This is the first book I have read by this author and I will be looking for more. I absolutely loved this book and read it in one day. I would definitely recommend this book.

Love a messy female protagonist trying to figure out life! The humor in this one was so good and I lowkey related to the character in too many ways. Looking forward to what O'Donoghue does next!

This lovely surprise of a novel is like a Sally Rooney book with more plot (and I like Sally Rooney books)! It's a starkly honest story of friendship, romantic love, the messiness of discovering oneself, the insidiousness of the patriarchy... or basically, of being a complicated human. It attempts what I think all great books attempt to do, bring us humans closer together by taking us deep into a singular flawed world.

The frame story is told by Rachel (now a married, pregnant adult journalist) who has just found out her old professor is ill; the man was once a defining force in her life.

She returns to her 20 year old self, to the year she connects with James Devlin, a gay closeted coworker at a bookstore. The two bond instantly and become roommates shortly after, sharing a cramped, cold hovel of an apartment. Rachel is finishing up college and has a crush on a professor. To lure him, James helps her put on a launch party for the prof's new boring book at the store, despite their boss's reluctance. The book is being published by his wife's pub company, and when Rachel meets the kind wife, she knows she won't go through with seducing the prof, who seems uninterested in her anyway. Then Rachel walks in on her new BFF James and the prof kissing.

The plot meanders along here as Rachel/James friendship is affected by James's illicit affair with the prof, who often visits their apartment. But this entanglement soon leads to bigger plot points with heavy consequences.

Highly recommend!

I was going to go two stars on this, but rounded up because I was semi-interested in keeping reading. Listening to Rachel was tiresome, in the way that any adult looking back at stupid decisions one made in their early 20s is tiresome. Rachel was a typical self-absorbed 20-something. She made bad decisions, only looked out for herself and generally was a crap friend and roommate.

But she is telling this story looking back at this time in her life (which was a strange narrative - who is she telling this to? And why?) and she is able to view it from the eyes of someone older who, in theory, can make better decisions.

There wasn't a ton that happened in this book. Rachel and her roommate James live the lives of youngsters in Ireland. They don't have a lot of money, they are looking for love, and they hurt people along the way.

I feel bad that I put this off for so long.

All these characters felt so unbelievably real. I adored Rachel and James + the band of characters they interact with along the way. While I had no idea what to expect from this, every new twist was so engaging. Plus the snapshot of 2010's Ireland was so intriguing. I'll definitely pick up more by Caroline O'Donoghue

A lot of the reviews of this book compare the story and plot to Normal People by Sally Rooney. The Rachel Incident follows a group of friends, but Rachel (our main character) fell extremely flat for me and was unlikable.

This book was requested by a previous Lesbrary reviewer who did not finish or review it. In order to keep my Netgalley feedback up to date, I am submitting this review marking it as a DNF, though it was another reviewer who requested this.

4.5 stars

Oh how my Sally-Rooney-loving heart adored "The Rachel Incident." And I don't really have much of anything critical to say about the book, so I'll keep my review short and sweet. Caroline O'Donoghue's novel is fresh, sharply observant as to matters of love and friendship, and an all around engrossing read. I loved Rachel and I loved James (most of the time), and I loved the ending Rachel found for herself.


My sincerest appreciation to Caroline O'Donoghue, Knopf, and NetGalley for the digital review copy. All thoughts and opinions included herein are my own.

Caroline O'Donoghue's The Rachel Incident got me back into reading literary fiction. I was gripped to understand all of Rachel's life and how everything unwound around her in college and how she rebuilt her life after a scandal.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from this book, but I was delightfully surprised! The Rachel Incident had a Sally Rooney vibe and I loved it. I found myself wanting to shake Rachel at certain times, but I also loved the growth she had from the first page to the last. I could say so many great things about this book, the characters, the realness, friendship, second chance romance, all of these things lead to my deep love for this book!

***Thank you Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an ARC copy in return for an honest review***

The thing is, I will always be sat for Irish lit fic.
This one is for the readers that love a flawed characters.

a truly singular book. i know it’s cliché nowadays to pretend to be shocked when a book outgrows your expectations for it, but i had no idea how much this story would mean to me. one part campus novel, one part love story, one part coming of age. rachel and james meet while working in a bookstore together while rachel is still in college. they are fast — and fierce — friends, and their lives tilt on their axes when one begins a torrid love affair. they are the center of their own universes and for 300 pages i wholly believed they were the center of mine, too. cried like a little bitch for 40 pages toward the end. clutched it to my chest and wept some more when i finished. can’t wait to reread this one for the rest of my life.

