The Seven Day Switch
by Kelly Harms

 

Amazon / B&N  / BB

 

Two moms as opposite as a Happy Meal and a quinoa bowl. What a difference a week makes in a heartfelt, laugh-out-loud novel by the Washington Post bestselling author of The Overdue Life of Amy Byler.

Celeste Mason is the Pinterest stay-at-home supermom of other mothers’ nightmares. Despite her all-organic, SunButter-loving, free-range kids, her immaculate home, and her volunteering awards, she still has time to relax with a nice glass of pinot at the end of the day. The only thing that ruins it all is her workaholic, career-obsessed neighbor, who makes no secret of what she thinks of Celeste’s life choices every chance she gets.

Wendy Charles is a celebrated productivity consultant, columnist, and speaker. On a minute-by-minute schedule, she makes the working-mom hustle look easy. She even spends at least one waking hour a day with her kids. She’s not apologizing for a thing. Especially to Celeste, who plays her superior parenting against Wendy whenever she can.

Who do Celeste and Wendy think they are? They’re about to find out thanks to one freaky week. After a neighborhood potluck and too much sangria, they wake up– um, what?? –in each other’s bodies. Everything Celeste and Wendy thought they knew about the “other kind of mom” is flipped upside down–along with their messy, complicated, maybe not so different lives.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

“Where is Anna Joy?” I ask, the second name poison in my mouth. Anna Joy, for heaven’s sake. She’s not even southern. Where does she get off taking two nice names when there are so few good ones left to choose from in the neighborhood? Because of her greed, some poor newborn is probably going around with the name Bertha-Sue.

 

She hops to it with a team enthusiasm that fills me with pride. Sure, at home she can leave a half-drunk glass of milk on her desk until it’s science-lab material, but out here, she’s all in.

 

Are you sick with Old Timers’ like Great-Grandma? Are you going to die?

 

No one knows what to say to you. Your life path is the conversational equivalent of asking about a bad rash. Is that how you really want to roll?

 

I have them both going on a chore chart. I have mad skills, Wendy, and soon you will learn to worship at the altar that is my parenting.

 

 My Review:

 

This was my first experience with Kelly Harms and she provided a deliciously fun and well-crafted read. I adored her clever humor and snark merrily prancing through this slyly insightful and highly amusing book. Her writing style was easy to fall into and her humorous women’s fiction tale covered multiple tropes with family drama, whimsical body-switching, mom guilt, infidelity, and suburban parenting wars gone awry.

All of the characters were well textured and multi-layered but I had a tough time caring for the main character of Wendy throughout most of the book as she was rather acidic, testy, judgmental, full of sharp edges, and needed to save up for that all-important surgery to remove the stick that was firmly embedded up her rectal region. She was a complicated piece of work but thankfully Waspish Wendy salvaged herself and I had mellowed to her cause by the end of the book.

Even if the premise was more than a bit fanciful and outside of my typical reading habits, I enjoyed this one immensely as the women’s dilemmas kept me well entertained. I also find a bit of excellent writing such as this can make any genre worth a go. Kelly Harms has an avid new fangirl and has been added to my list of favorites.

Kelly Harms is an author, a mother, and a big dreamer. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her sparkling son, Griffin; her fluffy dog, Scout; and her beloved Irishman, Chris. Before this midwestern life, she lived in New York, New York, and worked with many of her author-heroes as an editor at HarperCollins and then as a literary agent. When she’s not lost in a book that she’s either writing or reading, you can find her on the water, in the water, or near the water. Say hello anytime at www.kellyharms.com.

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