A trans-atlantic love story. Suze Wilding is in London and Lloyd Rockwell is in New York. They know nothing about each other until one summer they exchange jobs and homes.

From Amazon:
"Suze Wilding is overjoyed when she's given the chance to job swap with New York-based colleague Lloyd Rockwell. Excited by the prospect of living the American dream for a few weeks, she eagerly trades her desk, job and London flat with a colleague she's never met for the bright lights of Manhattan and a step up the career ladder at Schneider Fox, one of the world's leading ad agencies. Through necessary transatlantic phone calls regarding cat and plant care, Suze begins to build a picture of the person she's swapped lives with, and finds herself increasingly looking forward to his calls. But whilst Suze's career is going from strength to strength under the expert tutelage of Shelley, one of Schneider Fox's leading career women, Lloyd's stay in London is not going so well. When Suze uncovers a plot to oust Lloyd from his job, she finds herself pulling out all the stops to help him, despite the fact they've never met. As Suze asks herself why she's putting her neck on the line for a perfect stranger, she realises that her feelings for Lloyd are driven by more than just concern for a fellow colleague; whilst on the other side of the Atlantic Lloyd becomes ever more curious about the lively, vivacious voice on the end of the line, and realises he wants to know more about the woman who's willing to risk all to help him."

Released on Friday, March 19, 2004 at ... by mail :) in Sent to a fellow BookCrosser, Bookring Controlled Releases.

Released as part of BookRelay

Just recently the post has been arriving very late in the day around our way.
I come home from an early shift (about 1530) and there's nothing waiting on the mat for anyone in the house.
In fact, I was halfway through cooking up a batch of banana muffins when the postie finally knocked on the door with this and a couple of other books for me this afternoon.
I think a splodge of banana muffin batter in return for lots of groovy reading material is fair trade, don't you?

Most good farmers and gardeners will tell you that in order to prevent a piece of land from becoming useless and infertile, you have to rotate the plants you plant there, or feed it with the right mixture of nutrients to keep the balance in the soil.
I try to apply the same principle to my reading, letting my brain recover from the nutrient-sapping process of reading 'proper' literature by feeding it with a couple of volumes of harmless fluff.
So this was was the natural choice after reading a couple of heavier bookrings.
I've read both of Robyn Sisman's other books and was always pleasantly surprised by them, and it happened again; in fact, I'd say this is the best of the three.
A good idea, nice light writing, some genuinely laugh-out loud sections, a strong cast of supporting characters (including the mandatory gay best friend) and a really obvious conclusion reached in a good nail-biting fashion.

The only complaint I have is one common to much in the chick-lit genre - a tendency to spell out which characters we're not meant to like by making them as unsympathetic as possible. Surely you can be clean and tidy and on the fragile side, and not be a complete priss? (As an ex-hockey player, with thighs that still don't seem to have realised I no longer thunder up and down pitches on a regular basis, I have trouble finding sympathy for any girl who is described as fragile or delicate in any case)
And do the mothers of said prisses have to be nightmarish matriarchs trying to project their ideals onto their poor kids (and slightly downtrodden boyfriends)?

Okay, rant over.
Otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable book, ideal for replenishing the bits of brain left gasping from too much serious reading.

Offered on BookRelay; accepted by bookxrannie.