by Amy Poeppel

This is the story of what happens when a family from an upper middle class Dallas suburb exchanges homes for the summer with an affluent husband and wife from urban Berlin. Despite each being thrust into totally unfamiliar cultures and settings they manage to not only survive, but thrive. More or less. The core characters were all likable good people, which is the key to their ultimate success. And the premise was very entertaining. I’ve read 3 other books by this author and this was a close second to Small Admissions, still my favorite by this author. Lucy decides to get the hell out of Dodge Dallas when her sweet, brilliant and somewhat nerdy son Jack is expelled from school and cruelly crucified on social media and in their social circle (It was all a big misunderstanding). I was caught up in the injustice of it all and my fondness for Jack. Always in the background was my hope for eventual redemption and comeuppances. Lucy has a very happy and solid marriage but unfortunately she has to deal with the crisis on her own as her husband, a NASA scientist, is on a special project and incommunicado for 6 months. On the other side of the Atlantic, Otto, a surgeon, who is unhappy at his work and with his colleagues, gets a temporary job in Dallas and moves himself and his wife Greta, a private art curator. I should say loyal wife Greta moves them, because stiff and formal Otto is very much a traditional husband, and it is Greta that handles all of the day to day home type business.

Amy Poeppel’s books are all about the characters, although this one is jam packed with plot developments and many exploits as well. There is never a dull moment. In this novel, it is Greta and Otto who go through the most growth and change. They are different people by the end of this story. Lucy, Jack, and Lucy and Mason’s young twin girls are perfectly fine and happy as they are, barring Jack’s struggles and the fear for his crumbling future. They have other challenges, don’t get me wrong. In addition to trying to keep her rambunctious twins from breaking all of Greta’s priceless antiques in the lovely but museum-like (but tiny!) city apartment, Lucy has to contend with how to keep her bosses from finding out she is no longer in the United States (she mostly works from home), and more importantly, dealing with Jack wanting to meet his Scandinavian biological father when he doesn’t even know Jack exists, as well as the absence of her loving and normally involved husband. Meanwhile Otto and Greta have to contend with how to get Lucy’s huge modern suburban smart home to obey them, their (shock!) unruly dogs, too friendly and interested neighbors, Otto’s sociable new work colleagues, barbeques, and the very casual lifestyle of Dallas. On top of that, Greta has an ethical struggle and possible career-ender regarding a Vermeer painting that might have been painted by his daughter Maria instead. She also is concerned about her daughter Emmi who seems to be pulling away from her, and a mother that might be having an affair with a much younger man.

Stern and formal Otto’s enthusiastic embrace of everything to do with the Dallas lifestyle combined with Greta’s bewilderment over her husband’s new personality and her own more cautious and suspicious approach, provide much of the humor. When kitchen-adverse Otto brags that he has learned how to bake “stickerpoodles”, Greta is totally flummoxed. Despite his failures as a husband, Otto was very endearing in his ultimately successful efforts to fit in and his fracturing of the American language was too funny.

But the book is so much more than two fish out of water stories and how they end up being just what the doctor ordered. Amy Poeppel has a lot to say about social media, hypocrisy, gossip and how vicious and destructive it can be. And it shows how ordinary people can be brave and not go with the toxic mob mentality and make a difference with kindness, common sense, and fairness. It is not a romance at all, but by the end we have five happy couples, or maybe more, I lost count. The epilogue was all that I hoped, which means it was probably a little over the top.