“Flying By the Seat of my Knickers” is part of the burgeoning genre of…I don’t know exactly what to call it…stories about hapless young women who have to turn their lives around by having adventures and finding love. It’s chick lit of a very specific sort.

Of course, what it really is at its heart is a heroic journey/coming of age tale, but presented in the lightest, most cheerful and upbeat version. Heroines in these tales often have dead-end jobs (or no jobs at all), failed relationships, and everyday problems like that, but they rarely come under deadly danger or face anything really world-shattering. Which is fine. That’s how most people live most of the time, and one of the main strengths of these kinds of books is that they put everyday and largely feminine problems and concerns front and center, in a fun and readable fashion.

And “Flying by the Seat of my Knickers” is great fun, with some seriousness as well. Caity Shaw is trying to rebuild her life after getting out of an emotionally abusive and controlling relationship with an older man. She takes a temp job helping out her event-planner older sister at an event in Dublin, which leads to the expected round of humiliating tasks, embarrassing mishaps, eventual realization self-worth and competence, plus the possibility of a little romance with a handsome Irishman. It’s all par for the course, but it is great fun, and Caity’s struggles to pull herself together after her disastrous relationship lend some genuine pathos to the story. A sweet little short read (I read the entire thing while spending a morning sitting in various waiting rooms) for those looking for some good-natured women’s fiction, or who just want to read about romance with handsome Irishmen.