Brittany Lynn Snider’s life came to a screeching halt—literally—one Sunday afternoon. Brittany was a hair stylist in Marfa, Texas, working along side her mother, who taught her how to tease that Texas hair and glue it down (up?) with Aqua Net. She was 25, and insecure about her weight, but she wanted to find love. She had made a Tinder date with HotGuyNate, and she had driven her mother’s minivan to El Paso to meet him. But at the last minute, he’d backed out, saying that his wife had found out. Brittany had been so angry and shocked to find out he was married that she was about to tell him off, but she lost control of the van.
The next thing Brittany remembered is waking up in the hospital. She stood at the end of the bed, watching as doctors and nurses tried to fix her body. That’s when the concierge showed up, a guy in loud golf pants who explained what happened to her next. While her body was in the El Paso hospital, she could be in the room or she could relax in the Limbo Lounge, until she came out of her coma, died, or was moved to a different facility. It took Brittany some time to understand what was going on (it always does), but she learned the rhythm.
There were others in the Limbo Lounge too, including an intense blonde woman named Edie who hangs around Brittany and asks a lot of questions. Brittany was thinking it would be her time soon to go to heaven, since she’d already made it to the sparkly path twice before getting pulled back, and the doctors were telling her parents it wouldn’t be long. But the next time that space opened over Brittany’s head, pulling her up, Edie pulls Brittany back down. This happens a couple of times before Edie finally makes it past Brittany, taking her spot on the sparkly path to heaven.
As Brittany finds out, that almost never happens. It only happened then because of a huge disaster that had happened on the other side of the globe, sending thousands to the heavenly bottleneck all at once. So now Brittany has a choice—she can stay there at the hospital and work like the concierge does, or she can become Edie, who is still in a coma at the hospital. But while she will remember some of her previous life, she can’t tell anyone, or she will break her contract.
Brittany chooses to become Edie, but she secretly decides that she will still find a way back to Marfa, Texas. She will find a way to open the hair salon with her mother, as she had always dreamed.
But what Brittany didn’t know before she agreed to the switch is why Edie was in the hospital. She didn’t know how hard Edie’s parents would fight to get their daughter back to good health. She didn’t know what it was that Edie had been running from, and she didn’t know how incredibly rich Edie’s family was. When Brittany wakes up as Edie, she has to figure out how to be Edie on the outside while still being Brittany on the inside, and on top of that, she has to deal with the mess Edie left behind.
While Brittany learns to maneuver her new life, she finds herself learning about the world outside of Texas. She makes mistakes, but she also makes new friends. But when she tries to go back to Texas to make her old dreams come true with her new resources, she finds that everything there has changed. Her family has moved on, and she no longer belongs there. Will she give up, or will Brittany find new opportunities to express who she’s becoming?
Drop Dead Gorgeous is a little bit wacky but overall a sweet story about finding yourself under extreme circumstances. Author Rachel Gibson uses her trademark humor and creativity to tell the story of a Texan with an outsized personality swapping places with a wealthy socialite. Told with heart and with soul, this story is a roller coaster of emotions, taking readers up and down and back up and back down, through life and death and the comfort of a small dog.
I was caught off guard by this book. I was ready for the humor and for a little romance, but I was surprised by how much I got caught up in Brittany’s emotions as she tried to find herself in her new reality. This is a character who experiences such amazing growth. There are many setbacks, but she continues to fight to find her place in her new life. And alongside her story is the story of what happens to Edie when she climbs her way into heaven, because of course, there are consequences for her as well. Drop Dead Gorgeous is a truly unique story, but it’s a fun story, and I finished it feeling inspiration and joy.
Egalleys for Drop Dead Gorgeous were provided by Gallery Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
