Book Review: The Big Switch: Varney And Cedric by Lynn Slaughter

Hello everyone! You may remember when I posted an image of The Big Switch: Varney And Cedric, a middle-grade fantasy novel by Lynn Slaughter, to my Instagram, Threads, Twitter and Bluesky in March. In those posts, I announced that I was invited to review an advance reading copy of the book ahead of its release date by Nightingale Books, an imprint of Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie Publishers. Well, with the book’s recent release, I am happy to share my review! Be sure to get it wherever books are sold! You can also check out Slaughter’s website at this link! Below is the book’s synopsis:

Varney Ruthven has been diagnosed with V.A.D., Vampire Adjustment Disorder. He hates the taste of blood and longs to be a human boy who can go to school and play basketball during the daytime. Twelve-year-old Cedric, on the other hand, is desperately unhappy as a human. He hates that he’s turning into his bully of a father, but he can’t seem to stop. If only he could feel powerful and in control of his life, like the vampires he admires. Not surprisingly, when Camilla, a friendly witch, offers Varney and Cedric the chance to switch places on a trial basis, the boys jump at the chance. They have just thirty days to decide whether to make the switch permanent.

I’m glad to have been given this opportunity after my previous review of Sophia Starr and a Dog to Love! But before we begin, I would like to give a heads up to some spoilers to the book. Let’s take a bite out of these pages, shall we?

Background

In March 2026, I received a message from Valerie Brown of Nightingale Books, who told me that she was reaching out to request a review for an upcoming middle-grade fantasy novel by Lynn Slaughter. According to the “About The Author” page from The Big Switch: Varney And Cedric, Slaughter loves chocolate, the arts, and her husband’s cooking. After a long career as a professional dancer and dance educator, she returned to school to earn her MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. Lynn is the award-winning author of Leisha’s Song and several other young adult novels. The mother of two grown sons and grandmother of five lovely grandchildren, she lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with her husband and their cat, Lacy Lou.

Valerie told me that she’d be delighted to send me a digital PDF copy of the book, as well as the cover image, author bio, and blurbs for my convenience. I don’t often get middle grade books, and the premise seemed intriguing, so I thanked her for reaching out. I told her that it sounds like a really fun and engaging concept, and I love the premise of the character swap. I added that I’d be happy to take a look at a review copy and consider it for my blog, and that I was also open to including a short-written Q&A in my post.

Valerie responded by thanking me for my kind response and really appreciated my interest in the book. She said that she was so glad the concept resonated with me and added that she’ll be sending over the PDF review copy along with the cover image, author bio, and blurbs shortly for my consideration. And the materials I got were pretty interesting. The book received a wonderful early review from Reader’s Favorite, the fastest growing book review and award contest site on the Internet, and it is currently being considered for an award there. It also earned a starred review and was named a notable book by BlueInk Reviews, another professional book review service, which has been very exciting for Slaughter.

Valerie also stated that she’d be happy to include a short Q&A to support my post, and to let her know if I have specific questions or if I can provide a prepared set for her. When I finally got around to reading the book, I submitted the following questions below, and I’m happy to report that Slaughter got back to me with the following answers!

Q: What inspired the idea of a vampire and a human swapping lives for 30 days?

A: I’ve always loved identity-swapping tales like Freaky Friday. But truthfully, the character of Varney popped into my head initially before the idea of a swap came to me, probably because at the time, a lot of my classmates in my MFA program at Seton Hill were into vampires. I wondered what would happen to a young vampire who didn’t fit in and didn’t even like the taste of blood. I also wanted to portray vampires differently. Varney’s family is very loving and not at all scary. After Varney had arrived in my mind, it occurred to me that he could get out of being a misfit vampire by trading places with a human boy who was also struggling and would also welcome a new identity. Of course, lots of complications ensue for these two who’d been eager to swap places, and a 30-day trial run is raising the stakes for them. They have just those 30 days to make a decision as to whether to make the switch permanent.

Q: How did you approach balancing humor and adventure while exploring themes like identity and self-discovery?

A: I think all of those ingredients—humor, adventure, and themes like identity and self-discovery make for engaging stories and mirror real life in many ways. And of course, things that matter to us seep into our fiction. So, I love humor, and I also have strong feelings about the importance of finding places where we feel we belong and are fully accepted, and both Varney and Cedric are on a quest to find families and situations that work better for who they are and who they wish to become.

Q: What do you hope middle-grade readers take away from Varney and Cedric’s experience?

A: Varney and Cedric both took risks to find better situations for themselves, and both became much happier and ended up feeling good about themselves with their new identities that were a better match for them. I hope young people who feel that they don’t fit in will have hope that they will find people and places in their lives where they will fit—sometimes we really do need to “find our tribe” and it’s not always in our current situations.

Q: Were there any particular challenges in writing two very different characters and having them navigate each other’s worlds?

