By: Abby McDonald
Reading Level: Young Adult
Review Book From: Candlewick
Bookwhisperer Rating: 
Book Synopsis:
Tubgate: the popular term used to describe California party-girl Tasha’s videotaped hot-tubbing with a famous actor. It’s all over the Internet and has made her life a living hell—and so she accepts a last-second foreign-exchange swap with straitlaced Oxford sophomore Emily. The plot splits into alternating story lines, with each girl suffering vastly disparate academic requirements, hesitant first friendships, and romantic customs. Finally, the two use e-mail to send each other a “switch survival guide,” but putting on acts (Emily as slutty wild child infiltrating Santa Barbara’s “junior Stepford experience” and Tasha as sober scholar stressed over “minimal academic criteria”) is more difficult than they guessed. Though the title portends bubbly identity mishaps—and it’s true that this would make a slam-dunk teen movie—McDonald’s debut is more sober than it sounds, and you can almost feel her copious talents bursting at the seams of the restrictive plot. With its intelligent writing and interesting takes on feminism, this will be plenty popular with the intended set, but it’s what McDonald does next that should be really interesting.
My Review: To be perfectly honest; in the end I am in love with this story. Sophomore Switch was very light hearted and an extremely easy read. Abby McDonald throws you into a world where one carefree college student is switched for one uptight strict college student. They are exchanged life for life; which means housing for housing, classes for classes, and world for world. Leaving two very different girls to sink or swim in one anothers shoes. Which inevitably they do a little of both. Emily and Natasha awesome characters; that I immediately fell in love with and had to see through.As if that was not enough I was even more eager once Ryan and Will were added to the storyline. I was literally cheering when Emily and Ryan hook up. (Don't do this in public people will believe you are crazy) This was a perfect match from the start that I was anticpating long before it was introduced in the story. Unfortunately, the use of "Totes" did become a little excessive, but this is understandably the way the younger generation will use slang so it was easily overlooked. In the end, as far as "Happily Everafters" go I wished Tasha ending had been a little happier, but I understand the authors reasoning and that for the character it probably the best ending. McDonald started easy, and ended strong leaving me as an instant fan.
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