What a fantastic novel about friendship, love, complex relationships and navigating life as a twenty-something. I thoroughly enjoyed O'Donoghue's writing style--humorous, witty, sharp. It's overall an unputdownable novel, and one that when you aren't reading, you'll be thinking about.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

"Perhaps it's because so many people claim Irishness that we keep putting our private jokes on higher and higher shelves, so you have to ask a member of staff to get them down for you." Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

There are times in each of our lives that we'd prefer not to recall. Immature, embarrassing, finding ourselves ... Call it what you wish, we've all been there. I cringed for Rachel as she navigated those years. Decisions made out of emotion and all the justifying .. Yes, I've been there.

What I adored about this story was the candor, the description passages of rain, smells, clouded vision and bad decisions. And of course the friendship. Who doesn't recall that tried and true relationship of Rachel and James - one that consists on shared inexperience, lack of money and most of all a soft place to land. Someone you can tell anything to - well almost anything. This story is full of youth, friendship, love, loss, betrayal and forgiveness.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley and the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf for the opportunity to read the digital ARC, The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue.

Rachel Murray is a young Irish woman getting ready to graduate from college in 2010 with a degree in English literature. She works in a bookstore and lives with her best friend James. Rachel tells her story of the incident from her current day (2022) perspective, which shaped her life.

I enjoyed the glimpses of Rachel’s current life as we get the details of her life in 2010. The characters are realistic and engaging and the story is paced well, with a satisfying ending.

This was a well written book but honestly it just wasn’t for me. I appreciated the angle that looked at the women’s reproductive health care concerns and inability to access abortion. Such an important topic and honestly, here in the US, highly relevant in the last year since the decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

Aside from that though, this book was hard for to relate to. The female MC came across as selfish and whiny but I think that has more to do with generational differences as I’m far past 20 and I grew up in a different time then the setting of this book.

I really really enjoyed The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue. It was a very smart, witty, and complicated coming-of-age story that had the added layer of social commentary around abortion.

We bounced back and forth a bit around timelines which at times could be a little confusing but ultimately was in good service of the story.

Rachel is in university in Ireland, and stumbling through a bit. She works at a bookstore, but isn't really sure what she wants to do with her life. She meets her coworker James and immediately is drawn to him. They become inseparable best friends - moving in together and deeply intertwining their lives.

They are young, a bit lost, poor, and searching for direction and love in all the wrong places. They are also grappling with the Irish recession and social issues that deeply impact them both.

I don't want to give too many details because going in blind made it all the more enjoyable. Rachel and James are complicated and complex but watching them stumble and grow and evolve is a story that will stay with me for some time.

I'll post this review on goodreads, retail sites and my bookstagram @scottonreads and twitter @sarahncotton

What makes The Rachel Incident a unique novel is that the plot is centered on one, life changing incident. Rachel Murray is a young college student living in Cork, Ireland and working in a book store there. She meets her soon to be life long best friend, James Devlin at work. Rachel and James become roommates and inseperable platonic friends. Rachel suspects James is gay and this is confirmed when she finds him in a compromising situation with her married English professor. This same professor is Rachel's crush. O'Donoghue's characters are identifiable and interesting. The plot is easy to follow as Rachel falls in love and tries to build a career that allows her to use her English degree. Both Rachel and James become part of the professor's world. If you are looking for that "something different" to read this summer, The Rachel Incident is the book for you.

I fell in love with this book quickly, from the very first chapter, fully intrigued by Rachel and James’ relationship and the messy antics of 20-year-olds living in Cork, Ireland. Told from the perspective of a mature Rachel looking back on that time in her life, this story is about friendship and sex and love and identity and I loved it so much on audio (thanks for my copy @prhaudio!) that I wasn’t even halfway through before ordering myself a copy, knowing that these were characters I’d want to revisit again and again.

This is a great coming of age novel about a young college student named Rachel and her best friend, James taking place in 2010 but flashing back to the future. It’s such a beautiful novel about young adults finding themselves and the strong friendship between James and Rachel. I really enjoyed reading it snd was disappointed when it ended.

At its heart, this is a story about friendship but the author layers in elements of growing up, sexuality, keeping secrets, and making tough life choices. I adored the relationship between best friends Rachel and James. They are truly nonromantic life partners. I also found the other relationships in this story so realistic and messy, in the best ways. I think this would make a great book club choice because I finished reading with so much to discuss and so many questions I wanted to explore. Thanks to Caroline O'Donoghue, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, and NetGalley for an ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.