I am mad I put this one off as long as I did. I ws ready for a sally rooney-esque story but it was its own story and I devoured it. Loved the whole thing and felt like it was super charming. The writing is beautiful and moving.

This book is about two young adults who meet at a bookstore and become friends and roommates. James works in the bookstore. Rachel is in college and has fallen in love with one of her married professors. Things quickly become complicated, because two of the main characters turn out not to be heterosexual. I thought the author did an excellent job in showing how painful and complex this time of life can be.

I received an e-arc from the publisher Knopf via NetGalley, and voluntarily read and reviewed it.

The Rachel Incident promises an intriguing premise but ends up feeling more like a missed opportunity. The narrative starts with potential, but it meanders and struggles to find a clear direction. The characters are likable enough but lack the depth needed to really make you care about their journey. Some moments hit the mark, but others fall flat, leaving the plot feeling uneven. It’s an okay read if you’re looking for something light and don’t mind a bit of aimless wandering. However, if you’re after a story with a strong, cohesive impact, this one might not quite do the trick.

Rachel meets her best-friend-to-be, James, while working at a bookstore in Cork. It's love at first sight: the two of them are utterly fascinated by each other, and very quickly their blossoming friendship starts a fire that they can't put out again; Rachel's young, attractive professor is releasing a new book, and somehow the two of them manage to set up a reading for him at the bookstore. But not Rachel will develop an affair with him that changes everyones lives, and all of this in Ireland amidst the recession.
I really really really loved this book. It's written beautifully and I really liked how the characters were real, unlikeable and messy. It reminded me a lot of Sally Rooney, who is my favourite author. Still, we didn't only emphasise with the main characters, but with everyone involved in this deliciously messy story. Rachel especially was very relatable in her struggles as a young professional trying to make it in her industry whilst navigating life, which is never what you've planned. I usually do not enjoy stories told by the main character, but much older, it usually takes me out of the narrative, but for this, the two levels of narration worked beautifully. The themes and struggles of the characters were wonderfully unterlined by the setting and the time-relevant issues. I'm very excited to read more of Caroline O'Donoghue's Novels, this was an absolute treat! (Also, the audiobook is - thankfully - narrated by an Irish narrator, who is amazing at her job!)

The Rachel Incident
Caroline O’ Donoghue

I loved this book. Beautifully written and full of emotion. Even though I’m old enough to be Rachel’s mother I found I could really relate to her and I cared so much about where her story would end up. Caroline O’Donoghue has a great writing career ahead of her and I can’t wait to read what she offers us next.

I found The Rachel Incident to be a very entertaining and enjoyable read. The characters were very well developed and made it very easy to fall in to the story.

The Rachel Incident is one of those lovely, relatable novels about a young woman learning about herself and the world, striving and bumbling and yearning her way through her early 20s. The titular Rachel here is a university student, living with her (insistently heterosexual) best friend James in Cork, where they both work at a bookstore. When Rachel sets out to have an affair with her married English professor, James help her devise a plan to seduce him – which serves as the catalyst for a lot of upheaval in both of their lives.

The Rachel Incident feels at once celebratory and melancholy in its exploration of friendship, love, and the chaos of early adulthood. Caroline O’Donoghue’s writing is vibrant and rich with emotion, with a narrative voice so intimate that I often felt like I was reading a memoir. Rachel is the best kind of character: complex and vulnerable, self-aware but also sweetly naïve, beautifully young and gorgeously alive. I felt so much for her and just wanted to give her a hug and lots of reassurances that everything would be okay. Her relationships with the other characters are so vivid and relayed with so much authenticity, and it’s Rachel herself and the strength of those relationships that carry the novel.

I do agree that fans of Sally Rooney will likely enjoy The Rachel Incident – but just know that I am not a fan of Sally Rooney, and I adored it. It’s a slice of life story with so much meaning – a book that comforts you at the same time that it makes you feel just the slightest bit sad and nostalgic. It’s just fantastic storytelling all-around, and I enjoyed it so much.

Perfectly captures early twenties wit and sarcasm and commentary on adult life (the adults in question being in their mid to late thirties).