The Undomestic Goddess

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Author: Sophie Kinsella
Published 2005

The book I’ve read is about a young woman, called Samantha Sweeting. She’s a high-powered lawyer living in London. She works all days and all hours. Her goal is to become a partner at her law firm Carter Spink.
The day she finally becomes a partner her world falls apart. She realizes she has done a huge mistake. So huge it’ll wreck her career and cost her firm a loss of £50 million.
Samantha has never done a mistake in her whole life. During her seven years at Carter Spink she’s been flawless. Never taken a day off work, never forgotten a meeting. She has even worked late on her birthdays.
In her shock realizing her whole lawyer career is over and done she walks out of her office and on to the first train she sees, and finds herself in the middle of nowhere. Asking for directions at a big beautiful house she is mistaken for the interviewee housekeeper and finds herself being offered the job. Just the thought of going back and explaining the mistake to her boss makes it easy for her to accept the job.
Some people might find housekeeping an easy job, but for Samantha Sweeting it’s the job from hell. It’s harder than any case she has been working on. She has no idea how to cook or to work the oven and she has never used an iron in her life…
Her employers are just too happy with a housekeeper who actually speaks English that they don’t see what a chaos there is in the kitchen.
To her rescue she meets Nathaniel, who is the gardener. He doesn’t have to look at her twice to realize she’s anything but a housekeeper. Nathaniel’s mum teaches Samantha how to cook simple food that looks fancy and how to wash and iron and all those simple things that normal people know about. Samantha and Nathaniel soon start a relationship. Samantha won’t tell anyone where she comes from or what her old life used to be like. She calls her seven years at Carter Spink “a bad relationship” she hasn’t talked to anyone at her old work since she left the office and none of the co-workers seem to want to talk to her after a while.
Gradually Samantha falls in love with her new life in a wholly unexpected way. It is so different from her old life. She’s got friends and work is just a small part of her life. Her relationship with Nathaniel grows deeper and deeper.
One day Samantha finds out that one of her co-workers is retiring and through that she also finds out that the mistake she had done had actually not been a mistake but a set up and she had just been the unlucky person who would take the fall. The information was a shock to her and when she calls another co-worker to tell him what she has found out she gets treated as a loser who can’t accept she made a mistake. They won’t listen to her and she even gets banned from the office. Samantha then takes matters in her own hands and goes to London, sneaks into her old office dressed as a waitress working at the retiring party of her co-worker Arnold. What she was supposed to do was to threat him to tell the truth about his scheme, but being back at work seeing all her old co-workers whom she had thought were her friends makes her emotional. Instead she is screaming at him and cries and appears as the loser they already think she is. But afterwards she meets her boss and to him she tells what she has discovered. He promises to look into it while Samantha returns to her housekeeping job.
Just a few days later her boss calls back to tell her that he’s found out what Arnold has done to her. He also offers Samantha her job back. This is what she wanted, what she had always wanted since she lost it. But does she really want it now?
That’s when she realizes that who she used to be isn’t the person she is today. The young woman who would put her work before her life and couldn’t think of taking a day off work is now happily living on the countryside in a town where everyone knows each other and she has too cook and clean for a rich couple.
Samantha accepts the job offer, however, changes her mind while she’s on the train back to London. So back in her country life she decides to move in with her loved boyfriend Nathaniel. As you can see all in all it’s a happy ever after end of the book.

My opinion
I found this book very charming. It had its hilarious moments and it was also very interesting. When I started reading the book I thought I knew how it would end. I assumed Samantha would go back to work and to her old life. I even believed that until I was reading the last chapter. So I wasn’t disappointed at all with the happy ever after ending.
The book feels realistic. The thoughts and feelings that Sophie Kinsella has put into Samantha’s mind all make it seem real and sometimes I could even feel them myself. When...