I loved Beth O’Leary’s “The Flatshare,” so I was thrilled to receive the audiobook of “The Switch” from NetGalley.

I’m always a little nervous that if I really enjoyed the author’s first book the second will inevitably be a “sophomore slump.” But this was not the case with “The Switch”. I ended up really enjoying the book. The characters are charming and funny and right off the bat, the plot is so quirky and cute. The idea of a grandma and granddaughter “switching” places is just the type of COVID distraction I need. However, it did take the character a little bit more time to develop and feel a little bit more 3-dimensional, but by the end I loved them.

As far as the audiobook goes, they choose to do a few strange things. There are two different narrators for the book, one for Leena and one for her Grandmother. When a phone call took place, they made the person on the other end of the line sound like they were on the extension by putting the voice in a “tunnel” type effect. This was incredibly frustrating as a listener. The volumes were on two different levels, and the other person almost sounded like they had a bad 70’s connection. I noticed at one point during the Grandma’s chapter, they had the actor voicing Leena inserted when she called her grandma, but that did not happen during the Leena chapters. That type of inconsistency would throw me as a listener. But by the end, they seemed to find their stride and stuck with one narrator at a time.

Overall, I would recommend “The Switch” as a cute getaway.

3.5 Stars. I listened to the audio. I received the audio ARC from Netgalley.
This is 1st person POV. Lena & her grandma Eileen.
I really enjoyed the narrators. The sound was a little tinny & faint at times. I'm new to using the Netgalley app. I had some technical issues with the audio stopping & then going to the home page.
I'm sure that the bugs will work out very soon.
Alison Steadman (Mrs Bennet in Pride & Prejudice- BBC version) narrates grandma Eileen's voice.
I love Lena's part narrated by Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People). I need to check out the Normal People on TV.
I know, I know, I'm behind on this! I googled her, she's only 22 y/o. She has a lovely voice, reminds me a little of actress Emily Mortimer.
I had a little difficulty with the rapid dialogue. I had to listen to Lena at 1.0 & could listen to Eileen at 1.25. I sometimes have to slow it down for British accents. Daisy & Alison's accent was great, but there was so much of it. A lot of characters all at once. Was I supposed to already know them?
I love that grandma Eileen 79 y/o, is so active and has a busy life in her town in Yorkshire.
Eileen and Lena have a close relationship. Lena's mom Marianne hasn't been close with either of them. There's a sad event that brings them even closer.
I would love to have this adapted for a BBC mini series.

Narrators Daisy Edgar-Jones and Alison Steadman perfectly portray this granddaughter and grandmother. I particularly enjoyed Steadman’s Eileen the grandmother. I could see the twinkle in her eye as I listened to her narration. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The story was a delight. Eileen finds herself single at 79, and Leena finds herself exhausted from overwork. Both are coping with the loss of a beloved sister and granddaughter. They switch homes and lives for the two months of Leena’s sabbatical from work. Hijinks ensue.

There were laugh out loud moments, but also a look at how we all process grief differently. Eileen builds a community in London, Leena learns to be a member of her grandmother’s community and finds healing there. I loved the warmth of the intergenerational relationships each develops in her new home.

Also, God Bless Her- Eileen does online dating and gets more action than her 29 year old granddaughter and I am here for it! 😂



This was a warm cup of tea with plenty of sugar and cream. Perfect for reading in 2020 when it feels like the world has gone mad.

Humorous and laugh out loud fun! I loved the narrators voices in this audiobook! In an attempt to change their lives and take a break, Leena switches homes with her grandmother Eileen. They spend a time in different cities with their switch. There is new drama in both of their lives, but they meet new people and experience whole new situations. The characters are absolutely delightful! Throughout the story, Leena and her mother and her grandmother have their own issues with their relationships between them. They have lost their closeness. Can they learn to understand each other and rebuild their relationships?

