I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley.

I fully enjoyed the story of the hard working New Yorker Haley switching the life to Australia as a jillaroo at a cattle farm. So interesting to learn more about the life and nature of outback Australia and the total culture crock for big city girl Haley. She manages the transition so well though and gets close to Jenna that is the opposite to her and loves the life on a cattle farm far away from city life.

The love story between Haley and Jenna great but it would be great if even more details were in but overall I recommend to read the book since an enjoyable ride.

Hayley Reed, a through and through New Yorker, wins a contest to switch lives for a year and ends up on a remote Australian cattle station. There, she meets Jenna Dwyer, a seasoned ranch hand, who will be mentoring the inexperienced city girl. Despite initial animosity, Jenna struggles to resist Hayley's earnest efforts and undeniable charm.

This book is about learning to stay open minded and overcoming that mental struggle so many face when pushed out their comfort zone.

Thanks to the author, publisher & NetGalley for the ARC because this was such a good book, it was engrossing, the storylines were all well fleshed out and I enjoyed the flow of the book, it all felt natural and well paced. I also really appreciated the way Blue descriptively set the scene of what New York was like for Hayley and vice versa for Jenna. No surprise as Blue rarely disappoints and every book is just better than the last.

If you're a fan of opposites attract, want to know what being a station hand/jillaroo is all about, you'll enjoy this. :)

This book had me all up in my feelings and going back to things I thought I had forgotten. I have been Hayley totally dealing with cultural shock having moved to a new country and Jenna when someone new moved to mine and I had to show them ways to adjust.

At times the story seems to move a little slowly. Is this a novel that you should add to your library - YES.

Went on a little Cheyenne Blue readathon this past month and I was not disappointed. The last read was probably my favorite. I am such a sucker for contemporary western romances. The added Australian flavor was a nice touch to cap off quite the fish out of water hijinks. Fun times.

Thank you to Ylva Publishing and Netgalley for providing an eARC for an honest review.

4.25 ⭐️
Haley wins a competition from a New York newspaper to swap lives with another person for a year. Only she is not sent to a small village in the middle of the Rockies, as she had thought, but to Downunder. She is to spend a year working as a jillaroo on a cattle station in one of the driest and dustiest corners of Australia. There could hardly be a bigger difference to life in New York, even with two low-paid jobs and a mini flat.

Ghost Gum Station is Jenna's home, she can't imagine living anywhere else. The people here are like her family and she loves the vastness of the country and she appreciates and loves the hard work with and for the animals. She is a loyal and hard-working woman with her heart in the right place. But now she has to babysit a clumsy New Yorker and report as many embarrassments as possible to the newspaper.

Hayley is a sweetheart and totally easy to like. She actually turns out to be one of the most disastrous Jillaroos ever. There are some really hilarious situations - for those watching. But one thing Hayley isn't is a quitter. She has to put up with a lot and fight hard for her place and respect. But I was impressed by the way she does it.

The closer Jenna and Hayley get at work, and not just at work, the more Hayley learns to see the land through Jenna's eyes. Jenna's love of the land is palpable and infectious.

What I love most about Cheyenne Blue's stories is her vivid description of the surroundings, the Australian idiosyncrasies, the dialogue, including Aussie slang, and her subtle humor. Her Mc's are down-to-earth and likable women who make good and bad decisions and have dreams and desires.

Reading a book by Cheyenne always feels like visiting old friends in Australia and having a good time. A friend of mine lives in Melbourne and I was able to visit her three times and travel around parts of this huge, beautiful country. Enjoy this journey with Hayley and Jenna.

ARC received from Ylva Publishing through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The adventure of a lifetime!

Hayley gets the opportunity of a lifetime to swap her life with someone else for a year. Finding herself working as a jillaroo on a cattle station in Australia, things couldn’t be more different than the New York life she left behind. Jenna has never left the cattle station and she’s not enjoying having to show Hayley the ropes but Hayley is just too cute for her to resist.

Loved every second of this! It was such an amazing chance for Hayley to really make the most of her life, and it gave Jenna an opportunity to experience something outside of her comfort zone too. Hayley had so much to learn, I admired how she just embraced everything and gave it her best shot, even if it came with bumps and difficulty. She and Jenna had a connection but it was completely laced with a tension you just knew wouldn’t remain, even if Jenna was stubborn and adamant Hayley wasn’t that important to her.

It was a romance that came with lessons about perhaps stopping once in a while and thinking about what really makes you happy. Simplicity is definitely one of the keys to that, as Hayley soon discovered. Being a jillaroo in Australia didn’t come naturally to her, but she eventually found her place and was able to use strengths to start really loving what her life had become and the family she was building out there. Her relationship with Jenna was slow burn and very strained at times to begin with, but they had a great connection when they both let down their defenses and started working together and got to know one another better.

