Mu Xiang Xiang and Qiao Nan had met each other by chance; the difference in their personalities and their family backgrounds was akin to night and day. However, one day, after having jointly combined their efforts to complete a good deed, Fate decided to play a huge joke on them — and the two of them discovered, that their bodies had been swapped!
And, after undergoing various trials and tribulations, each came to the realisation that the other party seemed to be able to use the body that originally belonged to him / her, and lead the ideal life that he / she had always desired……
When You Be Me / Another Life (反转人生) is a fairly swift and easy read, with a mish-mash of the usual, typical tropes one can come to expect with sweet c-novels with little to no angst. Set in the modern school setting, When You Be Me details the bond, relationship and trust that is formed between our extremely hardworking, smart, capable (but poor and physically weak) female lead, and our handsome, popular, and rich (but lazy and rebellious) male lead when our female and male lead is forced to undergo a “body / soul swap”.
With their souls swapped, the female lead and the male lead are forced to co-operate and work together in order to ensure that their true identities do not get discovered; and yet, despite all the preparation and discussions that the female and male leads undertook, nothing could truly prepare them for the myriad of surprising events that awaited each of them in their new bodies, and they are often forced to react instinctively to such surprising events. For instance, before the male and female leads swapped bodies / souls, the male lead had extremely strained relationships with all of his family members, and, his family members, being the avoidant people that they are, often choose to stay / live away from home under the guise of being overly busy with work. Given the rarity at which his family members returned home, the male lead did not detail his family dynamics to the female lead and simply told the female lead, that he doesn’t really talk to his family members — which, unsurprisingly, resulted in the female lead being left with an impression that the male lead is simply “distant” from his family members. As such, when the female lead (in the male lead’s body) returned to the male lead’s home and discovered his step-mother in the house, she simply made the basic, courteous greetings (by acknowledging the step-mother’s presence, and simply informing her, “I’m home.”), this resulted in the step-mother becoming overcome with exuberant joy (that her step-son might finally grow to accept her) and immediately informing the male lead’s father and brother of this earth-shattering piece of celebratory news, and the male lead’s father and brother rushing home from work and slowly learning to spend more time with the ‘male lead’ (and the gradual easing of “tensions” between the real male lead, and his family members).
Being a short, simple novel, this novel also does not lay off on “empowering” the male / female leads such that they would be able to efficiently and easily resolve all the obstacles in their path, such that the entire novel has little to no angst involved (this is especially so for the female lead’s family members, who, as a result of the intervention of the male lead (in the female lead’s body), gradually learns to take the risk to pursue their own dreams instead of simply aiming to just “get by” with a mediocre job, and (unsurprisingly) succeeds in each and every one of their ventures. All in all, this is a fairly easy read for those looking to pass the time, with elements of humor spattered within, and can easily score this a 3.5/5.