Switched, p.1
Switched, page 1
Switched
Sarah Ready
Praise for Sarah Ready
PRAISE FOR FRENCH HOLIDAY
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"Ready (The Fall in Love Checklist) whisks readers to the South of France for a saucy enemies-to-lovers romance...This is a winner."
Publishers Weekly starred review on French Holiday
"Ready has written a tale that deliciously taps into its French trappings...A charming dramedy featuring a promising sleuthing duo."
Kirkus Reviews on French Holiday
PRAISE FOR JOSH AND GEMMA MAKE A BABY
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“Romance author Ready gives Gemma rich and complex motivations for wanting a baby…An unusual and winning read about a little-discussed topic.”
Kirkus Reviews
“A lively, entertaining, romantic comedy by an author and novelist with a genuine flair for originality, humor, and narrative driven storytelling…”
Midwest Book Review
PRAISE FOR JOSH AND GEMMA THE SECOND TIME AROUND
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“In this sequel—which stands well enough on its own—the happily-ever-after moment is merely the starting point…Ready effectively leads readers to wonder if she isn’t going to upend every single one of the genre’s expectations. It’s a testament to her exceptional writing skill that even the most romantic-minded readers won’t be sure which outcome they prefer. A charming and disarmingly tough story of the many ways that love can adapt to crises.”
Kirkus Reviews
PRAISE FOR CHASING ROMEO
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“A fun and sweet love story…”
Kirkus Reviews
PRAISE FOR THE SPACE BETWEEN
* * *
“…emotional roller-coaster, but in the end true love prevails. For hopeless romantics, this one’s got the goods.”
Publishers Weekly
“A touching tale of adult reckonings and reunions with some heart-tugging reversals.”
Kirkus Reviews
Also by Sarah Ready
Stand Alone Romances:
The Fall in Love Checklist
Hero Ever After
Once Upon an Island
French Holiday
The Space Between
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The Ghosted Series:
Ghosted
Switched
Fated
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Josh and Gemma:
Josh and Gemma Make a Baby
Josh and Gemma the Second Time Around
* * *
Soul Mates in Romeo Romance Series:
Chasing Romeo
Love Not at First Sight
Romance by the Book
Love, Artifacts, and You
Married by Sunday
My Better Life
Scrooging Christmas
Dear Christmas
* * *
Stand Alone Novella:
Love Letters
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Find these books and more by Sarah Ready at:
www.sarahready.com/romance-books
Love is complicated…
For Serena Otaki, free-spirited Californian, life is simple. She loves smashing atoms at The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. She loves Star Trek, spicy tofu, and her cat, Captain Purrk. She loves her messy (slob-fest) apartment, her chaotic brand of organizing, and staying permanently, happily unattached.
Life is perfect. She has one true love—physics.
Loving a man isn’t in her future.
For Henry Joule, uptight Brit, life is simple. He loves making analog black holes, drinking piping hot tea, and organizing his pencil tray. He loves his family, red meat, and obsessively cleaning his spotless apartment.
Life is perfect. He has many loves—physics, family, friends. He can’t wait to find the woman of his dreams.
Love and marriage are in his future.
One perfect night Serena and Henry meet. Sparks fly, particles collide, the universe comes to a halt, and…
It was a mistake.
They’re too different.
It won’t work.
Love isn’t in their future.
Until an electric storm causes an unexpected event at the particle collider and suddenly—they’ve switched.
Serena is in Henry’s body.
Henry is in Serena’s body.
And both life and love are suddenly very, very complicated.
W.W. CROWN BOOKS
An imprint of Swift & Lewis Publishing LLC
www.wwcrown.com
* * *
This book is a work of fiction. All the characters and situations in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to situations or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any reference to historical events, real people, or real locations are used fictitiously.
* * *
Copyright © 2024 by Sarah Ready
Published by W.W. Crown Books an Imprint of Swift & Lewis Publishing, LLC, Lowell, MI USA
Cover Illustration & Design: Elizabeth Turner Stokes
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All rights reserved.
* * *
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2023947278
ISBN: 978-1-954007-65-9 (eBook)
ISBN: 978-1-954007-68-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-954007-69-7 (large print)
ISBN: 978-1-954007-70-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-954007-71-0 (audiobook)
All about footnotes from Sarah Ready…
* * *
Hello!
