Author: Jay
Northcote
Length: 57,000
words
Release Date: September
9 2016
Blurb:
What do you do
when the body you wake up in isn’t yours?
Olly and Scott promised to be best friends forever. They grew up on the same street, went to the same school, and did everything together. But one hot summer night, teenage experimentation caused hurt feelings and confusion, and their friendship was destroyed.
Four years later they’re both eighteen years old and in their final term at school. Scott is a football star and Olly’s preparing for a main role in the school play. After a heated argument in the street—witnessed by their mysterious, elderly neighbour—they wake up the next morning stuck in each other’s bodies.
With no idea how to get back to normal, they have to co-operate in order to hide their secret. Spending time together rekindles their friendship, yet feelings run deeper for both of them. With the end of school fast approaching, the clock is ticking. Unless they discover how to change back, they could be stuck in the wrong bodies forever.
Excerpt
The sound of music playing pulled Scott from a thick blanket of sleep into
wakefulness. He lay curled on his side; his room
was darker than usual, as though someone had come in and closed the blinds
while he slept. His bed felt weird, softer than it should be, and it
smelled different.
He sat up, blinking in confusion as he looked
around. He took in the room, the details unclear in the half-light that
crept around the edges of the blind, but it was enough for him to realise
where he was.
The posters on the wall were new, but the layout
hadn’t changed in four years.
What the fuck?
It wasn’t possible. Logic told Scott there was no
way this could be happening.
He’d gone to sleep in his own bed—he hadn’t been
drunk or high. So why the hell was he waking up in Olly’s room with no
recollection of how he got there? And where the hell was Olly? The music
that had woken him was coming from a phone on a docking station by the
bed. He picked it up and pressed some buttons until it stopped. His brain
was fogged with sleep and he couldn’t think clearly.
Scott got out of bed on shaky legs. His hip ached
as though it was bruised.
Actually, his whole body felt weird. Perhaps he was
sick? Maybe this was all some bizarre hallucination?
Pulling the cord to raise the blind, Scott flooded
the room with light. He looked down at himself, only….
He closed his eyes and shook his head. When he
opened them again, he still didn’t see himself. His body was too thin, his
skin too pale, the hair on his legs darker than usual, and he definitely didn’t
own any snug purple briefs like the ones he was currently wearing.
Stomach roiling with disbelief and terror, Scott
turned to the full-length mirror on the wall and blinked.
Olly’s reflection stared back looking as horrified
as Scott felt. Scott raised his hands to his face, and so did Olly in the
mirror.
“This isn’t happening,” he said.
The voice was Olly’s too, softer and a little
higher-pitched than Scott’s own.
It was the weirdest, most vivid dream Scott had
ever had.
He pinched himself hard. “Ouch!”
Why wasn’t he waking up?
Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep!
Olly shot up, heart pounding at the shrill sound.
He opened his eyes and blinked in the sunlight.
Ugh. Too bright.
He looked around wildly and closed his eyes again,
refusing to believe what he saw. Obviously he wasn’t awake yet because he
couldn’t be in Scott’s room. He hadn’t set foot in Scott’s house in years.
Olly cracked his eyes open again but still saw the
white walls, the posters of Scott’s football heroes that Olly remembered
from years ago, and the freakishly tidy desk that definitely wasn’t his.
The alarm clock by the bed was still making an
awful racket, so he found the button to silence it.
“Scott?” he said hesitantly, then coughed.
What the fuck was wrong with his throat? His voice
was deep and rough sounding. Oh God, no, please don’t let him be getting a
cold. He couldn’t afford to lose his voice with all the play rehearsals
coming up.
He pushed the duvet off and swung his legs around
to get out of bed. He’d find
Scott and work out what the hell was going on.
Maybe he had some weird amnesia after his accident yesterday, although he
hadn’t hit his head. There had to be some explanation for why he was
apparently in Scott’s bed rather than his own.
Then Olly looked down at his legs—and froze.
They were thicker and more muscular than they
should be. Olly only dreamed of having legs like that. The hairs on them
were light brown instead of dark, the skin more tanned. He looked at his
hands, they were all wrong too, thicker and sturdier than they should be.
He lifted one to run it through his hair, the way he often did in times of
crisis.
“What the fuck?” No long floppy fringe falling in
his eyes. Instead he found short-cropped hair and his ear piercings were
gone.
Now convinced he was dreaming, because that was the
only possible explanation, Olly got up to look in the mirror. Scott’s
handsome face stared back at him, the mouth slack with surprise and the
blue eyes wide.
Olly shook his head in disbelief. No way could this
be happening. No way. This was the stuff of Hollywood
movies, not reality. But cold, creeping panic rose in his gut, because
apart from the fact that he appeared to be in the wrong body, everything
else felt normal. Way too normal for it to be a dream.
“No,” he said loudly, putting his hands up and
touching Scott’s nose, Scott’s
cheekbones, Scott’s lips. He felt every brush of
his fingertips. “Oh, Jesus Christ on a bike, this is not happening. No.”
My thoughts:
If I had to describe Into You
in one word, I’d say ‘cute’. This story and the characters in it are adorable,
charming and a joy to spend time with.
Olly and Scott have been friends for years when a combination of teenage
curiosity and teenage angst pull them apart. Four years later they still live
across the street from each other and their friendship is still a thing of the
past.
Also in their street lives an older lady who they’ve never felt completely
comfortable around. One day, when the lads are 18, she’s clearly upset when she
sees them having an argument on the street. Olly and Scott don’t pay her a lot
of attention when she states that fate might need a push in the right direction,
but maybe they should have because the morning after they wake up to discover
they’ve swapped bodies. In order to function as each other they have to work
together; a process that allows them to reconnect and discover things about
themselves and each other they’d been previously unaware off.
As I said, this is a super cute story. While the situation Olly and Scott
find themselves in certainly leads to introspection and soul searching for both
of them, there’s very little angst in this story. In fact, even though they are
confused and trying to figure out what is going on and how to fix the situation
again, the whole swap is nowhere near as fraught with trouble and danger of
being exposed as you might expect. For two young men who haven’t really
interacted for four years, Ollie and Scott have remarkably little problems
living each other’s lives. Ollie takes to football as if he’s been training for
years and Scott, who doesn’t understand Shakespeare and isn’t into drama, takes
to the role of Romeo like a fish to water. Because the story isn’t so much
about the difficulties associated with a body-swap as it is about two young men
reconnecting and finding each other and their joined destiny, that lack of
tension makes sense, but it did leave me feeling it was all a bit too easy.
There are relatively few sexy times in this story. Having said that,
watching the two boys figure out whether or not it would be appropriate to
indulge in a handjob while in the others body, was both intriguing and great
fun, not to mention enticing once they give in to their needs.
Of course this story is very well written and smoothly told; I’d be
surprised if a book by Jay Northcote was anything else. I’m not quite sure how
to label this book. Coming of age fits, as do friends to lovers and enemies to lovers, but there’s also
a dose of paranormal / magical realism to be found here.
If you enjoy a fun, sweet, very cute and somewhat magical feel good
story, I highly recommend Into You
by Jay Northcote.
Author Bio:
Jay lives just
outside Bristol in the West of England, with her husband, two children, and two
cats.
She comes from
a family of writers, but she always used to believe that the gene for fiction
writing had passed her by. She spent years only ever writing emails, articles,
or website content. One day, she decided to try and write a short story just to
see if she could and found it rather addictive. She hasn’t stopped writing
since.
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