Book info

• Title The Undomestic Goddess
• Author Sophie Kinsella
• Year 2005
• Genre Romance

Samantha is a high-powered lawyer in London who thrives under pressure. She works all hours, has no home life, and only cares about becoming the youngest partner at her law firm. Eating, sleeping, seeing friends – even taking a breath – will have to wait. But just when she’s about to get everything she has ever wanted, Samantha makes a mistake. A fifty-million-pound, career-destroying mistake. Unable to face the consequences, she does the unimaginable and runs away... Catching the first train she can, Samantha finds herself in the countryside, outside a beautiful grand house. Mistaken for another woman, she falls into a new job as the family’s housekeeper. They have no idea they've hired a Cambridge educated lawyer with an IQ of 158 who doesn’t know how to work a washing machine, let alone an oven. Gradually Samantha starts to learn. She learns how to bake bread, she learns how to slow down, falling in love with her new reality in a wholly unexpected way. Then her old life threatens to catch up with her... but does she want it back?

Thoughts

I’ve ended up with mixed feelings about this one. It’s very, very readable, you’re sort of eating up the words as you go along and I really enjoyed the process of devouring it. But I’m not totally sold on the story. The initial concept of sort of accidentally winding up as a housekeeper and then sticking with it isn’t that credible but if you suspend your disbelief you can go with it. But as things start unravelling, I don’t really understand why no one poses the idea of, maybe, as out there as it is, becoming a lawyer in the country? Not having big city pressures but still doing the job you love? Maybe that’s where they end up once they get off the railway platform, but the either/or stakes of it just didn’t ring true for me.

Rating: 3 / 5