Thank you for reading Switched! I hope you love it. Before you begin, I wanted to let you know this book contains footnotes.
What?
Yes.
Footnotes.
Do you remember in school how footnotes were always where you shoved the long-winded boring stuff? Well, that’s not the case here. Footnotes make life fun.
The footnotes in this ebook are hyperlinked…so when you come across that little number within the text here is what you do:
When a small hyperlinked number appears in the book tap or click it and you will jump to the footnote.
When you’re done reading the footnote tap or click the number again and you’ll jump back to where you were and you can continue reading.
That’s all! I hope you love Switched!
* * *
All the best,
Sarah
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Notes
Join Sarah Ready’s Newsletter
About the Author
Also by Sarah Ready
1
I’ve always believed that things are only impossible until they’re not. For instance: particle physics, space travel, and sex on a tree branch. Everyone thinks, “My gosh, those are impossible! They can’t possibly happen!” But then they do.
They do.
Everyone has instances of the impossible becoming possible in their own lives. I don’t mean HUGE things like teleporting or dating an alien—I mean things like winning the state science fair against all odds or having their cancer miraculously disappear. These things happen.
Of course, HUGE impossible things become possible every day. Remember the world’s oldest Twinkie? No one thought it could stay fresh for decades, but here it is, deliciously edible since 1976.
Anyway, the impossible is only impossible until it isn’t.
Because I’m a physicist and I have a particular affinity for graphs, lists, charts, and visual aids, I’ve included a list to show a few of the once impossible things in life that became possible.
Fair warning, life is more fun with:
Charts
Graphs
Tables
Footnotes1
Bullet points
Okay, here it is.
* * *
THE THINGS ONCE THOUGHT IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL THEY BECAME POSSIBLE:
* * *
1 million BC—Humans master fire (and have the first hot date with cooked mammoth and kissing).2
3500 BC—The wheel (need I say more?).
1876—The telephone (and phone sex).
1901—Wireless transmission across the Atlantic.
1961—Space travel.
1996 I was born, because impossibly, both the condom and birth control failed.
2004—I melted Barbie and Ken using only a potato battery and my Easy-Bake Oven.
2010—The first atom was smashed at the Large Hadron Collider and I met Spock.
2012—I lost my virginity to Bernie Berger in the kitchen pantry while my parents obliviously watched Weird Science in the living room.
2018—I’m awarded a double PhD in Physics and Computer Science at age 22.
2020—I land my dream job at CERN, smashing atoms.
2022—I’m stuck to the seat of the wooden pub booth at The Cock and Bull.
2022—Also, the guy at the table across from mine won’t stop staring.
2022—No, I mean I’m really, really stuck. As in, my jeans are practically glued to the wooden seat and they won’t budge. How is this even possible? It’s not.
* * *
I tug at my thighs, pry at my jeans, and wiggle-jerk from left to right. There’s no fixing it. Somehow, impossibly, I’m glued to the wooden seat in the booth at the back of my favorite pub. It’s ridiculous, impossible, embarrassing.
Okay, Serena, pull yourself together. You’re a scientist—you can get out of any sticky situation life throws at you.
I gather energy, brace my palms on the tacky wooden tabletop, and shove upward as hard as I can, trying to burst free from my unlikely prison. I move all of a quarter inch, then rebound hard back to the wood.
“Umph.”
I collapse back against the booth and let out a frustrated breath. Then I surreptitiously glance from the side of my eyes at the small, round table next to mine. Yup, the man is still staring while pretending not to stare.
I’ve never seen him here before, which is why I don’t call him over and ask him to brace himself against the booth edge and yank me free from my seat. I’ve seen some odd things in this pub over the years, but if he’s new here, he may not be inured to all the pub’s oddities.
The Cock and Bull is a tiny, rough stone-walled and thick wooden-raftered homely British pub owned by a short, hairy Italian named Vinny Vincenzo. There’s the usual dark wood and plaid décor, British kitsch, and football (a.k.a. soccer) playing over the bar. The lights are low, the TVs flicker over the dull, sticky wood counters and floors, and instead of amplifying the sound, the old stone walls muffle everything to a garbled murmur.
