Review: The Switch

I was really late to the party when it came to The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary. I wanted to read it but there are always so many books to read and then my library didn't have a copy of it. How rude! I finally listened to it on audiobook while commuting earlier this year (remember driving places?) and adored it just as I expected. In an amusing twist, I also listened to O'Leary's latest novel, The Switch. I don't often listen to audiobooks so to have listened to both of O'Leary's is rare. Happily, I was just as in love with the new book and thoroughly enjoyed listening to it.

Here's the synopsis:

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 long-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.

So they decide to try a two-month swap.

Eileen will live in London and look for love. She’ll take Leena’s flat, and learn all about casual dating, swiping right, and city neighbors. Meanwhile Leena will look after everything in rural Yorkshire: Eileen’s sweet cottage and garden, her idyllic, quiet village, and her little neighborhood projects.

But stepping into one another's shoes proves more difficult than either of them expected. Will swapping lives help Eileen and Leena find themselves…and maybe even find true love? In Beth O'Leary's The Switch, it's never too late to change everything....or to find yourself.

One of the reasons I don't read audibooks is I'm a super fast reader and find audiobooks take longer for me to read. The other is I review so many upcoming/not yet released books that I don't often have time for other books that aren't on my review list. That's starting to change now for book reviewers as there are new options to receive advanced copies audio titles. NetGalley just started their audiobook program and that's how I snagged The Switch. A chance to try out their new system and read a book I was really looking forward to? Win! Slightly less win...the audiobook would decide to pause often whenever it decided my phone had been locked for too long so I would have to unlock it to get the file going again. I had tried updating the app and hope that it's just a bug that will get worked out as NetGalley figures out this audiobook thing.

The narrators of this novel were delightful. There were two, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Alison Steadman, and each chapter switched perspective between Leena and Eileen so having two narrators really helps the reader distinguish between the two characters. I've seen some people mention they had issues understanding their accents but I had no trouble at all. Though my inner voice now seems to have a slight Yorkshire accent...

This novel showed that just because you're above a "certain age," doesn't mean your life has ended and I absolutely loved that. The older adults in this novel have all sorts of personalities but dull or near death's door are not among the descriptors I'd choose for them. Eileen was full of spunk and she was such an intelligent and entertaining character. She was fiercely protective of her family but recognized she needed to do something for herself for once. It was an absolute joy to read her story as well as see the friendships blossom between all characters of all ages.

Leena was slightly more hesitant to throw herself into her new life in an idyllic small town than her grandmother was to take on the big city life. She seemed more bruised and battered from work and family issues than Eileen (I don't want to mention what had impacted the family as the synopsis does not and I feel like it should be unveiled in the way O'Leary intends it to be in the course of the first few chapters). She had to learn that just because her life was going one way, didn't necessarily make it the right way. 

O'Leary's books are marketed as rom coms, and I've used that descriptor myself, but they're so much more than romance or comedy. There's an amazing family storyline woven through both her novels, and I especially loved it in The Switch. Three generations of Cotton women are dealing with major devastation and I loved what and how O'Leary wrote as they finally dealt with their grief. Leena also had to figure out what she wanted to do with her professional life and Eileen was taking stock of her newly single life and what parts of herself she had lost when she first got married so many years ago. Like with most books, The Switch is so much more than one narrow genre.

I really adored The Switch. Beth O'Leary is definitely going to go on my auto-read list because both times I've read her I've fallen a little bit in love with her writing, characters, and stories. Readers will have a lot of fun reading this new book while also having their heart warmed.

*An advanced audio copy of this novel was provided by the publisher, Macmillan Audio, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*