In 1998 (stay with me, here), a movie starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd came out called “The Object of My Affection”. In a rough nutshell, it’s about a woman who gets pregnant and decides she’d rather raise the baby with her gay best friend than with the father of the baby and the gay best friend agrees. The issue is, of course, that committing oneself to being a surrogate parent and platonic significant other at the same time is a lot to ask of someone who comes to realize they want to fall in love for themself.

I thought of that movie while I was reading The Rachel Incident not only because they both involve a straight woman and a gay man being platonic besties, but also because their friendship is also as codependent as the one in the movie. And there’s a quote in “The Object of my Affection” that serves The Rachel Incident well:

“Don't fix your life so that you're left alone right when you come to the middle of it.”

This quote, I think, sums up part of the problem and the solution for besties Rachel and James in O’Donoghue’s dramedy, set largely in Cork County, Ireland, starting in 2009 and goes on into the late 2010s but ends somewhat nebulously prior to COVID. Rachel and James meet one day when she comes into work at the bookshop she’s worked at for two years and James is a new employee. They hit it off and become roommates. He tells her he’s straight, she thinks he’s lying but lets it go. She has a crush on one of her English professors anyway. One night at the bookstore after a book signing, she finds out for sure her roommate is gay when she sees him in the arms of someone unexpected. That night sets off a chain of events that deeply affects both of their lives for the next two years at least, sometimes testing their friendship to the breaking point. In the end, it’s Rachel who ends up paying the most for that sequence of events, even though she ultimately had nothing to do with it except keep a secret for her best friend who wasn’t ready to come completely out of the closet yet.

O’Donoghue has a great talent for dialogue. I found myself swinging from laughing to tearing up at some of the dialogue passages in this book. Her talent for writing Rachel’s inner narrative and keeping the character consistent while allowing for growth and development was also very nice. What I found myself not liking was how the book swung back and forth in time and tense without warning, since it was being told like Rachel is telling someone a story. That particular narrative structure just doesn’t fit the book well, especially when O’Donoghue doesn’t always tell us readers what year it is when she goes back to talking about the past.

There’s also somewhat of a cultural barrier, due to this book being based in recent Irish history not many international readers (like this US one) would be familiar with. I can keep up with the Irish and British slang just fine, but I know nothing of Irish politics because I’ve been too busy worrying about the mess we have over here. So a lot of the nuances of what the characters are talking about when it comes to laws and referendums was lost on me. Now, the debate about abortion and birth control is something that’s timely no matter where you are in the world, I think, because those are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights. Human rights are a global issue. So I definitely picked up on all of that, but when it comes to anything else political in Ireland I’m pretty much useless. That could’ve affected my reading experience, I’m sure.

If you want to read about everlasting friendship, unrequited love, loving the wrong person, loving the right person at the wrong time, second chances, how English degrees don’t prepare you for a career in which you can use it, and how people grow into becoming the people they’re meant to be, this is a great book. Just beware that if you don’t know that much about Ireland you might either need to just accept that for what it is or look it up.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under:Coming of Age/ Literary Fiction/LGBTQ Fiction

For something that I was so unsure about when starting out, I was completely sucked into Rachel’s story and fell in love with these characters. This is such a touching coming of age story of friendship. It is humorous while still tackling tough and hard hitting issues in a considerate and emotive way. I genuinely did not expect to enjoy nor feel so much empathy towards this story as I did, but I am so glad I read it and can’t wait to read more of Caroline’s work.

Rachel Murray finds herself with a brand new best friend as soon as James Devlin comes into work with her at a bookshop in Ireland in 2010. They are inseparable, quickly becoming each others life lines in the strange world of young adulthood, spending all their time together. Through Rachel's finishing up her studies in English at the university and James coming to terms with his sexuality, the readers are spending some of the most pivotal moments in their lives. When Rachel attempts to seduce one of her English professors, things took a turn that causes ongoing twists. Through examining her life 10 years later, we learn how her friendship with James affected the rest of her life.

This was just a splendid story about friendship and what it is like to come of age in a hard time in Ireland. The author spends a lot of time examining the friendship of James and Rachel. After reading this book, I feel like I was friends with them as well. Their relationship was so important to Rachel that she didn't even realize that it was affecting other parts of her lives, including her romantic life, which was telling towards the end of the book. I feel like many readers will have this resonate with them, especially if they have found themselves in a friendship in which you almost take on the identity of the other individual. I went to college at the same time of Rachel, making us the same age, and this story truly resonated with me. I felt like I could be in this story, the characterization was so complete, and I truly enjoyed the time I spent reading this book. It was poignant and heartwarming at times, made me actually laugh out loud, and I will be recommending this book to all my friends.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced copy of this book. All opinions within this review are my own.