The pub attracts zombie-eyed, post-five o’clock working schlubs from the neighborhood, rowdy students searching for cheap beer, homesick Brits, and the occasional tourist. I don’t really fit the mold, but I live around the corner, and Vinny makes the best French fries I’ve ever tasted.
The pub is a rarity in Geneva since it’s not Swiss, French, or moldy cheese-peddling. Plus it has cheap beer and gives out free eight-inch dill pickles with the purchase of a pint. That’s why the dim interior always smells like pickle vinegar and hoppy beer sunk into centuries-old gray stone.
I wander in every Tuesday around six o’clock and grab my usual booth in the back. Tuesday night is my me night, when I have a date with myself. I order a two euro pilsner, a long, fat pickle that is so sour my lips pucker, a basket of crisp, buttery, steaming-hot golden fries, and then I pull out my notebook and try to break my mind with new theories about everything. Or at least theories about the fundamental laws of nature.
There are very few windows and even fewer tables, which is why I always make a beeline to the back corner, where there’s a small, out-of-the-way two-person booth that no one ever notices. It has a scarred, scratched mahogany table with permanently sticky varnish, two hard wooden seats, and a little colored green glass lamp that casts a small pool of light across the tabletop.
It’s a really nice spot. A great spot.
Except. I’ve never not been able to move.
I try to stand again, pushing my feet into the wood floor and bracing against the booth.
I grit my teeth and shove, but my thighs won’t budge.
The table shakes, and I make a sound of frustration. The stranger sitting at the table across from me raises his eyebrows. Now he’s not even trying to hide the fact that he’s watching me.
“Excusez-moi,” I say, feeling irritable.
At that, the edge of his mouth quirks into an amused half-smile.
“Are you British?” he asks in a proper Oxford accent. “American? Canadian?”
He tilts his head and gives me an expectant, open look.
It’s not a hard deduction. We’re in Geneva, Switzerland, home of the UN where nationalities collide and bump along every day. Plus, my French accent is terrible and I look a bit like the love child of Daisuke Serizawa (minus the eyepatch) and Lady Godiva (minus the nakedness), which most men find compelling (a.k.a. I feature in a lot of morning wood fantasies). So that means I’m an easy mark to—
Wait. A. Second.
He’s been watching me. He was here before I arrived. He has a slight smile hovering at the edge of his mouth.
He . . .
“Did you do this?” I ask the stranger, outrage tinging my voice. I make a spinning circle with my finger, pointing at the booth, my thighs, and the unknown adhesive that’s sticking me to the wood.
It’s not outside the realm of possibility. He could be a predator, sticking women to restaurant booths like flies to flypaper, so he can “rescue” them. Sadly, I’ve seen worse pick-up strategies.
The man is a few years older than me and stunningly good-looking.
It’s human nature to think attractive men are “good” and unattractive men are “bad.” It’s also human nature to think attractive men are “bad” and unattractive men are also “bad.”
But the reality looks a bit more like this:
[Here we have a graph with Attractiveness on the Y axis and Morals on the X axis, and a squiggly mess of lines on the graph. And that’s it.]
* * *
He’s at the little two-person table next to my booth, sitting casually in the wooden pub chair, a half-finished pint in front of him and a half-eaten dinner of charred steak, a pickle, and crisp golden fries.
“Do what?” he asks, frowning and looking around the dimly lit pub just to make sure I’m talking to him.
I am.
I take a moment to catalog his features. Blue-gray eyes. Wheat-colored hair that falls just shy of the collar of his navy shirt. There’s a light wool jacket slung over the back of his seat, a nod to the early spring chill. He has a nice chin—there’s a little dimple there—and his cheekbones are high and sprinkled with a few freckles. His lips are dark pink, and he looks as if he smiles a lot. His eyes are sharp, intelligent, and I think he’s taking me in too. His gaze roves over my face and I feel his searching look as firmly as a touch. An electricity, as tangible as static arcs between us, buzzing and crackling.
He leans forward.
The muscles in his shoulders bunch, and I calculate that he’s at least six feet, even though it’s hard to tell when he’s sitting. He’s rangy but muscled. Intelligent, but probably not too intelligent. He’s likely a tourist. Maybe he’s here for a conference. Or . . . he’s a psycho.
