The Undomestic Goddess

I thought this was funny as heck!

In The Undomestic Goddess, we meet Samantha, a high-powered lawyer who, after a very public meltdown at work, flees to the countryside to escape the paparazzi.

While Samantha is hiding out, she takes a job as a housekeeper for a wealthy family. She knows nothing about being a domestic goddess, but she is a quick learner and soon finds herself in the middle of a romantic entanglement.

The Undomestic Goddess is a fun and fast read with an unlikely heroine who will have you rooting for her from page one.

Too romantic for me, but it was funny and unexpected.

Sophie Kinsella always manages to put me in a good mood. Light-hearted, cheery and some predictable plot line, a good book to wind off after a long week.

I give it a 4.5

This was cute - I would give it 3.5 stars.

For a romantic farcical comedy, it was really good. I guess the genre isn't totally my thing, but this was pretty fun. Sometimes it seemed too silly for the emotional heft it occasionally tried to bring, or vice versa - too randomly emotional for the overall effervescent tone. But overall I liked Samantha and got invested in her learning how to have a life and maybe still use her brain.

I did feel like the ending left things quite open - it seemed like once the romantic subplot was resolved, the author dusted her hands and let us speculate on the rest. I might have liked more exploration on where Samantha landed with her career.

Still, a good palate-cleanser after some heavy duty reading. Now back to Lovecraftian fiction for a while. :) ~^(;,;)^~

Didn't love the back and forth at the end. Everything else is very Kinsella and very lovable.

This book was wonderfully funny. I listened to it on my commute and it made me laugh out loud constantly alone in my car (I can only imagine what the other drivers thought). It also made me yell at it the way one does at the a football game. All that to say, it brilliantly pulled emotions out of me. It drew me so deeply into the world of the novel I wanted to talk to the characters. It was moving and hilarious and romantic. Sophie Kinsella is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors and this was another wonderful addition to her catalog.

This is my second Sophie Kinsella book.

Samantha Sweeting is a stressed, workaholic lawyer who comes from a family of hard-working lawyers. She works at the top law firm in London, and finds out that she's going to make partner. It's her dream. All that she ever wanted in life. That day the decision would be officially made, and she's really excited.

That is until she finds an expired legal document on her messy desk. Everything turned upside down as Samantha realizes that she made a HUGE mistake which costs the client 50 millions. In a rush of panic, she jumps on a train and ends up in a small village.

Samantha approaches a big, beautiful house to ask for some aspirins, yet she's mistaken for an interviewee applying as a housekeeper. In order to spend the night, she applies and gets the job. The problem is, Samantha isn't exactly a domestic person. Her cooking is disastrous, she fails at cleaning, and has no idea on how to sew a button. She doesn't even know that vaccuum cleaners have bags.

When her boss calls up and informs her that she's fired, Samantha has no choice but to continue her current life — as a housekeeper. There, she finds many things she had never realize before. She starts to cope with her job and finds love with the gardener, Nathaniel.

But then, what if one day she finds out that she never made that mistake to begin with? What if she was set up in the first place? She wants to clear her name, but does she want her old job back?

I enjoyed this book as much as I enjoyed Can You Keep a Secret?. It's funny and light, perfect for a nice read when you want to relax. It's fun to see how Samantha tackles the household chores, and ends up buying food and new clothes to cover her failed attempts. Her employers — Eddie and Trish Geiger — are very peculiar people, but they really care about Samantha.

At times I find Samantha thinks too much for her own good. Because of her old job she's way too tense when facing everything, and that's why I couldn't help but root for her. As for the other characters, personally I love Nathaniel as much as I want to punch Guy in the jaw like Samantha did. But my favourite character is probably Iris, Nathaniel's mother. It'd be nice to have a mother like her. :)

The Undomestic Goddess delivers a very important message to the readers, that happiness worth a lot more than money.