I found this book easy to listen to and the story line intriguing. For me listening to an audio book needs a compelling story, but even more important, the narrator has to be someone I could listen to. This book meets both of those important requirements.

The Switch was one fun read, it was a warm and fuzzy, and in parts hilarious. The book tells the story of Leena who was, up until a year earlier, at the top of her professional game, living in London with the perfect job, the perfect boyfriend, and the perfect group of friends. But Leena lost her sister Carla a year earlier to cancer and her mother’s unwillingness to even consider trying to prolong her life with experimental treatments abroad caused a deep rift in their mother/daughter relationship. Leena began slipping in her presentations at work and her very understanding boss, forced her to take a two month fully paid leave from work to allow herself to heal. Leena’s maternal grandmother Eileen (age 79), too, was trying to come to terms with her own grief while trying to be supportive to both her daughter and granddaughter. Eileen was caught in the middle trying to help mend the ties between mother and daughter.

Thus came about the switch. The unwilling vacationer, Leena, travels to visit her Grandmother Eileen in Leeds. While snooping inn her grandmother’s notebook Leena sees that Eileen is looking for potential dating/sex partners. To make a long story short, Leena with a two months’ vacation on her hands, offers her grandmother to switch living accommodations so that Eileen can dip into a wider dating pool.

There’s a lot of predictable here, cheating boyfriend, hunky male love interest (old school chum), Eileen gathering friends and offering her mature perspective to Leena’s sphere in London, and Leena taking over her grandmother’s jobs within the Septuagenarian/Octogenarian Watch Group where she lives - while bringing her own talents and younger generation technological savvy to the community. Both bring their go-get‘em skills to pull off major projects in their respective, alternate communities.

The beauty of the book lies in the witty dialog, the humorous situations that Leena and Eileen fall into, and the quirky characters of both communities. There is also the predictable healing and rapprochement between Leena and her mother.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for enabling me to download an audio of The Switch by Beth O'Leary, narrated by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Alison Steadman, in exchange for my honest review. Although this genre in not my normal reading preference, the book was lovely, and I truly enjoyed. I loved Leena’s narrator and I loved Eileen’s less - I cannot say which voice was which because the NetGalley App does not seem to have detailed enough credits information listed for viewing. I loved the technique employed for narrating the telephone conversations between the characters.
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I liked this quite a bit but not as much as The Flat Share.

I didn't find Eileen's story all that interesting, and I definitely enjoyed Leena's side a lot more.
A lot of this I would say is due to the narrator for Eileen who I struggled to enjoy, which is unfortunate.

I really think that O'Leary weaves fun tales that are semi-realistic but also very imaginative, her writing is easy to get through and I always like the characters.

This was an okay book for me. I liked it and I liked the plot, the idea for the two characters switching lives, but I just had a hard time connecting to the characters. I did like the family dynamics within the novel. Overall, an enjoyable book, but not a favorite.

I thoroughly enjoyed this cute read! I loved the grandmother and granddaughter dynamic as well as their switch of homes.

I struggled with this story a lot because I felt the blurb told me everything that was going to happen and there was no element of surprise. I also found the story to be very slow going and would lose interest as I listened.

As far as audio production goes I liked when the characters sound like they are actually on the phone. It made the exchange more realistic.

The Holiday: Family Edition, is a grandmother-granddaughter house swap. Eileen, the grandmother, is amazing. I loved her life perspective and strategies. I was surprised there wasn't more of the story with the grandmother and granddaughter living together in the grandmother's house since Leena, the granddaughter, could learn so much from her amazing grandmother. Leena is a hapless 20-something, and could really use some of Eileen's wisdom and experience.

Daisy Edgar-Jones and Alison Steadman both narrate beautifully.

This audiobook was provided as a loan from NetGalley.

This book is a fairly good escape read. There are a couple of heavier threads in the story that keeps it from completely satisfying that need though. I also found there were a few too many characters. I would rather have had less characters, to give the author a chance for more character development. That being said, I enjoyed the story and it was very good as an audio book. Having two narrators for the main protagonists was great.

