Review: The Swap by Nancy Boyarksy

Great first line—it promises suspense by the bucketload, and that’s definitely what The Swap delivered. Nicole and Brad are from LA, and have swapped houses for three months with Muriel and Freddy Lowry of Chiswick, London. Nicole hopes the trip will help revitalise her marriage,

The thing which impressed me the most about The Swap was the research. I’ve lived in London, and the details were spot on, from the description of Victoria Station to Nicole’s fascination at her first visit to Sainsbury’s (one of the major UK supermarket chains).

Most books I read that are from American authors but set in England (or anywhere outside the US) are riddled with vocabulary and setting errors, so it was refreshing to find one that not only had no noticeable errors, but perfectly captured the London I remember. The only thing which caught me was when Nicole commented about how a character pronounced ‘vase’ as ‘vaaze’. Well, that’s how I pronounce it, so I was left wondering how Nicole pronounces it.

But that’s not to say the story wasn’t good. It was. Yes, I still have fingernails but only because I set the book aside a couple of times to recover. The plot and suspense were both excellent, with plenty of unpredictable twists. If The Swap has a failing, it would be that the characters weren’t quite as good. I didn’t get the impression Nicole grew or changed as a character, but that is often the nature of thrillers.

I requested The Swap for review because it was from Light Messages Publishing, and I’ve recently reviewed another Light Messages book which was Christian fiction. I therefore assumed Light Messages was a Christian publisher, as few publishers straddle both markets. In terms of writing and editing, The Swap was by far the better book, but it’s definitely not Christian fiction. There is a lot of bad language, as well as violence and sex (not on the page, but implied).

I checked the Light Messages website, and there is nothing to indicate they are a Christian publisher (despite the name, which seemed like the kind of name a small press focusing on Christian fiction would choose). I’m now left wondering why a general market publisher published the other book, which was full of Christian romance cliches. Perhaps that’s the explanation: they don’t publish Christian fiction, so didn’t realise the other book was full of badly written cliches and too many romance tropes.

No matter. I'm glad I read the swap, and I'll be watching for the sequel.

Thanks to Light Messages Publishing and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

Review: Beneath the Heavens by Lindsey Barlow

More Weak Points than Strong Points

Beneath the Heavens starts well, introducing readers to midwife Esther Callen and her son Michael, then flighty teacher Abigail Silver. It’s soon apparent that both women are going to find love during the course of the novel.

This leads to one of the problems with the novel: shallow characters, because it meant there wasn’t enough time to focus on them all. Will’s characterisation was shallow at best, and I never felt any emotion from him. Abigail came across as an inconsistent mix of flighty and intelligent—I would have liked more consistency in the beginning, and more character growth throughout the novel.

Joseph was assertive to the point of controlling, and I wasn’t convinced that was healthy. Overall, Esther was the best character, in that she was the one with the most consistent story and the most believable change.

The plot was typical of a Christian historical romance novels set in the American West in the late 1900’s, although it did try and cram too many romance tropes into a single book. The writing started well, with lines like:

Her father had told her that religion was delusion, but to her, it was conclusion. The answer to all her problems, until it wasn’t.

Unfortunately, the novel as a whole didn’t live up to this early promise, with multiple writing and editing issues such as not using contractions (which made a lot of the dialogue feel unnatural and wooden), confusing point of view changes, punctuation errors, anachronisms (words that are too modern for the 1896 time setting) and some questionable vocabulary (mild swearing and misused words).

Overall, not a novel I recommend.

Thanks to Light Messages Publishing for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Lindsey Barlow at her website, and read the introduction to Beneath the Heavens below: