Review: Swap Meet by G.G. Cummings

Attractive young couple, Beth and David, go to a local swap meet to look for some good deals. They only end up buying one thing, but that thing changes both of their lives forever.

The enthusiastic couple buy an ancient book of spells. Of particular interest to them is a gender swap spell. They already have a wild and adventurous bedroom life, but often fantasize about swapping bodies and doing all kinds of dirty things to each other.

David's dreamed about being in Beth's perky and petite little body, running his hands all over its silky smooth skin. And Beth has always wanted to know what it would be like to live inside David's big, strong, and muscular frame.

When the spell actually works, these two eager lovers get right down to business. They do everything that they've always wanted to... and more!

Here goes cranky Lyka again…  I am a bit spoiled by having recently been working so closely with some of my favorite writers on the Lipstick for Her Leather anthology, and so seeing a story that has little more than a premise behind it…  Let’s just say it’s a difficult comedown.

David and Beth are a married couple who have an adventurous sex life.  When they come across a book of spells at a swap meet, they are given the opportunity to shift into one another’s bodies and see what sexual gratification as the other gender feels like.  And, so, they do.  That’s it.  The whole plot right there.

G.G. Cummings is a capable enough writer, though I still have my issues with authors who use the present tense (completely personal preference), and there are only a handful of missing or misused words.  But the fact that a body swap story has so little going on beyond the setup and a lengthy sex scene is disappointing.  Some readers may want for nothing more, but even in this limited scope, there is time to suggest more characterization beyond “horny married couple.”  Nothing in the swapping changes the dynamic between the characters.  Nothing is revealed, there is no conflict between the characters and, therefore, no drama.

Some readers who enjoy this genre may consider all such stories disposable, but I like to think that good stories with interesting characters, or at least a fresh take on old tropes, can make these stories something more than disposable entertainment.  They can be uplifting or scary or seductive, and still deliver the ‘money shot’ of the tale along the way.  Swap Meet  is just premise and money shot, which I may be wrong for criticizing, but it left me feeling as if what I had read was cynical, a story written to tick the boxes of the genre without much regard for the experience of reading the story itself.

If all you require of your tg fantasy fiction is a setup and an extended sequence of sexual explicitness, Swap Meet will do you fine.  If you expect any work done in regards to theme, character or plot, it may be best to look elsewhere.

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