January 1, 2025
A house swap leads to dual love stories in this queer contemporary romance. Small-town waitress Tatum Ward has no interest in staying home to meet the half-brother whose existence recently revealed her father's infidelity, so she jumps at the chance to temporarily swap houses with New Yorker Eleanor Chapman, who is herself trying to escape a romantic and career implosion. In Tatum's Midwestern town, Eleanor's impulsive hookup with one of Tatum's siblings, the nonbinary Carson, leads to emotional entanglement. Meanwhile in NYC, an encouraging older neighbor pushes Tatum to act on her long-standing crush on friend June. Tatum and Eleanor have both experienced family-related traumas that make it hard for them to accept love as adults, but the novel remains fairly lighthearted, sprinkled with classic rom-com elements like aspirational careers (Broadway press agent, mural artist-slash-furniture creator, perfumer) and luxurious homes. Nancy Meyers didn't invent the idea of swapping houses and finding love, but enough specific details carry over to make this novel a clear pastiche of The Holiday. VERDICT Fans of Roan Parrish's The Holiday Trap will enjoy Morrissey's (That Summer Feeling) latest.--Katelyn Browne
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March 23, 2025
Similar to the movie Holiday, Eleanor and Tatum swap homes to escape their troublesome lives in this fun story. Eleanor has lost her job as a Broadway press agent after telling her colleague/lover's new fianc�e that he'd been cheating on her, so she needs to get away. Tatum wants to leave her small town before her father's surprise son from an affair decades ago comes to visit. She brings her crush, June, with her to New York to stay in Eleanor's condo. They discover that the condo is dirty and cluttered, but they fix it up, and get to know the former starlet down the hall. They fall in love as they start envisioning a new life in the city. Meanwhile, Eleanor falls in love with Tatum's sibling, Carson, and attends the family gatherings with the newly arrived half-brother. She finds that she loves being part of the family. The warm characters and back-and-forth between the two couples offer appealing and quickly moving romance story lines and readers will be cheering for both couples. Small-town romance fans will especially enjoy Morrissey's latest (That Summer Feeling, 2023).
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