Doubting Abbey by Samantha Tonge

Doubting Abbey

by Samantha Tonge

Hilarious and heartwarming, spend your holiday season with Gemma and Abbey

Swapping downstairs for upstairs… How hard can it be!?

Look up the phrase ordinary girl and you’ll see a picture of me, Gemma Goodwin – I only look half-decent after applying the entire contents of my make-up bag, and my dating track-record includes a man who treated me to dinner…at a kebab shop. No joke!

The only extraordinary thing about me is that I look EXACTLY like my BFF, Abbey Croxley. Oh, and that for reasons I can’t explain, I’ve agreed to swap identities and pretend be her to star in the TV show about her aristocratic family’s country estate, Million Dollar Mansion.

So now it’s not just my tan I’m faking – it’s Kate Middleton style demure hemlines and lady-like manners too. And amongst the hundreds of fusty etiquette rules I’m trying to cram into my head, there are two I really must remember; 1) No-one can ever find out that I’m just Gemma, who’d be more at home in the servants quarters. And 2) There can be absolutely no flirting with Abbey’s dishy but buttoned-up cousin, Lord Edward.

Aaargh, this is going to be harder than I thought…

Praise for Samantha Tonge

'I was hooked from the start, by this impressive debut novel' – Chicklit Club

'This really was a humorous read, Gemma is such a witty character who always seems to get herself into mischief, I never expected this book to be a witty read but it was the humour that kept me hooked.' – Rea Book Reviews

' Samantha Tonge has taken an every-day girl and stuck her in this crumbling manor where she has to pretend to be her best friend and help win a reality TV program. She takes all our guilty pleasures and wraps them in one good read.' – Novel Escapes

Reviewed by Leah on

3 of 5 stars

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When Samantha Tonge emailed me and asked if I’d like to review her debut novel Doubting Abbey, it took me a while to say yes as I wasn’t 100% sure I’d have the time to fit the novel in with so many other ebooks to review. But I managed to clear out all of my other review ebooks and I was so pleased to say yes to Doubting Abbey. Especially after I saw the gorgeous book cover, a cover that rivals Lindsey Kelk’s I Heart novels.

Doubting Abbey is a Downton Abbey inspired novel – can’t you tell from the title? It’s proper posh, well it is when Gemma is being Abbey, not so much when she’s being herself, but more on that later. The novel is taking advantage of the fact that Downton Abbey is so popular and that people are loving posh people and seeing what happens behind the scenes in posh families. In Doubting Abbey, Gemma finds herself impersonating her best friend Abbey in a bid to help Abbey’s family win Million Dollar Mansion, a reality TV show pitting two stately homes against each other to win a million dollars. Gemma hopes it will be a cake walk, but impersonating someone is harder than she thinks, especially when someone rumbles her secret. Not only that, but she finds herself having untoward feelings for Edward, the Earl’s son. Can Gemma keep her secret to the end to help Applebridge Hall win the million dollars or will it all come out in the wash?

I was torn over Doubting Abbey. I did like it, it was very Downton inspired (though I don’t watch Downton myself). I loved the whole impersonation aspect, I liked Gemma when she was being Abbey, I loved the characters at Applebridge Hall, but Gemma as a narrator really annoyed me. She was such a lovely person, but she’s super repetitive and her use of the word “mega” bordered on common. Everything in Gemma’s life in mega – things were “mega” cool, people were “mega”, and it just didn’t work at all. I get that she isn’t posh, but she also isn’t that common and she sounded common as muck. Especially with the use of the word “mega” and “amaaaaaaaazin'” (which was spelt exactly as I’ve typed it). Yep, I bet people work like that, but it just doesn’t come across in book form and just sounded awful.

Apart from my narration irritationjs, I did like the book. I really loved getting to know the Earl, and Edward, and all the “downstairs” staff. It was a lovely look into a life I’ll never experience myself. One of my favourite parts of the book was when Gemma reunited some folks who were taken away from their parents during the war. The effort put into that was fabulous and the tales were so sweet and touching. The whole novel was quite cute, I could have just done without the common narration, I now have a massive aversion to the word “mega”. I will read more from Samantha Tonge, as she is a good storyteller, I just found the narration terribly common. But other than that, it was a good tale.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 9 November, 2013: Finished reading
  • 9 November, 2013: Reviewed