A: I think the biggest challenge was figuring out what Varney and Cedric would be apt to know and not know about their new lives and identities. Varney, for example, is not prepared to fall out of bed on his first night as Cedric! But he’s always slept in a coffin that had sides. And Cedric doesn’t anticipate banging his head on the side of his coffin the first night he sleeps there in his new identity as Varney. He’s never slept in a coffin before! They can’t tell anyone about the swap, or it will immediately end, so it’s not as though they can “explain” what’s going on for them to anyone else.

Q: How do you think fantasy elements like vampires or magical witches can help convey real-life lessons for kids?

A: Fantasy allows us to address real life painful problems in ways that give us a bit of remove from them, and yet allow us to experience hope for positive change.

But how was the book, anyway? How does it handle its themes of identity and self-discovery?

The Review

First off, I just have to say that this book was incredible, and I actually regret holding off on it for this long. The first thing I noticed was that the book is divided into two parts almost exactly down the middle: a Part One before Varney and Cedric switch bodies, and a Part Two after the switch. The second thing I noticed is that the book is told in first person point of view with Varney and Cedric telling the story in alternating chapters, often in two chapters in a row. I’ve enjoyed other books with this storytelling structure, and it works just as phenomenally here. So, who are our two main characters anyway? Let’s start with Varney Ruthven. He’s a vampire adopted into a vampire family, which is already a fascinating detail considering his Vampire Adjustment Disorder, though this isn’t really explored beyond how differently he looks compared to his muscular dad. He’s shorter than average for his age, but he’s very studious, though he doesn’t go to school like human kids, even though he desperately wants to. Instead, he attends night school with adults where he learns German. The biggest thing about his character, though, is his longing to be human and him being convinced that he could never be a vampire.

Then there’s Cedric Furman, who’s arguably the more fascinating character in most respects, though not precisely because he’s the human, even though his human experience feels very real. He’s definitely not studious, has an affinity for vampires, and is resentful of his father, who is emotionally abusive to him and especially his mother, who just takes it on the chin. It’s revealed a little later that his father was traumatized after his experience serving in Afghanistan, and his mother copes with her situation by reading romance novels. But he’s also a bully and delinquent who goes so low as to bully a girl named Amelia Aronstein. Normally, this would make Cedric unlikeable out of the gate, but Slaughter crucially uses Cedric’s domestic situation to put his bullying into perspective, which was REALLY smart. There are few children’s books I’ve read that go this deeply into the psychology of a bully (the final Big Nate book Blasts Off comes to mind), and fewer that try to explain the nature of abusive parents, which was really strong. The truth is that bullies usually don’t bully for the sake of it, but because of some underlying issue in their personal lives that those who are bullied can’t understand. It’s also interesting that it’s the vampire that has the stronger moral compass, creating a twist on the moral expectations of each character, whereas Cedric has this “Greg Heffley but worse” snark to him, almost giving the boys a Goofus and Gallant-style dynamic from Highlights Magazine, especially considering the alternating chapter structure.

Then there’s Amelia. Amelia could have easily been a one-off character after being bullied by Cedric. But she ended up becoming a fantastic third character who is just as important to the story as the boys. Not too long after being bullied, Amelia crosses paths with Varney, who develops a crush on her at first sight. The ways Varney describes her alone is cute, making her very easy to visualize without illustrations. It’s easy to see why he’d like her, as her red hair, freckles and pink-pastel color scheme is a great design for her character. She is more studious than even Varney and wants to be a marine biologist. She had friends in elementary school, but they fell off when they arrived in middle school, leaving her alone and isolated like Varney. But Amelia’s character REALLY takes off when she agrees to have Varney come over to her house. Their interactions in Amelia’s room and the ways in which they related to each other’s struggles (even as Varney masked his identity as a vampire from her) were honestly SUPER adorable, and I was HERE for this ship! I even liked what Slaughter did with Amelia’s father, given his job at the drugstore Varney visits in the beginning and where Cedric is forced to work at a little later. It was a great way to weave him into both of the boys’ arcs.

Amelia tells Varney about her getting bullied by Cedric, making Varney want to go after Cedric. But fascinatingly, Varney and Cedric don’t cross paths with each other until way after the switch much later in the story, which brings us to Camila. For someone who’s mentioned in the premise, she actually feels less important to the narrative then Amelia, though the limited time we get of her (mostly in the middle and end) fits a character that’s meant to be a little mysterious. By the time we get to the switch, you realize that Slaughter is about to do something amazing with Amelia. Before Camila makes the switch, she lets the boys in on each other’s lives to make it easier for them to act like each other. But she doesn’t disclose either boy’s name to the other, likely to prevent Varney from objecting to swapping with the bully he wants to teach a lesson. More fascinatingly, she also doesn’t disclose Amelia’s identity to Cedric, likely to prevent Cedric from objecting to swapping with the best friend of the girl he’s bullying. But it’s this dynamic that makes the nature of the swap FAR more fascinating than a typical body swap plot.

