It's a nasty little title. Otherwise Engaged. With only vague significance at first, a ways into the book, it gains its full impact. As the plot thickens, the title begins to accrue subtle meanings and suck subplots and characters into its net of double entendre. If you like relationship stories, you'll like this one. There's boy-meets-girl (well mid-thirties boys and girls); there's conflict between the sexes, there's romance-gone-wrong.

Only one thing. I'd recommend starting somewhere after page 100. I know it's strange advice, but as the book introduces characters in the set-up, the details of their lives seem to be ordered out of a Macy's book character catalogue: he'll take the divorced parents, the neglected childhood; she'll take the deceased parents and the childhood trauma. Sprinkle the Oshkosh around the suburban kids, and give the Native American a Pathfinder to drive. This effect never fully goes away, something Eileen Goudge will surely get better at as she continues to churn out romances. In some ways, it feels like a book based on a movie (romantic comedy of course). It would be one of those movies where the two rivals have occasion to exchange childhood wounds, and suddenly they're in love -- up violins, close-up on the breeze-blown hair.

But you can tamp that sense of "created characters" down because let me say that the plot is irresistible, just too delicious to resist. Two friends decide to trade lives. One lives in the city, the other in countrified suburbia. Erin, the married friend, runs a country inn and her husband has just walked out on her -- prognosis unknown. Jessie, the single one, who lives in bustling New York city, has ticking-clock ovary syndrome (35 and wanting kids) and has just been given the cold treatment by her boyfriend (divorced with kids) when she mentioned the M word. It's a very old plot device, but as each arrives in the other's life, you simply can't help wanting badly to know how it will all turn out. To make matters better, there are attractive men in each place circling our heroine's wagons.

The suspense got me through the introductory period.

Somewhere after the first quarter of the book, things start to get tasty. There's a man in every port for these women -- a good vantage point to tell settling from dreaming. And that's what the book is really about. Are you settling? Can you have your dreams and meet your needs at the same time? What are you’re your real values? Is the guy who's great in the short-term going to be great in the long term -- or do I care about the long term? Jessie's ever-busy media mogul boyfriend makes the trip out to the country inn to see her. And she can't stop thinking about the passionate activist Native American brooding guy she kissed the other night. Erin has landed her dream job in the city and as her husband considers her good qualities and moves closer to returning, she comes ever closer to dangerous liaisons with her charming upstairs neighbor. And the demands for choices and decisions come pouring in. Do you meet half-way? Do you go with your gut? Do you follow your dreams? Do you honor your commitments? Every time one of the women makes a decision, events conspire to shake things up. And as we are dragged from option to option, from compromise to compromise, we're up one side and down the other of, "what exactly do we want from a relationship, and what is a good one worth to us?"

This is a tale rich with the real decisions in life; a great read for someone who's single, looking at the vast dating canvas as a challenge. Because this book gives the feeling that asking what you can have it the wrong question. The question really, is figuring out what you want.

This book has a high-profile trial, exciting careers, a missing person, lots of romance, cuddling, and bedroom scenes. Though you may not like the choices that each woman makes, it's fair to say that you'll see that each chooses what's really right for her. Other than that, you'll have to read for yourself.