As someone who is looking to start her own B&B someday, I found this book quite entertaining. Lainey is sent off to Ireland to run her recently deceased Aunt's B&B for a year to help out her family financially. Unfortuntately, she has to leave behind her chef boyfriend and she figures it will be easier to break things off rather than try to keep a long distance relationship going. Ultimately she realizes that life, no matter how hard you try, cannot be planned out and organized like a celebratory event. It's fun to watch her go through the steps in realizing it and fun to learn a little Irish history in the process. ( )

A nice simple read. Good descriptions of Ireland"s green country landscapes. Great details of the life of running a bed and breakfast inn. ( )

This book is about twice as long as it needs to be. It is decent chick lit, but nothing beyond that. I had to re-start the book twice to get into it; the only reason I kept trying was because I received it as an Early Reader review book. Lainy, the main character, is a self-absorbed woman who is rather bossy and annoying. The dialogue sequences are tedious -- no one has conversations like that with their families. It's rather silly, and never ending.

It's a light read. The romantic element is forced. I'm not really sure what the author was going for here. I also wonder why the editor didn't cut the book by about 100 pages. ( )

light, not a lot of detail, etc.--I read this book over two months ago and the only things I really recall about it are the details of the relationship plot. I liked the book while I was reading it but I'm not sure that I would read it again.

This was a pleasant summer read. However, I found myself putting it down often for more challenging works. As previous reviewers noted, the plot is a bit thin and predictable. I suppose I'm damning it with faint praise when I say there wasn't anything objectionable about it. ( )

This started off with Lainey and her family having so much artificial, witty, dailogue that I wondered if I'd be able to bear with it. Thankfully, it got better. I did enjoy reading about the B&B in Ireland and the difficulties in setting up the place. The area sounds wonderful. The family dynamics got better and became believable, but the romance part worked well. It was an easy summer read, abit too simple and breezy for my normal taste, but a refreshing change of pace for me. ( )

This book was just OK; not because it wasn't written well but because this kind of gentle love story/family tale isn't really my thing. It was chick lit somewhat along the lines of Maeve Binchy (though I enjoy her more--her characters are more memorable & complex) or even an early Rosamund Pilcher. Overall, it was a good-natured , fish-out-of-water story set mainly in Irish countryside near the historic plains of Tara (which I didn't know anything about, so that was interesting) with a little love story and family crisis thrown in. The main character, a die-hard career woman named Lainey who works as an event planner in Australia, irked me in the beginning with her selfishness, but I began to like her a bit more once the book got going. It was essentially a "Under the Tuscan Sun"-type plot transferred to the Irish countryside. I probably won't read this author again but only because what she tends to write isn't what I want to read. ( )

A very light weight, chick lit novel about Lainey Byrne, type A career girl with lots of family problems and responsibilities who suddenly finds herself forced to leave everything behind to run a bed and breakfast in Ireland in order to meet the terms of a dead aunt's will so her father can inherit the land and sell it to pay for his much needed medical treatments. How's that for a family guilt trip? Lainey-- dutiful daughter that she is-- is totally selfless and, being the only one the family can count on, gives up everything, her career, her home, her love, in order to make this thing work.
The story is weak and predicable and , as noted by a previous LT early reviewer, the supporting characters are undeveloped types more than well thought out characters in their own right. I did not care for Lainey nor for her ridiculous predicament and i doubt anyone else will either. Sorry-- this one is not for me and I would not recommend it to anyone. ( )

I was unable to get into this book. It didn't catch my attention and make me want to read more. ( )

It took a little while to get into the groove of this book, and ultimately, I'm not sure if I did. It's a nice story. Uplifting.

But, I had a hard time really connecting with the characters. The secondary characters were really just types, and at times, caricatures: the loving but eccentric younger brother, the misunderstood serious brother, the loving and wronged boyfriend. This wouldn't be much of a problem, really, except the main character, Lainey, doesn't feel especially fleshed out either.

Despite this, it was still an enjoyable read. Relaxing, entertaining, and interesting enough to want to know what ultimately happens to everyone. So, while not especially memorable, it's still nice, and not a bad summer read. ( )

My feelings about Greetings from Somewhere Else went back and forth. I enjoyed the premise of the story line. In the beginning I was excited because I thought that the storyline was original and I liked the writing. The little fantasy dreams of the main character were too hokey and spoiled the credibility of the authors writing (read like a cheap romance and it just didn't fit). The ending wrapped up a little too quickly and neatly in comparison with the well balanced introduction.

