The Irish Goodbye

• Author: Heather Aimee O’Neill
• Genre: Contemporary Fiction
• Publication Date: September 30, 2025
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

In this debut, for fans of J. Courtney Sullivan and Mary Beth Keane, three adult sisters grapple with a shared tragedy over a Thanksgiving weekend spent in their childhood home, navigating complex relationships and old tensions.

It’s been years since the three Ryan sisters were all home together at their family’s beloved house on the eastern shore of Long Island. Two decades ago, their lives were upended by an accident on their brother Topher’s a friend’s brother was killed, the lawsuit nearly bankrupted their parents, and Topher spiraled into a depression, eventually taking his life. Now the Ryan women are back for Thanksgiving, eager to reconnect, but each carrying a heavy secret. The eldest, Cait, still holding guilt for the role no one knows she played in the boat accident, rekindles a flame with her high school crush, Topher’s best friend and the brother of the boy who died. Middle sister Alice’s been thrown a curveball threatening the career she’s restarting and faces a difficult decision that may doom her marriage. And the youngest, Maggie, is finally taking the risk to bring the woman she loves home to her devoutly Catholic mother. Infusing everything is the grief for Topher that none of the Ryans have figured out how to carry together.

When Cait invites a guest to Thanksgiving dinner, old tensions boil over and new truths surface, nearly overpowering the flickering light of their family bond. Far more than a family holiday will be ruined unless the sisters can find a way to forgive themselves—and one another.

As the holiday season draws closer, I’m sure more than a few people can understand what a holiday weekend back home can be like. Some people have joyful reunions, others have stressful and bickering interactions, and others—like the Ryan family—have traumatic events in their past that get stirred up when everyone is together. Some of those have the potential to bring a family closer, and I couldn’t resist finding out if this family could overcome their individual obstacles to come together and receive the support they desperately need.

I read this as an audiobook, narrated by Kristen Sieh. She did a fantastic job with the voices, accents, and cadences of the various characters. There were accents from London, Ireland, and Long Island, and they sounded great. The Long Island accent is a distinctive one, and since it’s where I lived most of my life, it was passable, but not fully believable. However, if you aren’t a Long Islander, you probably won’t notice. Sieh’s soft lilting Irish accent sounded musical, and was a pleasure to listen to. 

The Ryan family has shared trauma, although it affected each of them differently. Twenty years ago, the only son, Topher, was involved in a boating accident that killed a friend. Afterwards, the friend’s family wins a lawsuit against the Ryans that nearly bankrupts the family, leading to Topher dealing with depression and ultimately taking his own life.

Presently, Cait lives in London with her twins, and relies on her nanny to control them yet decided it would be a good idea not to bring the nanny; Alice’s children are getting older and she’s ready to start a new career while taking care of her aging parents and all of their affairs; and Maggie is finally ready to bring a girlfriend home for the first time to meet her mother, who was raised in Ireland by nuns. All of this, plus the secrets and past hurts that the sisters have been holding on to means they’re heading into a tumultuous weekend.

I loved how realistic the interactions in the family are—the relationships the sisters have with each other, with their significant other, and with their parents made it easy for me to visualize the characters and really place myself in the setting. It isn’t hard to picture the setting anyway, I’ve been out there before, and it can be beautiful. But the cost of living in that area is high, with exorbitant property taxes, and the Ryan sisters’ childhood home needs work that no one can pay for. I could identify with Alice, feeling frustrated at being pulled in multiple directions at once, and how just when she plans to restart her life and do this one thing for herself, it’s quickly jeopardized by unexpected news.

Overall, this is a great read if you like family drama books. The tension crackles throughout the pages. There are a lot of issues for each character, individually and as a family, as well as the families that the sisters have made for themselves. Each of the sisters carries over certain characteristics of their parents, and I notice that when spending time with my own family members. Writing realistic characters is a strength that O’Neill demonstrates beautifully in this book. The pace held steady, and there weren’t any parts of the story where it lags or gets boring. Finding out the secrets that this family held was a fascinating revelation for me, as the author slowly shows us more about what the characters are keeping hidden and what happens when they are revealed. I’ll definitely be checking out more books by O’Neill.

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