Greetings from Somewhere Else

I actually liked this book a lot. It threw me at first that the author - and the main character - are Australian, not Irish-American. I'm not sure why. But it certainly gave a different vibe and a different tone to the book than would an Irish-American author, I think.

I expected this to be a story like this: Girl is unhappy. Even with her relationship. Girl has the opportunity to return to Ireland. Girl fixes up B&B. Girl reconnects with childhood friend who she falls madly in love with, while ex-boyfriend in Australia moves on too. Like most chick lit books, right?

Wrong. Lainey thought she was happy, and then got snuckered into going to Ireland to fix up a B&B - though she is absolute crap at housework and other domestic duties. She faces all sorts of hassles, and feels lonely while worrying about her problematic family; it's the sort of family that seems pretty realistic with its array of problems and its differing personalities.

I like that Lainey did not fall for Rohan, her childhood friend, but returned to Adam, who went to great lengths to show his love, even from a different hemisphere. The tapes he made with Hugh, Lainey's little brother, remind me of videos from the fellow in Love Actually who pines over Keira Knightley's character.

The ending was happy without being ridiculously trite.

I wasn't, however, a huge fan of McInerney's writing. But it may be a cultural difference, since some paragraphs and dialogue did not seem to flow (to me).