Thank you Knopf and NetGalley for the eARC of The Rachel Incident! All opinions in this review are my own.

In all honesty, I think I am still trying to process how I feel about this book. I ended up getting a copy from the library and on the day the book was due, I decided to start it. While my intention was to binge read it so I could return it, I also couldn't put it down once I started reading it.

At first, I wasn't into reading about Rachel and James struggling through their early 20s. It was stressful enough to live through that time, I didn't need to read about it in a book. However, as the book progressed, I was drawn into Rachel and James's friendship, but also this mess that they were creating. I had to find out how they were going to get through it.

Overall, The Rachel Incident is captivating read. It is about trying to figure out who you are at such an tumultous time in your life. I think it can be a comforting read for people who are also going through this stage in their life and to the people who are glad they never have to live through it again.

I enjoyed the way this story was told. Having the older Rachel be able to give her more mature point of view as to the events in the story of her younger life made this much more interesting. It was a bit slow at points, but overall entertaining.

Went into this completely blind, and what a delightful surprise. Rachel, while flawed, was so relatable as a college student graduating at the height of the Great Recession, following her through her 20s as she makes her way into the world. Her fast and furious friendship with co-worker turned flatmate James Devlin, romance with James Carey, intersecting with complicated relationship with her college professor and his wife who eventually employs her - made for an alternatively heartwarming, funny, cringeworthy and frustrating sequence of events that I couldn't wait to get back to. Glad I didn't see the comparison to Sally Rooney ahead of time - this had much more heart and soul than that. Loved this fresh novel.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

It took me about three tries to finally get through this one - and not for lack of trying. I LOVE Caroline O'Donoghue's writing, unusually, but this felt like an Irish version of Sally Rooney and I couldn't get myself to care about the characters or their crappy decisions. I may have to stick to the author's YA publications from here on out.

This one didn’t quite work for me. Leading up to its publication, it was frequently compared to Sally Rooney, so I obviously had to read it. Unfortunately, I think that comparison did this book a disservice. Whereas Rooney’s work is focused
on the main characters and their complex feelings and emotions, The Rachel Incident was focused less on the main character and more on her obsession with her best friend and her professor in a way that did not end up being very compelling. This did not work for me.

A character driven drama set in Ireland and focused on Rachel, a student working at a bookstore where she meets James, and they quickly become inseparable. He invites her to move in and become his roommate, which solidifies their friendship that will forever change their lives. She falls in love with her professor, and James gets him to their bookstore for a reading, but the professor has other desires, and this sets them all off on a series of secrets that interferes with the fates of James, Rachel, and the professor and his well-connected wife.

Ahh to be young and clueless but think you have it all figured out like James and Rachel.. These two put their friendship above anything else and I was there for it. I also could not get enough of the Ireland setting, it was excellent. The audio only further enhanced this story, Tara Flynn did a fantastic job here and I basically listened to this one as long as my AirPods would stay charged.

Plenty of drama, growth, and funny moments in here to keep me vested in these two’s lives, so much so that I did not want this one to be over. I absolutely enjoyed this and cannot recommend it enough.

Thank you to Knopf, PRH Audio and NetGalley for the copies to review.

I really enjoyed The Rachel Incident. It was enticing in so many ways. I enjoyed getting to grapple with Rachel's challenges as a young 20-something and her parallel journey in her 30s. It was refreshing to read a character with such flaws, and got to see how the struggles of young adulthood impacted how she handled her life later down the line.

There were parts of this book I loved more than others, and many of those parts were closer to the end and may spoil the book if I were to talk about them, so I'll leave out those things and why I loved them. But ultimately, I really felt like the book was a full character arc that was just absolutely lovely. I enjoyed seeing things come full circle. It was wildly beautiful.

Great characters, love, friendship, heartbreak all play a part in this book. Quite funny at the same time. Loved the tempo and some unexpected plot turns. A different genre for me to read but so glad I received an arc of it.
I will be on the lookout for more by Caroline O'Donoghue.

I did not enjoy this book at all. I found myself asking several times throughout the course of this novel, what exactly is the point of this. I didn't think Rachel and James had any redeeming qualities and I didn't understand if I was supposed to like them or hate them. If there's an audience for this book, it's not me.
I would not recommend this to others.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the ARC!

I binged this book in just over a day listening to the audio. It's one of those books that I couldn't even really tell you what it's about - a snapshot of a girl's life, I suppose - but I was just totally enthralled.

Rachel and James have this friendship that you love to hate. They are so close - too close - that their worlds revolve around each other, no one else matters, and everyone else is excluded. It's one of those all consuming friendships only the lucky ones get to experience.

I loved that Rachel is sharing a story about her past but we don't really know how long ago it was or what the actual outcome is. We start with Rachel being pregnant and her tale could've been from 10 years ago, or just a few months ago.

I loved the narrator - Tara Flynn - and would definitely love to do more audiobooks with her as the narrator. She had an Irish accent that was of course fitting because the novel takes place in Cork, but it was also just so lovely and soothing and engaging.

This is also a bit of a book about books. You have the English lit students, the college campus cliches, the bookstore theme. I loved all of this and felt like it added so much depth and complexity to an otherwise "cliche" tale. I also adored the LGBTQIA+ aspect and the general love and acceptance from most of the characters.

This one was really great and one I definitely recommend. Thank you to PRH Audio, Knopf, and NetGalley for the copy.

