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• Loved this story! It is the one that got me hooked on Maeve Binchey's books.

  5.00 out of 5

  AugMom

• WONDERFUL book. But I LOVE any book by Maeve. Loved all the characters. sort of predictable, but in a comforting way. So like a good woman friend. Her writing is so easy to read. 5/19/99

  5.00 out of 5

  cindyloumn

• I remember reading this on a trip round the Isle of Wight. I read most of it in a day and can't remember any of the scenery we passed at all. Like a lot of Maeve Binchy's books, it pulled me right in, and though it seems a bit surprising looking back, I really really cared about the characters and wanted to know how things worked out.The relationship between Ria and Danny was the part the fascinated me the most - I knew what I wanted to happen, and on the other hand I always prefer authors who are prepared to make their endings sad (or at least realistic).The idea of a house swap was an interesting story idea, but it was still the Irish end of things that I wanted to hear about.

  4.50 out of 5

  jayne_charles

• two women who are strangers to each other?one American, one Irish?trade houses for a summer, each to assuage a terrible loss. Ria, happily married to handsome, prosperous (if slick) real estate developer Danny Lynch, lives in a beautiful old home on Dublin's Tara Road, an enviable address. For nearly 20 years, such world as matters to Ria Lynch congregates in her kitchen: her mother and sister, her two children, many friends, kids' chums and Danny's associates, a whole bright web of connection. When Danny, out of the blue, announces he's leaving home to live with his young pregnant mistress, Ria's life explodes, and the fallout touches everyone. In coping with this shattering blow, Ria agrees to an offered house trade with an American woman who once had real estate dealings with her husband. Ria will live two months in suburban Connecticut, while American Marilyn Vine will come to Ireland to absorb (or evade) her own sorrow?her son's recent death. Once installed on Tara Road, however, the uptight, remote Marilyn is drawn into Ria's neighborhood dramas; Ria brightens Marilyn's American life as well. While the novel asks questions about marriage (how can basically decent people shred their families, hopes and assumptions, and somehow reconstitute their lives?), the real roots of the story lie in female friendship as a source of strength. The pleasures Binchy offers readers are her lively depiction of social connections, feuds and friendships; secrets, lies, alliances, in short, the thicket of Irish everyday life. The American scenes and characters pale by contrast. As usual, all the characters are basically decent people struggling through the morass of daily existence. While the beginning is slow and the end overtidy, once into the heat of the story, readers will find it a charmer.

  4.00 out of 5

  Celt

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