There was a whole cast of characters really making this story special, and I enjoyed it so much! Hopefully Hayley and Jenna will be in future stories, as exciting things await!

The premise of this book is fun, a struggling New Yorker switches places with a jilleroo at and Australian Outback station because they both won a competition.
Let’s just say it isn’t all easy going in the Outback. I really enjoyed reading Hayley’s email’s to the magazine with updates on her life at the station. They tell a fun and good story, the struggles, the countless flies and endless red dirt. As someone who went to an Outback cattle station as “one of those backpackers” I can say a lot of it rings true. I really liked this escape from my life to the place I once was.

The romance isn’t my favourite part of the story, probably because I was so invested in reliving my own Outback experience. I’d say great job and a fun read with some excellent Aussie and (weird) American humour.

4.5 stars.

This is a story about New Yorker Hayley Reed who enters a life swapping contest and wins. She is sent to Australia to a cattle station in Queensland. One of the team leaders there is Jenna Dwyer who’s extremely hard working and wants to become a station manager. . Jenna is very hard on Hayley and Hayley is struggling with the physical labor and loneliness. Eventually they reach an understanding and the rest is history as they say.

I’m becoming a huge Cheyanne Blue fan and plan on reading the rest of the books in her back catalog soon. I find her writing very familiar and it gives me warm hugs. I like her humor and her characters. The stories she writes about Australia make me want to visit there all the more.

Thanks to Ylva Publishing and to Net Galley for letting me read and enjoy the arc so much.

Before this book, I'd never even heard of a jillaroo. That being said, I liked the setting and premise of this one a lot. I definitely learned a few things about Outback Australia I didn't know before. The first half of the book started off really strong for me, I loved watching Hayley learn to fit in and becoming friends with Jenna. However, after Jenna and Hayley went to the queer night event is when I almost struggled to finish the book. It seemed like they then existed in this strange space where I genuinely couldn't tell if their feelings were even romantic or purely sexual/friendly. As well, it felt as though we only got little glimpses into the time that took place during their arrangement, things felt like a montage rather than actual scenes and dialogue that could form a believable relationship. It wasn't until the last third of the book that I could tell for certain they actually had real feelings, and mostly it was because they said so. However, I was still able to appreciate the way the book was resolved with a HEA. Overall, I give this one a 3.4/5 stars!

Switcheroo is a slow burn romance set in the Australian outback on a station (ranch) about three hours from Mount Isa in Queensland. The story features Hayley, diner cook/bartender, from New York who applies for a one year life swap with a jillaroo from the Outback. When Hayley gets selected for the life swap, she is mentored by Jenna at the station. At first Hayley finds it incredibly difficult to take on this new life along with jobs that she isn’t skilled enough to handle. But Jenna provides her some guidance and they begin to develop a friendship.

The book tells the story of the next seven months of life at the station and Hayley and Jenna’s burgeoning relationship. A big positive about the story, from my perspective, is learning about another culture and an area of the world that I am unfamiliar with at this point. I also enjoyed how the book was nicely concluded with Hayley’s return to Australia, 4 stars

I received an ARC from Ylva Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Cheyenne Blue takes us deep into the Outback and life on a station. Life is slow-moving and filled with lots of details. The story is under three hundred pages, but it seems longer. I don’t really feel that Jenna and Hayley are that opposite. They are both hard workers, they just have different jobs on different continents. There are more opportunities in New York for Hayley to socialize and have friends, but Jenna participates in the rainbow events every chance she gets.

There are not enough steamy parts for me (but it just could be that I have been in a drought of non-fiction (chuckle)). The chemistry is good.

Overall, I do wish the pace had been a bit quicker. The desert is dry and I was too for the first half of Switcheroo.

Switcheroo is a slow-burn, low angst romance set in the Australian outback. One thing that truly sets Cheyenne Blue apart from other writers is that the setting is always a main character, no matter where her books are set. I could almost taste and feel the constant red dust that settles over everything.

The "life swap" concept is one I haven't read before, and I couldn't help thinking about the unfortunate soul who ended up serving breakfast at 6:00 AM and then pouring drinks till late at night. And then, what if Hayley couldn't ride a horse for some reason?

The cover art is gorgeous and perfectly sets up the story inside. Just a fantastic way to spend a weekend, fantasizing about another life.

