Someone Else’s Shoes

Moyes’s charming spin on Trading Places (after The Giver of Stars) follows two 40-something women who end up with each other’s shoes. After Sam Kemp accidentally grabs the wrong bag at her London gym and finds in it a custom-made pair of Louboutins, she takes to wearing the heels to business meetings and finds a new confidence among her colleagues. Meanwhile, American Nisha Cantor ends up stuck with Sam’s sensible flats. Nisha returns to the hotel where she’s staying with her wealthy husband, Carl, only to find he’s locked her out and frozen her accounts, blindsiding her. Then the gym suddenly shuts down and Sam has no way to return Nisha’s belongings, so she leans into her new life, avoiding her depressed husband and a boss who’s out to get her. Meanwhile, Nisha takes a job at the hotel where she was once a guest, and Carl gives her the ultimatum to find the Louboutins, which he’d given to her, or forfeit any kind of divorce settlement. The plot leans a bit too much on convenience, but Moyes is never short on her trademark clever observations (of Sam: “There is a particularly vindictive tenor to the kind of hangover that occurs in your forties”). The author’s fans will have a ball. Agent: Sheila Crowley, Curis Brown. (Feb.)