MY RATING
Synopsis:
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.
Read More:
Once Leena learns of Eileen’s romantic predicament, she proposes a 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?
- Pages: 336
- Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Fiction, Chick Lit
- Publication date: April 16, 2020 by Quercus
- Format: Paperback, Kindle, Hardcover, Audiobook
- Source: Owned
PURCHASE LINKS:
AMAZON
KOBO
THE REVIEW:
Uhmmm, did I enjoy this one??: yes and no is the short answer.
The Yorkshire setting was great, I loved the little village set up and its people. The sense of community we can no longer get from the big cities. Eileen did remind me a bit of my late granny, and she was lovely as well as all the other elderly characters in here.
Leena was an OK character, I guess. But I was more invested in Eileen’s story with all the villagers rather than in Leena’s… We did not get to see much of her romance anyway. She was a walking disaster, and it really annoyed me that she could not pull her shit together, really.
Also, there were some things that did not click well with me with what they were going through and how they were all dealing with it. Speaking of both FMC and Leena’s mother. It was odd and disconnected to me. I mean, I remember loving The Flat Share, so I am familiar with her writing style, and I do enjoy it, but unfortunately, this book did not give me as much as I expected it to give. A lot was going on at the same time, and it was all discombobulated and all over the place.
There were a lot of stereotypes in this book, mostly negative. It was heartwarming at times and less believable in others, but overall it was okay.
In conclusion, I ended up giving it 3.5 stars only because of the elderly characters.
Lin's Perspective 
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