BLURB:

Eileen is sick of being 79.
Leena’s tired of life in her twenties.
Maybe it’s time they swapped places…

When overachiever Leena Cotton is ordered to take a two-month sabbatical after blowing a big presentation at work, she escapes to her grandmother Eileen’s house for some overdue rest. Eileen is newly single and about to turn eighty. She’d like a second chance at love, but her tiny Yorkshire village doesn’t offer many eligible gentlemen.

Once Leena learns of Eileen’s romantic predicament, she proposes a solution: a two-month swap. Eileen can live in London and look for love. Meanwhile Leena will look after everything in rural Yorkshire. But with gossiping neighbours and difficult family dynamics to navigate up north, and trendy London flatmates and online dating to contend with in the city, stepping into one another’s shoes proves more difficult than either of them expected.

Leena learns that a long-distance relationship isn’t as romantic as she hoped it would be, and then there is the annoyingly perfect – and distractingly handsome – school teacher, who keeps showing up to outdo her efforts to impress the local villagers. Back in London, Eileen is a huge hit with her new neighbours, but is her perfect match nearer home than she first thought?

So many thanks to Netgalley and Libro.fm for the chance to read this book early!

The Switch was one of my most anticipated reads for 2020, after finishing The Flatshare earlier this year. I started reading this book on my Kindle, but with lots of life changes and all that’s going on in the world, it’s been difficult to focus on reading much lately. Thankfully, Libro.fm swooped in with their ALC program, and I was able to get fully invested in this story through the audiobook. I’m so grateful I took the time to continue on with this book because it ended up being the breath of fresh air I needed! This is just proof that sometimes it’s the medium or the circumstances affecting our enjoyment of books, and not the books themselves.

This story was downright perfect for me at this moment. It had wholly likeable characters I was constantly rooting for, great settings, and it was simply a lot of fun to listen to. I keep seeing this book classified as a romance on Goodreads, but I certainly wouldn’t consider it a Romance novel. This book was more about the women’s relationships with themselves and with every other person in their life, rather than their individual romantic relationships. Romance was, of course, added to the story, but I wouldn’t classify it as the main subject. I would have welcomed more romance, but the story was great regardless. The Switch would, instead, be better classified as a Women’s Fiction novel or Contemporary Fiction.

As always, I appreciate novels with old people and especially loved how the characters were open to friendships with people of all ages. It made for some cute and fun situations! It also featured some heavier subjects, such as grieving the loss of loved ones and the painful changes life throws at us regardless of where we are in our journies.

All in all, it was a perfect distraction! I highly recommend checking this one out if you haven’t already.

Rating: 5 stars

Audiobook from Libro.fm
Purchase on Amazon.

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