Actual rating: 3.5 stars
Full review on: Flipping Through the Pages

Body Swap had a unique concept, well unique in the way that I was reading something like this for the first time, though I have seen some movies based on body swap concept. As the title suggests, the concept is that of a body switch, which initially intrigued me. But I was glad that the story had to offer so much more than just a humour pun story.

The story starts when an accident is caused by a faulty Hurricane vehicle being driven by an 82-years old woman, Susan. She bumps into a teenager Hallie who was too busy on her phone while crossing the road. Soon after the accident, they both pass out and find themselves with God. Both of them want to go back to their lives. God agrees to give them another chance. When they wake up, they find that their bodies have been switched and now they have to work together to go back into their respective bodies. From there, the things start to get tricky for them.

This story tries to including so many themes and the most important one in my view is that how no one appreciates the life they have. By using the body switch concept, the author has tried to show the life of an old person and a teen person from the reverse perspectives. We ignore old people simply because they are old. Also, we ignore teens because they are, well, teens and make no sense most of the time. But each life matters and have different life experiences. Sometimes people take their own life for granted and they don’t love and care for their bodies as they should. Some worry about the silliest of the things. The outcome here is to live life to the fullest by valuing yourself and also by taking others into account.

When Susan and Hallie are into each other’s bodies, they get to learn so many things about each other. Susan learns how much difficult it is for a black teenager (Hallie) to live in this world and it is even worse if she is a girl. Susan also learns to tackle the people who are always babying her and instructing her and she learns to live life on her own terms. Hallie, on the other hand, learns to enjoy the smallest joys of life and how not to worry over silliest things like boyfriends. Also, she should not take her body granted as she is going to miss it in her old age.

The narrative was switched between both the persons and sometimes it was difficult for me to focus on who was who in each chapter. Also, I wasn’t able to connect to both the characters as well as I hoped. They were good characters and definitely their growth was quite good, but I wasn’t invested in them.

The switch of both the persons was really interesting to read and more interesting was to see changes that both of them accommodate while being in different bodies. This was a fun and light read which some good moral things to discuss. It shows how important it is to have empathy and how we need to help each other.

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