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue is a novel about Rachel and the things that she goes through with her friends as she grows up. I thought this book was very honest at times, and I really enjoyed it. I especially appreciated how real Rachel and her friends were. It was very well-written. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley.

I really enjoyed this book and it was right up my alley. A bit of a coming-of-age story involving Rachel and her journey as she graduates college and tries to make a career in Ireland during a recession. It's also a story of enduring friendship, the kind unique to your early 20s. The writing felt very real and I really enjoyed Rachel and James as characters. Though both deeply flawed, I was rooting for them and wanted to hear more about them.

I found this book frustrating. Rachel had no self-awareness, James was a total stereotype, and the complications with Professor Byrne and his wife were over the top. I was obviously not the best audience for the book so I won't be posting my review anywhere as I am sure there are many who will like it.

Humorous and tender at the same time! Loved the relationship exploration and how friendships change over time. Would read this one again and again!

I was really hooked by this book from very early on. It has a very distinct voice and an intriguing story. Great characterisation and a great, specific sense of place and time - capturing that early Noughties mood of post-crash Ireland. Very much recommended.

Sally Rooney WISHES she wrote this book.

Okay, probably not. Sally Rooney is doing just fine, but this is the kind of story that I wish I was reading every time I try to read Rooney.

I loved this book and read it in 2 days. The second I finished I went straight to Goodreads and couldn't hit that fifth star quickly enough. 

Character driven book? YES
Irish narrator? YES
Academic setting? YOU KNOW IT

Rachel and James become friends while working at the local bookstore and quickly become roommates. They have a big old time in that simultaneously wonderful and horrible time of their 20s. Rachel falls in love with her professor Fred and their lives become twisted and connected between the 4 of them (including Fred's fancy wife).

The writing was just wonderful. I just adore Rachel and she was just so stinking relatable. We were both in college about the same time, having the same sort of worries. O'Donoghue captures that millennial college/career anxiety so perfectly. And the friendship between her and James! It's so real! I'm fairly convinced that O'Donoghue HAD to have gone through some of this, right??

This book is funny, real, sweet, biting, cringey, and wonderful. Give it a read.

Overview: Rachel is coming of age in Cork, Ireland, in 2010 as the recession is making the job market impossible, and the world feels collectively bleak. She's crawling through an English degree that feels pointless, especially in light of the recession. She picked it with no career goals in mind and feels relatively aimless in her swan dive into adulthood. Thankfully, she has her best friend James by her side, and as they share a run down house on Shandon Street, their lives bend, change, and shift so that every few months they're nearly unidentifiable. Framed around Rachel's life in 2021 as a fully grown adult, we sink into her adult-coming of age from around 19-22 as her life takes unexpected turns. Overall: 4.5

Characters: 4.5 Rachel is a character I immediately connected with as a fellow 20-year-old girl afloat in the abyss of "what am I going to do with my life?". She has a certain insecurity that feels embedded into her person, both physically about her height and emotionally in her connections with others. Once she meets James at the bookshop, her life finds a shape completely bent around his. While James maintains a strong skeleton of his own life, Rachel's is at the mercy of her best friend's path to her detriment. She has a similar tendency in romantic relationships, but the intensity of those is spared by her utter devotion to James that keeps them playing second fiddle. This creates both the sense of a powerful and important friendship and a warning about folding your life into someone else's completely.

So much of these characters are expressed in extremely subtle nuances, so it feels impossible to really get into them without spoiling what's so delightful and interesting about the book. The subtleties of the relationships and interactions is what the book is made of. Their various romantic entanglements and life choices as they cement their career aspirations paint a fascinating, relatable, and compelling portrait of some very different people, and surprising for literary fiction, each significant character does get some kind of send off by the end of the novel. I wish I could say more about the wonder of the wildly mixed up relationships and the characters that drive this book, but I would hate to ruin the surprises.

Plot: 4 This is a quintessential literary fiction novel. It's all about characters and subtlety and relationships, and I find that delicious. If you're not a fan of that style, you'll likely find the book quite boring. There are some truly dramatic moments, but that's sandwiched between a lot of quiet life that builds up to the most emotional twists. These moments felt earned, which is something I really appreciate, and I do feel like this novel has more plot than some in its category. I also appreciated the interesting framing of introducing us to Rachel in the present day and showing us small glimpses of her grown up life that created foreshadowing for the flashbacks to 2010 that constitute most of this book. It's a perfect literary coming of age creation, and I get the hype.

Writing: 4.5 I don't request books on NetGalley very often anymore (this is the only one I've requested all year), and I hadn't heard anything about this book when I sent in the request. I wasn't sure if I'd even get approved since I'd only ever read YA off NetGalley. I requested this one off the gorgeous cover and the Sally Rooney comparison. I had a much more natural and effortless connection with O'Donoghue's writing than with Rooney, but that might have to do with the 50 literary novels I've read in-between as practice. Still, if you're a fan of Irish literature or of Rooney, The Rachel Incident should be an easy favorite. There's a similarity in the quiet dedication to character portraits as well as an intensity and messiness to the relationships that unfold here that make the novels good companions. The book is expertly executed and feels both intimate and relatable as well as beautifully artistic.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to read this book early! I really enjoyed it. I thought the writing was very well done, and the story kept me interested. I believe my students/patrons would also love this book and will be acquiring it for the library!

Compelling, thoughtful, meaningful book about young adulthood, keeping secrets, and what we owe to other people.

A fun & thoughtful story. Recommend!

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.