I loved this book. Effortless writing, engaging story and not at all the lost Millennial story I was expecting. Really a delightful, thought-provoking read.

This is a great book for lovers of Sally Rooney's writing style, especially in Normal People. I loved the setting and getting an inside look into the flawed relationships in the book. It was slower paced but still held my attention.

An exciting and funny read. Unique characters and a story that weaves together love, friendship, lust and makes an entertaining read!

I had an odd experience with this book, because when I picked it up I was enthralled, obsessed. But then I'd forget to pick it up again. I'm not sure how it can be both so compelling and so easy to get out of your mind. The ARC published before I could finish, and I bought the hardback to read instead, which says something.

But it's the story of a pair of best friends in Cork, as they work through their twenties and finding themselves, along with their intimate but harmful connection to a professor and his wife. Rachel and James have one of those friendships everyone dreams about, where you just truly find your person and no one else matters at the end of the day. The balance and health of that relationship does increasingly come into question, but it is still a spectacular connection, and the warmest, most romantic bad living situation you can imagine.

But I couldn't stand Rachel. She was always just there, and so self absorbed. Even after she reckons with that, she's just boring. I hated the story being told from the many-years-after framing - it didn't add anything. It aimed to set the stage for how they grew up, but it ended up just being overly dramatic reflections into the actual story. I do think I liked the end.

And mostly, I loved James. I think you're supposed to love James. He is kind and charming and broken, and he is good. I want to protect him from anything and everything.

I mostly listened to this, but enjoyed it very much. I stayed an hour late at work just to finish it! Fans of Sally Rooney will enjoy this writer I think - though this story is a bit lighter than Rooney's typically are. I loved the Irish setting and slang, and loved the relatable nature of the characters.

for fans of lily king’s writers & lovers, sally rooney’s beautiful world where are you, or dolly alderton’s ghosts.
glittering novel by caroline o’donoghue about nostalgia and messy early adulthood and the magic of falling in love with people, especially your friends. i loved it.

📖ARC REVIEW📖

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the advanced reader copy.

This week’s headline? I miss the pre-2020s

Why this book? Sounded like something I’d like

Which book format? ARC

Primary reading environment? Train and bus

Any preconceived notions? Kind of a different spin on a teacher/student relationship

Identify most with? James

Three little words? “monkey’s paw wish”

Goes well with? Useless college degrees, small bookstores

Recommend this to? Book clubs

Other cultural accompaniments: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/06/20/rachel-incident-caroline-odonoghue-review/

I leave you with this: “I am again in another impossible situation…”

Not sure how to review this… it’s sort of a coming of age novel, which is a genre I love. I didn’t love or hate this book, but I felt almost removed from it all. The writing itself was perfectly fine, but I wasn’t drawn in like I would be with other novels in this genre. That being said, I’m sure there are people who will love this book, I’m just not one of them. *shrugs*

The Rachel Incident is available now.

This is both a small story of one woman's decade--from seedy university digs and hangovers with her gay roommate through professional development to the birth of her first child--and the story of Ireland's financial and social turmoil of the early 21st century. It tackles abuse of power and academic privilege, the difficulties and exultations of coming out queer in a college town filled with football hooligans and conservative religious parents, couple dynamics viewed through the lenses of several different Rachels in the course of her evolution toward maturity. And especially it speaks of lies, their endurance and their evolution.

The book launch scene in chapter 7 is--apart from one notable backroom moment--both entertaining and cringingly familiar to authors and bookstore owners.

At one point Rachel talks about bands whose names she wouldn’t remember a decade later but that occupied "a magical sweet space between celebrity and accessibility.”

For me this book is a magical sweet space between Ireland as it is, Ireland of the bleak financial-crash years before the Celtic Tiger roared anew, and the Ireland that was and remains shaped indelibly by the starvation times under Queen Victoria.

Ireland has a long and complex memory, and that is infused in every page of this engaging tale of a young woman growing up, navigating her world not always wisely. Her happy ending isn't one I'd have envisioned, and yet it was perfect for her. I dare you not to tear up.

Interesting and funny! I loved the setting of Ireland and the drama that unfolded. It felt like it had a “Normal People”, “Derry Girl” sort of feel to it. It might be just because the characters were Irish😅

This book is perfect for fans of Sally Rooney. It’s very slice-of-life with realistic characters. There is a lot to digest but I loved it.

Rachel is a young Irish woman living during the recession in 2010. She lives with her gay friend, James but is crushing on her married professor. What happens after that becomes what is later referred to as the Rachel incident.

