It's a universally considered premise: What would have happened if we made different choices in life? In her first novel, The One That Got Away, Leigh Himes humorously unravels the ramifications of such a possibility for Abbey Lahey, a 20-something, stressed wife and "suburban sweatpant mom" of two. Abbey's fraught, middle-class Philadelphia life includes a muffin top; a job in public relations that demands as much attention as her five-year-old bedwetting daughter; a rambunctious toddler of a son; an out-of-work husband, Jimmy; and stacks of unpaid bills.
When Abbey sets off to Nordstrom to return a $598 designer pocketbook to ease the strain on the family bank account and pay for running water and pediatrician co-pays, she falls over the side of an escalator en route to customer service. Blacking out, she suffers a head injury and wakes to someone else's life: Abbey van Holt, the wife of rich, handsome and well-connected Alexander van Holt, who's running for Congress. Abbey and Alex met years before; she considered him "the one that got away." With Abbey suddenly entrenched in an alternate reality of plastic surgery corrections to her former bodily flaws, lavish privilege and high society life--with problems of its own, including the pitfalls of politics and a meddlesome mother-in-law--the culture shock ultimately offers a renewed sense of perspective and unexpected appreciation for her once ordinary, however challenged, middle-class life. Himes's well-constructed comic novel adds thought-provoking depth to a charming be-careful-what-you-wish-for story. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines