by Katy Birchall

Good writing enables me to forgive a lot of sins. And Katie Birchall is very good. Her narrative voice is very likable, and her effortless wit and humor are on point. The author I would most compare her to is Sophie Kinsella. Like Sophie, she has a gift for putting engaging, funny, if somewhat hapless heroines who don’t realize their own value into intriguing and entertaining situations. She has become an author I will be on the watch for. She is still library-waiting-list-level though, not a pre-order auto-buy. Yet.

This is not a dual timeline book although we do have flashbacks to 10 years earlier when the two protagonists, Harper and Ryan, first meet and develop a relationship. I listened to it on Audible which of course influenced my feelings about the characters. Our heroine, Harper, is an excellent even brilliant journalist with a genius for getting celebrities to open up to her and trust her. She is renowned and respected in the industry but discounted by her stupid boss, Cosmo. His fair-haired boy is Ryan who has just been hired as the magazine’s new Features Head Editor to Harper’s dismay. As the not-as-respected Celebrity Features Editor, Harper’s good relationship with Features is crucial. Most of the time, the romance takes second place to the workplace dynamic and Harper’s successful pursuits of getting attention-grabbing interviews with reclusive media-shy celebrities. And that was more than fine with me.

I loved the hero in this one. In our heroine’s eyes, he is uptight, cold, and looks down on her. Reading between the lines, though, the reader sees that he is just shy and socially awkward. I felt a real Darcy-Elizabeth vibe, always a good thing. It’s also pretty clear that he is absolutely smitten by the warm, upbeat, but chaotic Harper soon after their first meeting and, again, now in the present. Harper is the first-person narrator of her story so of course we get to know her pretty well. Mostly she is very charming, likable, and even admirable. But her flaws threatened to derail my ability to relate and empathize with her. First and most importantly, she acted very immaturely in both her professional life and her love life. She is very unfair to Ryan, always putting the worst spin on his behavior. She blames him for things that are not his fault and refuses to see any point of view other than her own. She reacts in knee-jerk fashion which she almost always has to apologize for later usually after a reality check from her wiser and more fair-minded best friend and workmate, Mimi. This lack of empathy for Ryan’s point of view led to their break up in the past and a leads to a crisis in their present relationship. When Ryan can not give her special treatment at two turning points in her career, she interprets it as a personal betrayal and won’t listen to him when he tries to explain. It is a bit more complicated than that and he did do wrong, but she over-reacted (as usual). I was disappointed in her, especially considering what their relationship had grown into. She breaks his heart breaking up with him. I couldn’t help but feel he might be better off despite their connection.

The second strike against her in my book was that she is a disorganized slob, which causes her to be constantly late for meetings and appointments as well as causing crisis after crisis. This was very irritating especially since she seems to be quite proud of this trait, thinking it is a sign of her creativity and individualism instead of self-involvement and bad manners. Sounds like I hated her, doesn’t it? But I really didn’t. I admired and liked lots about her especially how she did her job with the highest integrity and honesty. She was kind and good at heart. We see her charisma. When she did wrong she was usually quick to admit it and would try to make things right. I suspect though, that the narrator made her more likable than what I may have found her on the written page. She funny, charming, and endearing when she wasn’t irritating the hell out of me.

That she was raised by terrible parents also made her a more sympathetic character. They are both renowned lawyers who make their disapproval of Harper’s chosen career abundantly clear. They treat her with contempt and cold disapproval, constantly comparing her with her sister Juliet, their Golden Child, who dutifully followed their prescribed path. The inevitable showdown between Harper and her parents added suspense and anticipation. I couldn’t wait until they got their comeuppance and when it came it was a great scene and well worth the wait. It was everything I hoped for but didn’t get in  The Undomestic Goddess. Her breaking free of the heavy weight that the lifelong disapproval of her parents caused and her ultimate triumph in her professional life and over her bad boss really bumped up my enjoyment of this book.

I mostly loved the prickly relationship between Ryan and Harper, their tugs of war, and ultimately, the sweet romance between them. I marveled at the levelheaded, neat, and organized Ryan’s patience with her. Unfortunately they are so different that cracks in the relationship are going to be inevitable. I can only hope that they will balance each other out in the end and they both will be the better for it.