I liked these characters. Rachel has the typical dry Irish sense of humor that i found was akin to my own. She made me chuckle quite a bit. The book focuses on friendship and personal growth. There is good LGTBQ representation in this one and I enjoyed the overall story.

Pick this up for an Irish literary read that at times will make you laugh

I LOVE BOOKS ABOUT CHAOTIC FRIENDS IN THEIR TWENTIES. This was one of those novels that's not so plot-focused that we lose the nuances of the people we're reading about. I can see how some readers might have the "but nothing happened" frustration, but this was just a really great depiction of a specific time in our lives that we all experience. It has some heavier themes for sure, it's not a lightweight, but I thought it was really well-written and a great read. One gripe is that James was a bit of the stereotypical gay friend, but...sigh. It is what it is.

Looking back on life in her early 20s in Cork, Ireland, Rachel recounts her relationship with her bookstore coworker and best friend James, who insists, at first, that he isn’t gay. When Rachel develops a crush on her professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James tries to facilitate their relationship. But things don’t go as planned, and when Fred’s wife Deenie gets involved, the lives of all four become messily intertwined. Rachel and James try to navigate their emerging adulthoods amidst an economic recession and political uncertainty in the early 2010s in Ireland in this insightful examination of friendship soulmates. Fans of Sally Rooney and Steven Rowley will enjoy this coming-of-age story, narrated by Rachel years after the fact, with generosity and compassion for her younger self.

An Irish "Will and Grace", O'Donoghue introduces us to our titular character, Rachel, as she looks back onto her early twenties where, like many twentysomethings, she had no clue what she was doing or what life had in store. Rachel, and her best, still-closeted/figuring it out, friend James, work in a local bookstore as the former is finishing up her English degree. When her English professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, happens upon their shop, Rachel finds herself compelled enough to devise a way to make Fred fall in love with her by hosting a book event; she didn't, however, intend for the seducing to be done by someone BUT herself. The situation quickly finds itself spiraling out of control with the introduction of Fred's wife and Rachel's short-lived employer, Deenie.

One of the novel's strengths lies in its exploration of the aftermath of the incident, especially in the way it affects the dynamics between these four characters. The unraveling of relationships and the revelation of hidden truths offer moments of tension and reflection that underscore the fragility of human connections. These glimpses into the characters' emotional turmoil provide some of the book's most engaging passages, and I can see how this novel is so frequently compared to both Normal People and Sally Rooney in general. However, while I was hoping to be engrossed in Rachel and James' friendship, which is ultimately the most important relationship in the novel, I found James to be too stereotypical and over-the-top. This clashed with my initial feelings towards James, which were that he would act as a grounding force for Rachel, who was clearly in need of one.

I desperately wanted to like this book, but ultimately I was not charmed by Rachel and her (many) incident(s).

I wouldn’t call this “brilliantly funny” as is claimed in the Goodreads synopsis; I didn’t really consider it to be in the comedic genre at all, as the plot veered towards a bit heavier material. It was, however, a good, complicated and engaging story about friendship, first love, first heartbreak, and loyalty.
Thanks to #netgalley and #knopfpublishing for this #arc of #therachelincident in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book. It’s not “light reading.” I don’t even know where to begin. I slept on this to see if I could better formulate my thoughts, but frankly, I’m a bit overwhelmed. This story touches on so many important themes: friendship, love, insecurities, loyalty, immaturity, coming to terms with being gay in the 90s, the economy, anti-abortion laws in Ireland and how they affected actual women, family ties, personal growth, and so much more. I fell in love with these characters and empathized with every one of them. Even though it was told entirely from the POV of Rachel, and despite her immaturity at the time of the events, she tells the story of what happened with such sensitivity and understanding that it’s impossible to feel any animosity toward any of them. Some of their lives were simply tragic, and there was nothing to be done but to offer them grace.

The story begins with Rachel in the present day, explaining her current situation (pregnant and married) without going into too much detail. Someone says something that reminds her of “the Rachel Incident” and it takes her back about ten years to a time when she and her best friend James experienced great heartache. As she retells the story, she pulls the reader into her mindset and relays all of the mistakes made, and alludes to what she might have done differently if she’d been more mature. I felt her pain and her regret, and like her, wished she could go back and change things.

We still don’t know whether she has achieved her HEA, and we won’t know until the very end. And when I read it, it brought tears to my eyes, because she truly walked through fire to get there. This is an epic love story in the vein of Homer’s journey to return home. The difference is that Rachel doesn’t know where her home is, so how can she possibly get there? Plus, she’s really the main obstacle to her own happiness, like most of us are.

