Cozy Corner: The Undomestic Goddess

Workaholic attorney Samantha Sweeting has just done the unthinkable. She’s made a mistake so huge, it’ll wreck any chance of a partnership.

Going into utter meltdown, she walks out of her London office, gets on a train, and ends up in the middle of nowhere. Asking for directions at a big, beautiful house, she’s mistaken for an interviewee and finds herself being offered a job as housekeeper. Her employers have no idea they’ve hired a lawyer–and Samantha has no idea how to work the oven. She can’t sew on a button, bake a potato, or get the #@%# ironing board to open. How she takes a deep breath and begins to cope–and finds love–is a story as delicious as the bread she learns to bake.

But will her old life ever catch up with her? And if it does…will she want it back?

I will start off by saying that I LOVE this book. I recently reread it as part of m COVID romantic-comedy quarantine reading, and it was just as fun as when I first read it many years ago.

Samantha Sweeting works as a lawyer and is up for partner. She works upwards of 80 hours a week, and is from a family of other workaholics, While she waits to discover whether she has successfully obtained partnership, she discovers a missed contract in a stack of papers on her desk that results in the loss of millions of dollars for her client. In her shock after discovering the mistake, she boards a train to the country and is mistaken for a housekeeper when she approaches a house to ask for a glass of water. Samantha decides to hide out in the country, pretending to be a housekeeper while she learns about life outside of a hectic law firm.

It may just be that I’ve been wishing that life would slow down a bit, and have been dreaming of moving outside of the city, but this book hit the right spot for me right now. I love Samantha’s journey to discovering life outside of her career, and her attempts to clean and cook are hilarious disasters (though I would probably go through the exact same thing if I was in her shoes).

I wish this book had been developed into a series — I just found this to be such a perfect mix of a book. Great characters, great setting, great storyline. It’s the kind of book that I never want to put down when I’m reading it, and then get sad when it is over. I am sure I will be rereading it soon.