This would make a good movie and maybe that is the reason I didn't score it higher. I would recommend it to my book club friends as a good quick read, but I wouldn't recommend that we spend an evening discussing it. ( )

Greetings from Somewhere Else is a story that revolves around Elaine Byrne. She is a controlling, over worked business woman who has to slow down and do some self reflection when she is sent to run a B&B for a year. Before leaving Australia and going back to her home country, Ireland, she runs her personal life like her business life. This changes as she spends time in the Irish countryside. The book has some comic relief with her brother Hugh, her mother, and situations Lainy has running a B&B. Overall, I was not really impressed with the story. It was rather predictable and somewhat silly (fantasy scenes). It would be a good beach book! ( )

There are some books that are easy to figure out, particularly in anything that might be considered chick-lit. Greetings From Somewhere Else could have easily been one of those books. Girl breaks boy's heart, leaves the country, finds new boy, and wacky hijinks ensue along the way.

The back of the book tells you as much. Thing is? The back of the book is a tease.

Lainey is very much a bossy, control freak. When she has to leave Australia for a year in Ireland, she decides that it would be for the best if she broke up with her boyfriend Adam. She's sure he'll understand since it's not like they were all that serious anyway.

I mean, he only helped nurse her back to health right after they met, kept her as sane as Lainey ever seems to be when her father suffered an accident at work that left him in horrible pain [as well as turning him into a horrible pain], and lived in the same building. Sure. A completely casual relationship.

Adam, naturally, saw things differently.

As the book unfolds, you wonder about the new guy in Ireland and where he fits into things, but you also find out about Lainey's family history, given just enough at a time to keep things interesting.

The best thing about Greetings is that even when you know [or at least hope really strongly] where the book is going, you still feel something when it gets there. A couple of plot points twist in ways you expect, others don't, but leave you laughing all the same.

I spend a lot of time disliking the main characters in books for various reasons. I honestly liked Lainey, even when she was at her most clueless, and about halfway through the book I wished it would suddenly become longer because I wasn't ready for it to end. ( )

There are films, fun films, that have a just-right attitude and tone (Four Weddings and a Funeral comes to mind), so that the time spent watching just seems to fly. This is the written equivalent of that type of film, a 415-page novel that reads fast and fun. It's also loaded with enough realistic people - not faux characters - that the reader wants to know the most important thing... What happens next?

Some would probably view this as either a "woman's book" or chic lit. Maybe it is a Bridget Jones-style book, although I honestly wouldn't know; the main character's perspective never gets in the way of the all too human story. The story is about Lainey Bryne, a Type A personality, who works like mad in a P.R. firm in Australia, often literally placing her chef boyfriend on the back burner. A death in the family and a medical crisis make it imperative that she meets the terms of a late aunt's will (so that the property formerly owned by her aunt can be sold). This will require that a member of Lainey's family live in and manage a broken-down B&B outside of Belfast, Ireland. Lainey, who desperately needs to control everything and everyone in the world, is left with the assignment.

This is not Under the Tuscan Sun. Instead it's A Year Outside of Belfast in an Almost Bankrupt Bed and Breakfast! A year in which Lainey learns valuable lessons about stepping back now and then and letting events run their course; about understanding that other people have their own instincts and sense of timing; about the fact that true love is not fantasy.

Very, very well done! (Jos. from http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/ ) ( )

I enjoyed Greetings from Somewhere Else. It is about a girl named Lainey Byrne who is a bit of a control freak. Moving to Ireland to take over her Aunt May's B&B to help her family collect their inheritance proves to be a challenge for Laniey. It is a funny and sweet tale on family, relationships and self discovery. Perfect summer read.

Lainey is an event planner--highly organized, energetic, ambitious, a bit bossy. Her father is bedridden after an industrial accident and her mother is getting a bit fed up with the situation. Her three brothers are all a bit eccentric in their own way. And she and her boyfriend seem to be more or less ships passing in the night--he's a chef with his own restaurant, and with their schedules, it seems they hardly see each other at all.

Into this chaos comes a new wrinkle -- an elderly aunt in Ireland has died, leaving a bed & breakfast to her brother, Lainey's father. That's wonderful news, since the family is struggling to pay medical bills, and waiting to get an insurance settlement. They plan to sell the B&B immediately, but there's a stipulation--one member of the family must come to Ireland and live for one year and manage the B&B, or they will lose the inheritance.

Lainey seems to be the logical--or only possible--choice, so she gives up her job, breaks up with her boyfriend, and heads to Ireland to run a B&B, despite never having spent much time either cooking or cleaning in her life.

I read this book in one long Sunday, and enjoyed it immensely. It reminded me a bit of a Cecelia Ahern novel, but that may just have been because of the Irish characters. The book was very well written, and by the end of the book I felt I knew the characters. Lainey grows up in the process of the book, and learns a lot, both about the B&B business, and about herself.

I highly recommend this book, and will search out more of Ms. McInerney's novels. ( )