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A review by cynsfictionaddiction
The Swap by Robyn Harding
4.0
My Two Cents: Centered around a small town Pacific Coast island village, an awkward teenager (Low) becomes enamored with a new celebrity couple that recently moved in (Freya and Max). When a new couple (Jamie and Brian) moves to the island and becomes friends with Freya, Low infiltrates herself into their lives and becomes increasingly obsessive.
This book was a breeze to read through! The chapters changed perspective every few chapters and were very short, ending each character’s narrative with so much foreshadowing that I couldn’t help but keep going!
I really enjoyed this book for the entertainment factor and the suspense that permeated the entire story. Knowing from the description that the two main couples end up swapping partners on a drunken night, I expected most of the drama to climax around that event. However, when that night came and went about mid-way through the novel, the foreshadowing only became more elusive and kept me telling myself “just one more chapter… I’ll stop when it changes perspective…”
Typically, I tend to relate to one or more of the main characters and that's what makes the story that much more real to me. In this case, I can’t say I related or even really liked any of the characters, but being inside their heads and understanding why they did the things they did still drew me in. This is probably one of the few books where I loved the book itself, but disliked every single character. Max was probably the one redeemable player and even that I only came to conclude at the end when we finally saw a brief birds-eye-view of his feelings throughout the chaos.
Besides Max, the other characters – Low, Freya, Jamie, and Brian – were horribly selfish and dysfunctional. I could sympathize with them in some ways, but it didn’t excuse their behavior. I don’t want to spill any beans so I’ll just say that Low had a fleeting moment in which I thought she had grown as a person, but in the end I think she was still chasing the same obsession and demons.
Overall, despite disliking the characters, they worked for the story which felt plausible, in large part thanks to the setting that brought it all together. This is a great book if you’re looking for something fun, but dramatic this summer!
This book was a breeze to read through! The chapters changed perspective every few chapters and were very short, ending each character’s narrative with so much foreshadowing that I couldn’t help but keep going!
I really enjoyed this book for the entertainment factor and the suspense that permeated the entire story. Knowing from the description that the two main couples end up swapping partners on a drunken night, I expected most of the drama to climax around that event. However, when that night came and went about mid-way through the novel, the foreshadowing only became more elusive and kept me telling myself “just one more chapter… I’ll stop when it changes perspective…”
Typically, I tend to relate to one or more of the main characters and that's what makes the story that much more real to me. In this case, I can’t say I related or even really liked any of the characters, but being inside their heads and understanding why they did the things they did still drew me in. This is probably one of the few books where I loved the book itself, but disliked every single character. Max was probably the one redeemable player and even that I only came to conclude at the end when we finally saw a brief birds-eye-view of his feelings throughout the chaos.
Besides Max, the other characters – Low, Freya, Jamie, and Brian – were horribly selfish and dysfunctional. I could sympathize with them in some ways, but it didn’t excuse their behavior. I don’t want to spill any beans so I’ll just say that Low had a fleeting moment in which I thought she had grown as a person, but in the end I think she was still chasing the same obsession and demons.
Overall, despite disliking the characters, they worked for the story which felt plausible, in large part thanks to the setting that brought it all together. This is a great book if you’re looking for something fun, but dramatic this summer!