kept setting the mood for more than 200 pages, pages that could have been devoted more to the experiences the women have when they switch. Also, Vicky and Amber decide, after all of this and only two weeks in their new lives, to switch back again! After all the energy that was put into building the characters, there's this anticlimax that is disappointing. The subject of this book is rehashed material and the ending is predictable; the women find that they prefer their own lives, after all. Jane Green should stick to writing about single girls--even though, as a mother of four, I suspect that getting into that mindset would be difficult. However, Green's earlier books were much more fun to read.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Okay but pretty cliched, May 14, 2008

By	Bookphile (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This novel had some moments that were greatly entertaining and even interesting at times. The photo of the author on the jacket made me think that she has some personal experience with the "Desperate Housewives" lifestyle. Still, it's a lifestyle that has really been done to death and I found it a bit far-fetched that in her quest to experience the married with children life, Vicky chose Amber's. If Vicky really wanted an accurate picture of married with children life, shouldn't she have chosen a household that was rather more middle class, where the kids weren't being raised by a nanny and where the mother wasn't out buying designer bag after designer bag? How much reality can anyone get from that sort of lifestyle? This particular plot thread was complicated by the fact that the author seems to be condemning the lifestyle but not entirely. While criticizing it, she's also glorifying it. The author really only skims the surface with this issue and I think she'd have been better served if she'd delved a bit deeper and gave some more insight into what made these women behave the way they were.

This goes doubly for Amber. The character was a prime opportunity for Green to dissect what goes on in the head of a woman caught up in this lifestyle but she pretty much throws the opportunity away. Amber felt pretty two-dimensional to me in general. She was symbolic of the woman who comes from nothing, marries for money, and then loses herself in the competition to prove that she is more affluent than the rest, but that's it. The reader never gets a real feel for what's going on in Amber's head, of what her hopes and dreams once were. Green makes her seem mercenary when describing how Amber pursued her husband but then tries to soften this so that Amber doesn't totally sound like a gold digger. It's not really effective and to me it didn't make sense, given that Amber was supposedly ambitious and had her own successful career.

As for Vicky, I also found her to be a rather stereotypical character. The clubbing, drinking single girl really has been done to death and it would have been nice to see a character who broke out of this mold a bit. I could understand Vicky's worry that she would be alone for the rest of her life but she mostly came across as desperate. She was also very judgmental when it came to men and I didn't think this was entirely realistic for a woman who is supposedly so consumed with worry about not finding a mate for life.

All in all, this novel was a pretty typical work of chick lit and I found that disappointing. I read Jemima J several years ago and really liked how Green got into the head of her character. I don't think I'll be in a rush to read more from the author.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't put this in your shopping cart!, August 24, 2006

By	Amy Leo! "Amy" (Haverford, PA United States) - See all my reviews

I was so looking forward to this book, like I look forward to all of Jane Green's books. Sadly however, the book is not nearly as good as the summary provided by Amazon. None of the characters really pulled you in, the first 150 pages just rambled on and on about how their lives appeared to be golden but so many things were missing - a man (seriously, come on) for the British swap and an actual grasp on reality for the American Swap. We are literally forced to listen to the main characters complain on and on and on... It gave me a headache.

Put this book back on the shelf, unclick it from your shopping, cart, return it to the library, save your self some time, and read Baby Proof or Something Borrowed/Something Blue.

And you, Jane Green, start writing witty novels again!