Swapping Lives
Jane Green
Plume, Jun 2007, $14.00
ISBN: 0670034800

In London glamorous thirty-five year old single Vicky Townsley loves her work as the features director of Poise! magazine. Her only negative in her mind from living the perfect life is she wants a husband and children; no prospects exist.

In Highfield, Connecticut, wife and mother to two wonderful children, Amber Winslow loves her family and their affluent existence. Yet she feels life is passing her by as her identify as a thirty-five year old is attached to her loved ones and even that is tainted as the nanny raises the kids.

Poise! offers Vicky and Amber an opportunity to swap roles in order to determine if the grass is greener on the other side of the pond. Both jumps at the opportunity and agree that an article or two would come out of trading places. Now Vicky and Amber learn the difference between dreaming and reality.

At times amusing, the swap is fun to follow as the two women find the other's lifestyle not anything near what they expected. Vicky and Amber are fully developed characters with some of their traits coming across by others comparing them to the one they replaced. Although the rest of the cast is underachievers and the epiphanies that both women obtain are obviously coming from the moment of the initial swap, readers will enjoy this lighthearted romp as two women learn to appreciate what they already have by walking in the moccasins of the other.

Harriet Klausner