Trading Places by Emily Duvall
You know that story when someone rich and privileged gets brought down a peg by trading places with someone who’s in the lowly working class? It’s a story about the 1% that the other 99% of us love to see, especially when we’re feeling not so valued at work. Or when we look at our paychecks. We love it when those rich folks get a taste of what we’re going through.
But how do we feel when that privileged character is an unloved heiress, and her hero is stodgy and a bit judgmental? Different perspective, right? This is the premise of the spicy romance novel Trading Places (Entangled: Amara) by Emily Duvall.
Lexi North, east coast posh princess and trust fund twenty-something is starting her summer off right — with a party complete with debauchery, champagne and her boytoy Hudson Hoffman. Only Hudson has found a girlfriend while he’s been out working on the west coast, someone he’s ready to settle down with. So, Lexi, after being publicly dumped at the party of the summer, storms out, tosses all her cash money to people on the street (“giving to charity,” she says) and drives away, a little hurt and a lot pissed.
She crashes her new Audi into the back of another car stopped at a light, and out of the car steps Evan Bailey, a handsome, poorly-dressed mechanic who immediately takes control of the situation. While Lexi thinks someone will just come “clean up the mess,” Evan holds her feet to the fire, causing her to fight back. She eventually offers him money to have her car towed to his shop and hops in an Uber without paying him — and without her grandmother’s diamond bracelet she was wearing — assured that her dad will pay Evan the next day.
When Dad doesn’t come through, Evan’s niece CeCe — who knows how famous Lexi is — pulls out her tablet and challenges Lexi on camera to trade places with her for two months in exchange for getting the bracelet back. If Lexi quits, she pays Evan $100,000.
Evan is assured he’ll win the bet, and he needs to because Bailey’s auto shop is in trouble. They need a serious cash infusion to keep the doors open. Plus, Evan needs his job because he is Cece’s guardian and is barely able to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table.
Dysfunctional Family Dynamics Make for Great Reading
While the enemies-to-lovers romance between Evan and Lexi is central to Trading Places, the more engaging and empathetic story surrounds each of the main characters’ families. Lexi is an unlikeable heroine until we see her interaction with her father and how her so-called best friends Talia and Elena drop her once she’s entered into this bet. And when we see how Lexi’s almost non-existent relationship with her mother affects her, we feel for her.
Evan’s a bit of a grump, and though he’s judgmental and a tad self-righteous, readers immediately understand why: he’s a man who’s given up being a single guy in his twenties to raise his niece Cece while her mother’s been away and her father’s out of the picture. And when we also find out about his other responsibilities and confidences he must keep, we root for his happiness and see why he was meant to be with Lexi.
Finding Themselves Trying to Find Each Other
When they realize they’re falling for each other, Evan and Lexi’s actions hint to the themes in the O. Henry story The Gift Of The Magi. They transform into what they think the other wants, and they slowly find out they’ve become different people in the process. Evan makes the most dramatic change outside and inside becoming who he thinks Lexi wants, while Lexi realizes who she was before the bet was not who she wanted to be, and that she needed to find herself to be happy. The transformation/ugly duckling trope here is on overtime as we see this couple move closer to who they truly are in order to find true love with each other.
This romantic comedy is a familiar and fun read. It also has a surprisingly engaging underlying story of family relationships, societal differences and redemption. For those who like a lot of real-life drama and some spice with their fairytale romcoms, this one’s for you.
Emily Duvall is an award-winning contemporary romance author with a soft spot for cranky, stubborn heroes and heroines who have it all figured out until they don’t. Her stories are packed with blush-worthy steam, a whole lot of heart, and that sweet moment when vulnerability strikes. She’s a West Coast girl at heart married to her East Coast husband and has two children who hover around her computer at the exact moment she sets out to write.
Connect with Emily on Instagram, Radish and Wattpad at @eduvallauthor.