Instead of getting the chance to fight Cedric, Varney is forced to contend with being in the body of a boy his crush hates, forcing him to do everything he can to make Cedric look as good as possible in order for Amelia to still like him. And Cedric is forced to spend meaningful enough time with Amelia that he begins to understand her for who she really is, even to the point of noticing her beauty himself (though probably not in the same way as Varney). I was RELIEVED to see that Cedric didn’t immediately decide to continue bullying Amelia in her own home as Varney, as it would have been devastating if he ruined Varney’s friendship with Amelia. In a sense, Amelia becomes the main catalyst that both boys needed to become better versions of themselves and live better lives without all three characters realizing it. But the swap improves both characters in other ways, too.

Varney also tries to make Cedric look good in the eyes of the adults in his life. One of my favorite parts is when Varney settles on Cedric’s decision to write a paper on the Draft Riot of 1863, which Cedric was interested in because of his hatred for war given his father’s experience in Afghanistan. Varney doesn’t know this, but he commits to making the best possible paper for Cedric, which actually backfires in such a dramatically great way. Varney is also incredibly sweet to Cedric’s mother, helping her find ways to deal with her husband and even go back to school. Varney even ends up making Cedric find new friends and turn his old friends against him. As for Cedric, he’s motivated to learn German in Varney’s classes in order to maintain his cover. He puts Amelia in trouble at one point during a great sneaking out scene (I was incredibly nervous he’d kill Varney’s friendship with her anyway), but he learns his lesson about being a delinquent after that moment. One part I did find a little implausible was Varney not being able to play basketball in Cedric’s body and Cedric being able to play in Varney’s, but it gave the basketball scenes some interesting tension as well.

One of the biggest strengths of The Big Switch: Varney And Cedric is Slaughter’s prose. Varney has quite a bit of snark in his own dialogue as well, which led to both boys constantly making sarcastic and matter-of-factly jokes that made me chuckle on nearly every single page. There are some mildly suggestive moments and language in some scenes, but it’s mostly pretty typical for an upper middle grade book. As the book neared the end, I was nervous that certain plot threads weren’t going to have enough time to resolve themselves. And everything does resolve cleanly, just not in the way I expected. And I hate to say it, but I was actually thrown off by the ending and felt that it undermined everything that came before. I feel like the place Varney and Cedric are in by the end is technically fine, but it feels logistically messy for their long-term emotional states. The first thing I thought about was how it undermined Varney’s friendship with Amelia and the potential couple that I was excited to see forming, as well as the lie that Amelia would be fed without the boys confessing the truth, which would be even messier. At least it’s Varney who liked Amelia and not the other way around (as far as we can tell), so there’s that, though any further effort “Cedric” might make to impress Amelia will be wild from her perspective.

The next thing I thought about was the boys’ parents. I like the place Cedric’s parents are in by the end, even if I think a more padded out reckoning between “Cedric” and his father could’ve been better for drama. But like Amelia, both of the boys’ parents are being fed the same lies about them, which is arguably devastating for Cedric’s mother especially because of everything “Cedric” did to help her and their family. I think that the more typical body swap plot route could’ve actually worked better here, rather than a Goosebumps-style ending in which the characters are occasionally changed in a supernatural way. For a story about identity and self-discovery, it could’ve been so great to see the boys realize that who they always were wasn’t so bad once they realize how much better they improved each other’s lives. But I bet that Slaughter’s choice here means something to her personally, so rather than question it too much, I’ll instead wish that I was more easily able to interpret her intent. But I think that the rest of the book is so great that other readers may see it differently and will like the book even more than I did.

Ultimately, The Big Switch: Varney And Cedric is a really good if slightly perplexing story about finding yourself and feeling belonged. It shows how you don’t have to accept the current circumstances of your life if you hate them, and how you can make a real effort to change yourself, even if that means changing another person while doing it. I think that this book could actually really help older kids on how to navigate domestic situations or social problems that could be very thorny to resolve cleanly at that age, or even on how to just be a better person. I actually wouldn’t mind another book by Slaughter with a body swap plot given how good this one was, perhaps between a human and another supernatural creature, or maybe even with girls as the main characters instead of boys. The book doesn’t have to become the first installment in a series written around body swapping, but I guess I can’t help but to come up with ideas for my own book report for Mr. Lucas.

So, what did you think of my review? Will you be checking out The Big Switch: Varney And Cedric? I will be posting an edited version of my review of the book to my Goodreads shortly. Do you have a children’s book that is about to be released? You can send me an advance reading copy of your book (preferably electronic) for me to leave a review on or after the book’s release date in a future blog post. You can also send me the book’s cover for me to promote it on my Instagram, Threads, Twitter and Bluesky before its release date. Check the Contact page for more information. Be aware that I prefer to review middle grade, traditionally published books and books NOT created using artificial intelligence, and even then, I may not review every book I receive.

Until then, stay enlightened, educated and entertained, folks.