Ever thought it would be fun to switch places with someone? This story has Hayley Reed (29) winning the chance to switch lives with another person for a year as part of a story for an online magazine. She doesn’t get to know where she will be going but with all expenses paid it will be a way to take a break from her two jobs and small NYC city apartment. It will also give her money to put towards her future dream of owning her own food truck. To her surprise she ends up on a remote cattle station in Australia working as a jillaroo (cowgirl). There she meets Jenna Dwyer who loves Ghost Gum Station and who hopes of being the ranch manager one day. She gets paid by the magazine to report on Hayley and also to make sure life isn’t easy.

Where this really shines is in the descriptions of the land and rustic beauty of Australia. The fish out of water scenes are to be expected. And I was glad there wasn’t sexist hazing. I love the Australian slang that is used frequently in the story. Hayley often uses NYC speech that feels dated, such as Word. I haven’t heard that term in years. I liked the characters but wish there had been more of a build up of the attraction before they jumped into a benefits situation. Even with my small criticisms I enjoyed the story overall. Hayley’s can do, never giving up nature made me want a HEA for her and Jenna.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ylva Publishing for the ARC and I am leaving a voluntary review.

I read the blurb and thought to myself, what a fun read this novel is going to be. After reading it, it did not disappoint. It was such a fun read with characters that I could relate to. The hardships that they faced, the way they resolved them, the way they interacted with everyone else was all something you and I would probably do in real life. To get a glimpse of the Australia that Cheyenne Blue lives in is an added bonus. I loved this book and the cover.

**3.75 stars, would've been 4 had it not been for the two things mentioned below**

When Hayley applies to a magazine competition advertising a life swap she takes a chance hoping to get sent to some nice small town in Colorado, however, she soon finds herself dumped in the Australian outback. Miles away from civilisation she settles into the life of a Jillaroo with the help of her newly assigned BFF Jenna.

This was such a sweet story, I've always been a little bit of a sucker for the whole farmer x city girl but they're always SO heterosexual so I was so thrilled to find this book. These genre of story is always fairly predictable but that it does what it's set out to well and is a fun ride and sapphics deserve these kinds of fluffy goodness.

However, I have two main gripes; WHY does Hayley say "Yeah nah" and "nah yeah" when she's the American?? Not to say Australians own that way of speaking but its a well known Aussie thing so it makes no sense that she's the one who says it (CONSTANTLY) but none of the Australians say it. So it's not even like she picks it up from them because she says it multipole times before ever arriving. It's a small detail but as an Aussie reading this it really broke the immersion form me and kind made it seem like the Australian way of speaking was being mocked. However, my number one criticism is the amount of times she says "FACTS", idk if this is a common thing to say in the U.S. but it's definitely not an Australian thing (outside of thirteen year old boys) but it made her sound so stupid, especially because she said it in response to serious or work related discussions - idk how many times she actually said it but it was WAY to many.

Thankyou to NetGalley and Ylva Publishing for the arc in exchange for my honest opinion

This was a wonderful, entertaining book by Blue. I haven't read all of her books, but this one is one of my favorites by her.

Haley lives in NYC and works two jobs to make ends meet. She grew up mostly in foster care after her mom passed and only has her best friend Mad. When she sees the life swap competition in magazine, she decides to apply, hoping it will give her a boost financially. Haley doesn't expect to win nor does she expect to be sent to Australia outback. She's determined to make the best of it, but doesn't expect everything that comes with living in the middle of nowhere and working as a jillaroo.

Jenna works at Ghost gum station which from US folks is a ranch. She doesn't want to be saddled with a helpless American, but Haley is more than she seems and she tries really hard despite her fears. Jenna warms up to her and their interactions develop slowly and then more warmly. It was fun and engaging to read and their relationship was a simmer but engaging. Maybe its a NYC thing, because Haley used facts and word a lot in answer to things, but I'm from Midwest and we don't say that a lot or maybe I'm just not aware.

I recommend this low angst, fun book. I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When Hayley dared to respond to an ad asking for volunteers to switch her life with another person: job, home, environment, she thought it would be for something closer and known, but wow, her change practically took her to the antipodes. But Hayley never had anything easy in life so she didn't get discouraged by that little thing. Not because of its hot, dusty environment, nor because of the difference between her New York and the Australian outback, where she is going to have to spend the year of the contest. But the result will be worth it, financially she will be able to alleviate her burdens.

Hayley is a city girl, a cook by obligation, but she is good at it. When she arrives at the ranch, huge and isolated, without a phone signal, without a warm welcome, she must convince her companions there that she can fit in and be of value. The person who has to help her there is Jenna, a serious and hard-working girl, who doesn't believe much in Hayley's abilities. But isolated life there encourages unexpected personal bonds.

It's been an enjoyable journey, Hayley is an character easy to like and quickly makes us root for her. She's already had enough obstacles without deserving something good once and for all.

Would you swap lives with someone on the other side of the world? A light hearted story of adventures and unexpected discoveries in a land far away.

