4 stars!
"The Irish Goodbye" by Amy Ewing is a wonderful, cute, emotional book! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. While it can be frilly and fun at times, it also has a lot of mature, serious undertones to it. It has a lot to say about grief and moving on, about loss and second chances (in love AND in life). I enjoyed the main female character, Cordelia, who lives in New York City and jumps at the chance to flee to Inishmore, Ireland for a summer gig so she can reconnect to her life and soul after the loss of her father. I also loved Niall, a grumpy chef who has had his life and everything in it snatched from under him after multiple simultaneous heartbreaks at the hands of the same person. At first, you really don't like Niall at all. He is brusk, curt, and a bit of a jerk, but second chances are such that his grumpiness is explained away, so you see his point of view and come to understand what made him standoffish and made him have his walls up so high. You feel for both of them. Niall's world has crashed down around him, and he must heal from his losses. Cordelia, who has a lot of internet success with her photography, feels disconnected and untethered after her dad's death. As they embark on their own healing journeys, they find solace in each other where they once saw only the worst in one another. Cordelia and Niall also rediscover their passion and love for photography and cooking, respectively, as they fall in love with each other. There's quite a lot of complexity in this book! The romance aspect takes its time to get going, but I enjoyed Cordelia and Niall's journey from enemies to lovers. It's sweet, and often bittersweet, but frequently swoon-worthy. The travel and wanderlust aspects here are excellent as well. You really get the sense of the community of Inishmore and the country of Ireland, from the people to the weather to the customs and connections. All of the secondary characters are well-written and don't feel like random characters who come and go as they please. They are integral to the plot and to Niall and Cordelia's stories. A wonderful little book that I encourage you to read!
Thank you to NetGalley, Amy Ewing, and Alcove Press for the complimentary ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. I was not compensated for this review.