SWITCHED

In Ready’s novel, when a would-be couple decides that they’re just too different to be together, the universe itself forces them to consider another perspective.

In the second installment of the Ghosted series, the author introduces Serena Otaki, who lives a chaotically wonderful life working at the Large Hadron Collider on the border of Switzerland and France while remaining unapologetically single (her true love is physics). But then she meets Henry Joule, a conventional Brit who looks forward to settling down. While their chemistry is palpable, Serena breaks things off after one passionate night together when she makes two horrifying realizations: She’s falling in love with him, and Henry is her new boss. Over a year later, Serena and Henry have settled into largely avoiding each other at work, until one stormy night when lightning strikes the control room and the two experience a cosmic event that somehow makes them swap bodies. From there, plenty of surprises and misunderstandings ensue. After the vegetarian Serena refuses to eat the meat that Henry loves so much (“Eat the sausage. I don’t want to be anemic when I get my body back”) and Henry discovers the wonders of female biology (“Henry is about to experience all the wonderful joys of my menstrual cycle. It should hit tomorrow or the next day, right after he’s had a crying jag, a load of cramps, bloating, and extreme cravings for peanut butter and chocolate”), their squabbling eventually turns into a mutual understanding that paves the way for them to do what they were meant to do the whole time: fall in love.

Serena narrates the vast majority of the novel in a voice that’s warm and funny, often directly addressing the reader. This is an unusual stylistic choice and one that the author pulls off with aplomb. The romance portion of the novel leans more heavily toward the sweet than the sexy, with some cutaway love scenes and one hilarious discussion about erections. From the opening line, when Serena declares that she’s “always believed that things are only impossible until they’re not. For instance: particle physics, space travel, and sex on a tree branch,” readers are given fair warning that the characters (and the plot itself) are filled with whimsy. That’s not to say that Ready doesn’t deliver some emotional punches along the way. As they’re forced to deal with each other’s major family events—including Serena’s mother’s emergency coronary bypass surgery and Henry’s brother’s wedding—the body swap compels them to finally talk to each other in an authentic, profound way. That’s when the novel moves beyond easy physical humor and into an insightful commentary on the impossibility of having it all: “I love too much. I only have room for one great love in my life. I’ve already chosen it. I don’t want to lose my dreams. I don’t want to lose everything for love.” This connection is only deepened when Serena and Henry begin getting flashes of each other’s memories, a phenomenon that urges them to have a reluctant conversation about how they want to move forward if they can’t actually find a way to swap bodies back.

A light, quirky romance; the body-swap premise provides plenty of fuel for witty one-liners and emotional reckoning.