3.5 stars

Thanks to #NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an ARC of #TheSwitch.

This is a delightful fun story of a grandmother and granddaughter who switch lives for 8 weeks, each needing a break from their own lives and the results of that. The way the grief over the granddaughter's sister's death was handled so well, I was tearing up at points as they each described the hole they felt and the way they did or did not deal with it. I really liked the dual narrator style of writing, and just loved the romance (from both of them) throughout. It's fairly unusual to have sex discussed for an older more elderly character, and it was closed door, but I loved both characters romances equally. The narrator's British accents were absolutely delightful and it was so good as an audiobook (minus the scenes of online dating written messages back and forth, that got a bit tedious in audio form!) The story held my attention, and I looked forward to listening to it during my commute to work.

Beth O'Leary's novel is over the top and requires some suspension of disbelief for the grinch inside of us, but it is heartwarming and that is the point. I listened to the audiobook, thanks to an ARC by the publishers and enjoyed the dual narrations by Daisy Edgar-Jones, a young British actress with another audiobook narration in her resumé, and Alison Steadman, a more established British actress with more roles and audiobook narrations under her belt.

They did a fantastic job bring Leena and her grandmother Eileen to life. Leena's adventures in her grandmother's Yorkshire village is a bit on the predicable side, but it still has the appeal of a [author:Sophie Kinsella|6160] romance.

The true star of the book, however, is Eileen. Like all the characters who first met Eileen in London, I fell in love with this almost octogenarian who was looking for love--and sex!--after her husband left her after many years of unhappy married life. Eileen is a force to be reckoned with. Used to being a community leader and organizer she is quick to identify those in need of companionship in her London community and sets out to do something about as she navigates a relationship app and the men who express interest in her. And yes, her happily-ever-after plot line was predictable as well, but I did not care after all of her adventures in London.

Such a wonderful journey of finding SELF again.
I had so much fun to listen to this book. It was truly inspirational. From the beginning I have loved both Leena and her grandmother Eileen.
After they lost Carla, Leena's younger sister, to a disease they weren't themselves. It's been as if they lost part of themselves to a griev.
When Leena had a panic attack at work she was given two month of sabbatical. She and Eileen decided to swap places for the whole time. Both of them met new wonderful people and discovered that as long as people who you love surround you, you can live anywhere.

I also want to say that both narrators did exceptionally great job.

Grandmother Eileen and granddaughter Leena swap their lives to help them heal from the death of Leena’s sister with Eileen moving to a Shoreditch flat with Leena’s flat mates and Leena taking residence in a small Yorkshire village and getting stuck in with the neighbourhood watch.
I read and thoroughly enjoyed The Flatshare last year so kept watch for more from Beth O’Leary. However, when The Switch was released, I wasn’t grabbed by the synopsis so didn’t pick it up at first.
I finally decided to listen to the audio and am pleased I did! Much like in The Flatshare, O’Leary gathers a charming cast of characters and writes about their lives with humour.
I warmed instantly to Leena and O’Leary realistically describes her grief related anxiety issues. Plus, she has a collection of nerdy Buffy t-shorten what’s not to like! But the star of the show is grandmother Eileen, who made me chuckle several times. She is caring, nosey, kind and interfering and I thoroughly enjoyed her adventures in London. The romance elements of the story only make up part of the plot (with Leena’s feeling a little shoehorned in - I didn’t quite invest in that) with the story also dealing with friendship, family and grief.
The performances for the audiobook narrators were superb; Leena’s chapters being read by Normal People’s Daisy Edgar Jones and Eileen’s by Gavin and Stacey’s Alison Steadman. They both brought life to the characters and were thoroughly entertaining.

