Ehh I dithered about this one, but honestly it had so many things wrong with it, I could not enjoy it much. I think that's because Barry sucked a lot in this one and we had random plot devices used to get rid of a romance and a character that has been around for several books. I usually enjoy these books and the village of Ballybucklebo, but ultimately think this was just a so-so installment in the Irish Country series.

In "An Irish Country Practice" Barry and Fingal are dealing with different things. 

Barry is becoming increasingly nervous about marrying his fiancee Sue Nolan due to her wanting children and Barry being hesitant about being a father. If you are wondering where this random divergent interest thing came from, you are not the only one. Up until the last book there has been no mention of Barry not wanting children. I at least understood why he was hesitant in the last book due to being concerned about bringing children into a world that is dealing with so many awful things. But this book he turns into Ebeneezer Scrooge and decides that he doesn't like kids and was really nasty towards one of them to the point I really wish that Sue had dumped Barry's butt.

Fingal is agreeing to take on a trainee and to help with having GPs certified. It's not that interesting. He also has to help out his colleague Fitzpatrick who develops an addiction to betting (that comes out of nowhere) and realizes that one of the village women is being beaten by her spouse. None of the stories were satisfactorily resolved to me. I mean they were resolved, but resolved with what I called hand-waving writing to not have to really deal with what Taylor sets in motion in this book. We also still have Fingal wanting Kitty to retire and is going around "subtly" trying to make her see how much more appealing it would be if she stayed home. I can honestly say that I don't even get why Fingal wants Kitty to retire just so she can sit around and be outdoors with him while he still has plenty of work? I hope she doesn't retire. Between Fingal and Barry I wanted to kick both of them in the shins for how they were acting in this one. 

The main reason why I liked this one is that there are callbacks to the villagers in this one. We forget it's been about 3 years or so since Barry has started working with Fingal, so we follow up with some of his earlier patients and some we have not heard from since "An Irish Country Christmas." 

The writing (medical) I will just say was okay. I just thought the issues which Taylor tried to delve into in this one didn't make a lot of sense at all with the overall story structure. 

The ending was just okay and I was very annoyed we only hear about Barry's wedding in the afterword written by Kinky Kincaid (now married and I can't even remember her married name).

This was all over the place. Fingal parts except for some storylines was okay and Barry was insufferable throughout. Taylor doesn't even show Barry's wedding, you have to read about it in the afterword which annoyed me to no end.

Good:

We get to see what happened to some of the villagers from the earlier books. 

Bad:

Kinky tells a ton of people about her gift (she's fey). And this contradicts her always saying she was not supposed to tell people.

Barry all of a sudden hates children. If he was ambivalent about them coming into the world due to war and other things like the prior book, fine. But he sucked. 

Taylor inserts a friend of his in the book that wasn't needed.

We barely hear about the third doctor anymore.

Fitzpatrick's addiction contradicts him placing a bet in the earlier books. Taylor gets him gone through some terrible plot device.

Same issue with Lars and Mryna's romance.

All in all disappointed. Two stars. 

Well now Barry is getting closer to getting married but seems intent on screwing things up since now he's gone all kids suck. 

Fingal is still happily married and has taken on supervising a new doctor and training a new puppy. The scenes with the puppy is the only saving grace with the book so far.