Thank you Viking Books, #partner for the finished copy of Someone Else’s Shoes in exchange for my honest review. I purchased the audiobook for my own collection.
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books / Penguin Random House Audio
Published: February 7, 2023
Summary:
A story of mix-ups, mess-ups and making the most of second chances, this is the new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You and The Giver of Stars
Who are you when you are forced to walk in someone else’s shoes?
Nisha Cantor lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband announces a divorce and cuts her off. Nisha is determined to hang onto her glamorous life. But in the meantime, she must scramble to cope—she doesn’t even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in.
That’s because Sam Kemp—in the bleakest point of her life—has accidentally taken Nisha’s gym bag. But Sam hardly has time to worry about a lost gym bag—she’s struggling to keep herself and her family afloat. When she tries on Nisha’s six-inch high Christian Louboutin red crocodile shoes, the resulting jolt of confidence makes her realize something must change—and that thing is herself.
Full of Jojo Moyes’ signature humor, brilliant storytelling, and warmth, Someone Else’s Shoes is a story about how just one little thing can suddenly change everything.
My thoughts:
I’ve been a fan of Jojo Moyes ever since reading The Girl You Left Behind back in 2013. I actually had the chance to meet Jojo then when she was on tour in the US for that book and it was such a great event…so was so lovely to chat with, even for just a few minutes. Since then I’ve read just about all her books and have enjoyed them immensely and was thrilled to get my hands on this latest one…which was just as good as I hoped it would be!
I read with book with another group of bookstagrammers and I’m so glad I did – doing these buddy reads really makes for some great discussions as we are reading the books and this one definitely was a good one to read with others. The book pulled me in right away and I loved that we have two women who couldn’t be more different from each other that are involved in a mix-up of their bags at a local gym. That sets off a chain reaction that involves changes in both their lives that lead to some interesting situations.
I love when an author is able to make me feel deeply about different characters and to make me grow to love characters that I might feel indifferent about in the beginning and that is exactly what happens here. I wasn’t Nisha’s biggest fan at first, but as the book progresses, we see her change through the circumstances she is put in. By the end, I think she might have been my favorite character.
This story is about how one simple action can have drastic consequences. I loved how we meet an array of women from all walks of life. They were flawed, real, relatable women who you wanted to know more about, secrets and all. I found myself so immersed in this story and loved that I would be laughing out loud on one page and then tearing up on the next. There might be little bits of wisdom to be taken from this book – how sometimes seeing something or someone from a different perspective gives you a different outlook – but at the end of the day, this book is just pure fun and I loved it!
Audio thoughts:
I started doing a combination of reading and listening to this one and ended up just listening as I loved the narration. Daisy Ridley does a great job bringing this story to life and I found myself unable to put this one down!