There were some wonderful descriptions and observations sprinkled throughout the story. I loved the description of Rachel Murray and James Devlin’s developing friendship when they move into an apartment together. They listened to “Cecilia” on repeat and started singing the song together, “elaborately lip-syncing,” flailing their “limbs in all directions, grabbing onto the song fiercely.” “By the sixteenth “Cecilia,” James and I had given birth to our relationship and it wandered around the house like a sticky, curious foal.” After creating an elaborate scenario based on few facts, now being taken seriously, “I felt like a child who imaginary friend was starting to bite people.” Rachel walked in on something she didn’t want to see and described her reaction as “it was just above ‘glimpsing’ and just below ‘gazing.’”

While describing her attraction to the second James in her life, dubbed Carey because she already had a James in her life, she observed, “My attraction to him came on like food poisoning.” She describes her view of “College I couldn’t gather the roughage to give a sh1t about.” Describing how she and her brother acted upon meeting James: “We, in that way siblings do for outsiders, tried to make a travelling circus out of our childhood.” I didn’t realize that’s a thing all siblings do, but it certainly resonated with me.

James and Rachel work in a bookstore. They “developed a deep hatred of women who bought The Help to read on holiday. ‘They should The Help us,’ James sniped. ‘Their husbands should have The Help-ed the country by not The Help-ing themselves.’” One night, they decided to cook a spaghetti bolognese and overcooked the meat. “It had the consistency of scabs.” I love this description (no setup necessary): “I felt now like we were two sad clowns in a nursery painting.”

Rachel decides not to attend her college graduation, and at the last minute, her mother convinces her to do it. But it’s too late. She can’t rent a gown and she can’t pick up her degree with everyone else. Her mother “pestered the administration office all day to let me go. She invented various problems as to why I hadn’t RSVP’d or booked my rental gown, hinting heavily at mental illness, financial ruin and general poor health. It was incredible how accurately she had nailed my situation while ostensibly lying about it.”

Rachel and Carey have a fight about her relationship with James (which is valid) and Carey tells her, “‘This isn’t about James.’ ‘It feels like it is,’ I said. I was hoping to get Carey on a charge of homophobia, thus clearing me on the charge of being a selfish and stupid person.” This was a particularly heartbreaking scene in which Rachel recounts all of her mistakes and laments her immaturity. On a lighter note, Rachel thinks that “diets were useless. If I didn’t have carbs three times a day I couldn’t finish a sentence, and that was that.” I feel that way too.

Overall, it’s easy to love Rachel even while you’re begging her to stop what she’s doing. She represents that part of us that couldn’t make good decisions to save our lives when we were young and immature, yet felt worldly and holier-than-thou. Her friendship with James is a beautiful thing, a thing that allows James to live his truth and forget worrying about what people think. But her insecurities are always tripping her up, whether it be a fear that James will drift away from her or the stronger fear that Carey will grow tired of her and leave. She lives too much of her life in fear of being alone, a very effective way to push people away, but it’s not until she spends some time alone that she learns her own value. Over the course of the story, everyone changes for the better. It paints a hopeful picture of what we can do with the support of a good friend and the courage to be ourselves and take chances. I’m still reeling from a story that only covers about ten years, but feels like it covered a lifetime. If I feel this way after reading it, I can only imagine how O’Donoghue feels after writing it. I’m glad she did.

The Rachel Incident is my favorite book I read this month. Rachel was such a fun and lovely character to follow and I enjoyed the many relationships we saw her through. I felt outrage, joy, and sadness while reading this book and what else can I ask for with literary fiction?

I can't recommend this book enough to women young and old (maybe even some men). If literary fiction about finding yourself in life and love are interesting to you then you need to pick this one up!

Thank you so much for my copy of The Rachel Incident, I will be giving it to all of my friends to read.

such a fun and well-told story. the characters are drawn so precisely and realistically, and the friendship between rachel and james was so well=written and really reminded me of the friendship with my best friend which was lovely. truly truly enjoyed

The Rachel Incident is a quirky coming-of-age story set in Ireland during the financial crisis. I'll pretty much read whatever Caroline O'Donoghue writes at this point. Her characters are lovely and she weaves a beautiful story of love, self-discovery, and acceptance with this one. I'll be telling all my friends to grab a copy.

Every novel is about friendships these days, but this one got it right. Donoghue's writing is so precise and sharp and SO funny. Fans of Sally Rooney, rejoice, there is an author to put alongside your books on the shelf.
It focuses on small decisions and the spirals they create in our life, but never for a moment weighs you down with that message. Cannot recommend it enough!