I received an advance copy from Netgalley for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Hailey is the ultimate New Yorker. She works two jobs as a cook and bartender and has just enough to get by. When her eye falls on an article requesting candidates for a life swap, she is convinced by the financial reward given by the newspaper that organizes the project. What Hailey didn’t expect was that she’d win. And even more of a surprise is the location for her life swap: a cattle farm in the outback of Australia. Between the endless views, red dust and countless bush flies, Hailey decides to make the best of it. Farmhand Jenna is the typical farm girl and gets assigned by the paper to act as Hailey’s best friend and mentor. Between hard physical labor and starry outback nights Hailey and Jenna form a bond of friendship. Can they be more though?

Jenna is roped into the swap project and has to help the American Hailey adjust to farm life. While Hailey sucks at the normal daily jobs, she surprises Jenna with her determination to succeed. Jenna’s respect for her grows along with her physical attraction to this weird visitor. It can’t be more. Because Jenna has sworn of love and Hailey is only there for the year. Sometimes, though, the heart wants what the heart wants.

The notion of changing lives with a stranger is intriguing. You can’t help but wonder: ‘what would I do?’. The two locations for the swap project couldn’t be more different and that makes it more interesting. Haley’s struggles in the bush are sometimes hilarious. I thought her adapting to her new circumstances went just as expected. She struggles, she knuckles down and grows to love it.

The connection Hailey forms with Jenna feels undeniable. I get that Hailey holds back at developing more feelings but I wanted to yell at her a few times to just go with it.

Life at the farm is hard but beautiful in its own way. A life that is very far removed of my own. I couldn’t help but picture scenes from the Australian tv-series McCleod’s Daughters for reference. Because the landscape of the bush is monotonous to the inexperienced, the descriptions kind of feel like that too. But I must say, I grew to like it alongside Hailey.

The colorful side characters that inhabit the farm make for an interesting mix of people. It gives a little look into the camaraderie these kind of forced communities inspire.

I wasn’t extremely gripped by the story, but it’s still a pretty good way to spend a few hours in the endless red dust of the outback.

A wonderful book with a unique story, that I have never read before.
Original and also light, but definitely with a lot of depth.
This romance has a seriousness that touches me deeply.
Both main characters have had a lonely and rather difficult life so far.
Hayley is having an extremely difficult time in Australia and is rarely given any real support, but that's not what I mean.
I mean how both MC’s approach things, deal with them and talk about them.
Even the approach to each other is slow, but full of seriousness and purpose!
It maybe starts as friends with benefits initially, but maybe it will become more. I don’t want to give too much away…
Hayley is a New York native. She was born and raised there and grew up, albeit under tragic circumstances, mainly as a orphan in foster care.
She has two jobs und a tiny Appartement to call her own.
She takes the opportunity and applies for a “Switcheroo” that “New Yorker Mondays” offers for a year in order to gain money and security for her life.
Never in her life did she think that Australia would be the chosen country.
However, Hayley definitely wants to make it, because she needs the money. There she will encounter great difficulties, harsh landscapes and somewhat different people.
And then there’s Jenna!
Her somewhat rough, rather calm and yet attractive mentor!
Jenna, who was chosen as „BFF“ for the newcomer from America, will have difficulty teaching her everything from the start.
Bringing a city girl closer to the outback and training her to do real work, becomes a challenge.
However, Hayley is also really beautiful, attractive and definitely doesn’t give up.
The description of the country is sometimes harsh, wild and dusty and then absolutely breathtaking.
It’s the same with this story!
Cheyenne Blue writes magical, sensual and profound books in magical beautiful places!

Thanks to the Author and Ylva Publishing for the ARC!

One of the things I love about this book is that it is interesting in an educating kind of way, but not lecturing! I feel I am learning about a new a totally different life. Another thing I love is the initial pacing. The mains have met and rather than love at first sight or indeed lust at first sight there is a bit of appreciation of the view but they are getting to know each other at a realistic pace. This feels like a life-like book. There were bits of the book that were incomprehensible to me but I think that was deliberate on the writers part, so I would feel the same out of my comfort zone as the characters p.o.v. I was reading.
Just when I was getting a wee bit intolerant of all the fails the main was having, circumstances meant something went a bit right, but believably so.
Pacing for me then slipped slightly, I enjoyed reading about this totally different life, but there wasn’t much going on in the romance. Then the plot picked up again and a plot twist I didn’t expect, but had been foreshadowed.
I found the book interesting and liked both mains but for some reason I didn’t love them as a couple.They were fine as people but I didn’t go ahhhh when they got together. My issue I am sure. For that reason I’m not rounding up from 3.5 to 4 although aspects of the book were there.