I got this one as a 'read now' email so i didn't really know what it was about when I started it. It's not my usual genre choice but I did end up enjoying it. This story mostly just follows Rachel except that every time I thought I could guess what was going to happen with her next, I was completely wrong. The twists and plot of this story were all over the place (not like logically, just totally surprised me at times). I don't know that I could say I like any of the characters, but I was absolutely sucked into the drama and chaos of Rachel's life.

What a unique spin on a literary fiction coming of age centering around an inappropriate relationship with a professor! I went into this thinking how could this be any different than the other stories I've read with similar themes, but honestly I can say I have never read anything like this.

I loved how the story didn't focus on the relationship with the professor but instead the best friend relationship between Rachel and James. The way the story shifted was so intriguing and fascinating to read and I love how it felt both slow and fast at the same time.

Also the cover?! I would 100% purchase this book solely for the cover but bonus points for how great the insides were as well!

Rachel is a student working at a bookstore where she meets James and falling madly in love. They run all over the city of Cork together until Rachel falls in love with her married professor. Then James helps set up an opportunity for Rachel to seduce him. This sets in motion a series of secrets and incidents that intertwine all of their fates.

A humorous novel about love, friendship, and self discovery. I loved it.
Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

The Rachel Incident is a quirky, humorous coming of age novel about early adulthood and the struggles that college students go through as they find their footing both in who they are as people and those that they surround themselves with.

Rachel is a broke English major who befriends James Devlin, a closeted gay man who works at the bookshop with her. Together the two of them navigate their twenties and their individual love affairs.

I absolutely loved how real the characters were and despite not being Irish, I could still relate to Rachel. As an English major who searched for a job with a seemingly “useless” degree, I completely understood Rachel’s fear navigating life post-university and her age at the time period the novel takes place at about the same time I was in my mid-twenties.

Recommended for English majors and any millennial who has survived their twenties.

Thank you to NetGalley, Caroline O’Donoghue, and Knopf for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for this glorious ARC. All opinions are my own.

The Rachel Incident jumps between Rachel Murray in her twenties and her thirties. In a whirlwind, she and her best friend, James, go through love, heartbreak, friendships, breakups, makeups, and all hell breaking loose. I loved every minute of it.

I guess I skimmed over the synopsis when I requested it on NetGalley because I thought this was a book about lesbians; also, no clue that it took place in Ireland. Nevertheless, I was hooked from the moment I started reading. The characters were intriguing, their successes and mishaps entertaining, and there was a never a dull moment. It was hilarious, shocking, heartbreaking, and everything in between. Yes, everything was tied up quite nicely in the end, but I enjoy that every now and then—and I especially enjoy a flash forward.

Would recommend this to anyone who likes general adult fiction. If this book gets adapted into a movie, I will definitely be first in line to see it.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I liked how the story begins in present day, but much of it is told reflecting back on what happened in 2010, when Rachel was a young 20-something in school. The author does a great job of making the characters realistic and relatable (to their age group) - many parts in the books you want to scream at the characters. But than you realize they are going through a time in their life where they are growing and transitioning from childhood to adulthood. O'Donoghue does an amazing job of clearly bringing you back in time, where hindsight and time can show the lack of experience in your decision making. Overall, a well done book that hits on all the emotions. You will laugh, you will cry.
Thank you netgalley for my advanced reader copy.

A story about young adulthood set in 2010's Ireland, focusing on Rachel and best friend James, and their fascination and involvement with Rachel's professor Dr. Byrne and his wife Deenie.

I really enjoyed this book, and it was fantastic on audio. I loved Rachel and James's friendship; they were quirky, sarcastic, gave each other a hard time, but ultimately had one another's backs through everything. Barely scraping by, figuring out what they want to "do" with their lives, trying to find love, making mistakes and questionable decisions, what young adulthood is all about... just figuring it out. Not always pretty, but in Rachel's case entertaining.

One thing that kept me turning the pages was the writing. Even when there wasn't much "happening" by way of plot, Rachel drove the story through immaturity and life's setbacks to learning from experiences.

Definitely one of those books where you're not sure exactly where it's going but you're enjoying the ride so you stick around to find out what happens.
Looking forward to seeing more from Caroline O'Donoghue!