Greetings from Somewhere Else » (Original)

Monica McInerney is the author of the international bestseller The Alphabet Sisters. She lives in Ireland.

Lainey Byrne is a master at controlled chaos, juggling her hectic, demanding job, her chef boyfriend with his crazy hours, and her roiling family with all its daily dramas. But her life truly threatens to spin out of control when her aunt May, who owns a B&B in Ireland, passes away. In order for the Byrnes to collect their inheritance, someone from the family must take over Aunt May’s business for a year. And apparently that someone is Lainey.

Between running a run-down, virtually guest-free B&B (without the slightest ability to cook or clean), worrying about her family from afar, adjusting to country life, and dealing with the complications of long-distance love, Lainey is in way over her head. But when a reunion with a (gorgeous) childhood friend sparks unexpected complications, Lainey realizes that fate may have another path for her–a direction she never imagined.

Publishers Weekly

McInerney provides a barely probable story that all too often collides with cliché. Lainey Byrne has the usual problems, what with her success in the corporate world and her mild failures in all things romantic. This quasi-idyllic existence comes to an end when she leaves for rural Ireland to take over a neglected bed and breakfast so her family can collect a rich aunt's inheritance. Though Lainey's inexperience with cooking and cleaning puts her in a precarious position at first, McInerney dodges the potential cliché of having the protagonist fall back on her chef ex-boyfriend, Adam-but only to choose the equally hackneyed route of her finding new love in an old school chum, and an unexpectedly fulfilled life at the bed and breakfast. The tired plot line isn't helped by carelessly developed characters.
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