I had high hopes for The Switch after recently reading Beth O’Leary’s prior book, The Flatshare. While I liked The Flatshare better, I still highly enjoyed The Switch - the story of a grandmother (Eileen Cotton) and her granddaughter (Leena Cotton) who are both in need of a change of scenery and swap homes for a couple of months. Eileen goes from a quiet, rural, close knit community to the hustle and bustle of London, and Leena takes a break from her high intensity life in the city for the more slow-paced existence that her grandmother lives.

I enjoyed the story of each character learning the ropes and acclimating to their new environments, each of them creating their own relationships with those in the other’s life. The story contained its fair share of fluff, but it also dealt with some deeper issues including how the characters process the loss of a loved one, and the isolation often experienced by the elderly. I was moved by the characters’ stories, but overall was left with positive and happy feelings at the end of the book.

My main, and not so significant, issue with the book was that I felt the story was predictable at times. Having said that, I certainly enjoyed the journey that O’Leary took us on as we experienced Eileen and Leena’s stories as they explored their new lives.

This book was so heartwarming and such a relaxing read. From the start I could sympathize with both characters. They were unique and lovable. The #audiobook was perfect for my busy two weeks. The two women reading do a wonderful job of capturing the mood and make the book come to life.

PSA: I didn’t agree with the authors normalization of urinary leakage (urinary incontinence) and increased night time urination (dysuria). It is not normal to experience leakage at ANY age. Waking during the night to urinate is not normal if you are under the age of 65, over the age of 65 it is normal to go 1-2x/night. If you are experiencing urinary incontinence (whether urge or stress) there are treatments available that don’t include medications or surgery – a lot of it is based on education and training your pelvic floor muscles. If you are experiencing leakage ask your primary care doctor about seeing a women’s health physical therapist who specializes in addressing incontinence (whether male or female).

#netgallery #theswitch #betholeary #recommendedreads goodreads #instareads #bookloversunite #mustreads #fiction #bookrecommendations #bookaddict #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #booksofinstagram #bookclub #booksbooksbooks #teabagsandbooks #readingwithJenna #womenshealthphysicaltherapy #womenshealth #pelvicfloormuscletraining #pelvicfloor #urinaryincontinence #olderadults #aging #publicserviceannouncements #physicaltherapy #bookreviews #london #england #summerreads

What a sweet story! I somehow loved this even more than The Flatshare, and I REALLY loved that one!

We follow duel perspectives. After Leena is pushed to brink at work in London and has a panic attack, she's put on sabbatical for three months. Eileen, Leena's grandmother, is yearning for romantic companionship that she can't find in rural Yorkshire. The two decide to essentially switch lives to get a better perspective on the things they need from their lives.

Eileen's perspective was probably my favorite just for how unexpected it was. It was so thrilling to see her start casually dating and make friends in the city. She was just so earnest and wholesome, and I loved seeing her story come to life. Her chapters made my laugh so much and smile so big that I couldn't give this book anything less than five stars.

But I also really felt for Leena in trying to get adjusted to small-town life and taking up her grandmother's responsibilities. I also love her personality and that she's just a genuinely lovely person trying to get through the trauma of losing her sister and repairing her relationship with her mother. If I had one critique though, it'd be that I didn't find it necessary for Leena to have a boyfriend at the start of the book. I would've loved to see her form a natural connection with Jackson without her having a boyfriend being the conflict that holds them back.

Otherwise, I absolutely loved this one! So glad I picked this one up when I did as I definitely needed a change in pace.

The major reason why I am giving the audio format of this book 5 shiny stars is because of the narrators Daisy Edgar-Jones and Alison Steadman. If I had opted to read this book instead, I would not have liked it all that much but these two English actors (one of them also has an OBE) brought the book and the main characters, Lena Cotton and her grandmother Eileen Cotton (plus all the other interesting, funny, quirky supporting characters--both young and old) to life! I absolutely enjoyed listening to both of them! Not one dull moment!

My thanks to NetGalley, the author Beth O'Leary and the publisher MacMillan Audio for the audio ARC. This is the second audio book I have listened to from NetGalley.

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