Special thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

The book switches times in the main character's life which made the book a bit confusing to get into. The trouble getting into the book was a reoccurrence for me throughout the whole novel and definitely affected my final review. As a whole Rachel was kind of annoying to me, she had obviously grown in her "radical" though as she aged, but it never really seemed to be anything that had substance to it. In addition, I was not a fan of how the gay character was treated (and never really given a chance to grow) and how bisexuality was portrayed.

I personally have been having trouble with this genre lately (imperfect young woman starting her life), so I would say to take my rating and review with a grain of salt.

I struggled with this one. the timeline switching was hard to keep track of and there was nothing about the characters that were particularly exciting or loveable. there was one moment where my jaw dropped but that seemed to have been the only moment of excitement throughout the entire thing… and that was fairly close to the start. I enjoyed the authors writing style but overall, it just felt like nothing really happened.

thank you to NetGalley and Random House/Knopf for the digital ARC in an exchange for an honest review.

I half expected to be bored after reading some of the 1 & 2 star reviews (which I very rarely do and have no idea why I did in this case) but I originally picked this up because it takes place in Ireland mostly and any book in Ireland is a book I'd want to read. I have absolutely no regrets. While I may not have completely loved some of the characters (including at times Rachel herself), I really enjoyed how the author wrote this story with dual timelines even if they weren't completely clear. It kept the mystery of who she is married to and having a child with throughout the story. It brought up many different difficulties of the times in Ireland and many different, difficult relationships issues that more than one of us have had to deal with in our pasts. This was my first story by this author and I would absolutely, gladly read her again. Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this story.

I just love a good coming of age contemporary story.

This had absolutely everything that I love. A main character that’s so real and flawed and just learning about life. A great background context about the recession in Ireland and how that affects our MC’s life and decisions. A love story that’s not perfect at all but that at the end it turns out okay, because they’re adults now and learned from all the shitty stuff they had to go through. A best friend relationship that just consumes your whole heart and life and that is the definition of soul mates and true friendship in a very messed up world where you don’t know who to trust, you just know they’ll be there.

It’s my first book from this author but it most definitely won’t be my last. I absolutely adored it and I know you’ll love it too. It comes out next week so make sure to buy it.

“And so now, everyone I love is called James.”

Thank you Netgalley and Knopf for the advance copy in exchange of an honest review.

“I was twenty and I needed two things: to be in love and to be taken seriously.”

This book was beautifully written and captures the messiness and angst of being in your early twenties. Caught between being a young person making irresponsible decisions and having fun, while desperately wanting to find your path and feel like a grown up.

We follow Rachel as she finishes her English degree in Ireland in 2010 when the economy is terrible and jobs are scare. She lives with her best friend James who is on his own journey of coming out. They both have significant love interests, one of which makes for a very messy situation leading up to the incident the book is titled after. Most of the book takes place around 2010, with some scenes in the almost-present day of 2022.

The characters are flawed and endearing and while at times it seems like not much is happening, bigger topics are touched on. Not only is this about growing up and finding yourself, but there's themes of sexuality, class differences, and access to reproductive healthcare. If you enjoy coming-of-age stories and character driven novels, give this a try!

Many thanks to Knopf for the digital review copy of this book, which comes out on June 27th.

I tore through The Rachel Incident, taking it down in two days’ time. It is, as the blurb promised, quite funny in a clever, Millenial sort of way. It earns a spot on the lists of books which made me laugh often enough that my husband asked what was so funny. It’s also a messy, complicated story about imperfect people living their lives.

The drama alone might pull you through, but the great writing is icing on the cake. Even though I was frustrated with the characters a lot of the time, they felt so real and human that I had to forgive their flaws.

If I had to complain about this book in any way, it’s that I occasionally found the narrative structure a bit confusing. The story is told by a present day Rachel, reflecting back on her younger years and the titular Rachel Incident. However, sometimes the blur between what’s happening in her present life and her past was a bit confusing.

I very much enjoyed The Rachel Incident, even if most of the plot was relatively predictable in spite of all the drama. It’s a story well told, with humor and honesty, that left me satisfied as a reader. I think fans of Really Good, Actually would enjoy this one for the similar “bit of a mess” vibes.

Reads more like a memoir than a novel. A coming of age examination of the turbulence of the times, the decisions that are made — sometimes for the most specious of unreflected reasons, the inappropriate loves, the mistakes, the lies told to ourselves and others, and just the plain old mishmash of life as one pretends to adulthood, develops friendships and relationships whilst floundering about unmoored. It’s not often that fiction gets people so right that it feels like your own life.

The Rachel Incident is a funny and engaging coming of age story. Throughout the book, we follow an ordinary 21 year old Irish girl through a tumultuous year in her life and all those tangled in it. The Rachel Incident highlights the realities many young Irish women face due to the lack of access to reproductive care. This book was an incredibly raw story that perfectly highlighted the realities of living in a small Irish city, graduating from university during a recession, and the complexities of power imbalances in relationships. O’Donoghue delivered a book perfect for lovers of Salley Rooney, but who are interested in less pretentious characters.

The Rachel Incident is one of my favorite reads so far this year and received an easy five star rating. I will recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a messy, but relatable coming of age story.

Thank you Netgalley for the Advance Copy.

I absolutely adored this book. Rachel's character was so relatable - not always likeable and certainly cringey at times, but mostly because I could recognize the not-so-great parts of my 20 year old self in her. Fortunately, Rachel's voice is much snarkier and full of dry wit than mine was at that age - making for great reading, I loved the relationships and found myself rooting for each character throughout. I also really loved the glimpses of present day Rachel - it was fun sort of knowing where the story wound up while still enjoying the ride. One of my favorite books of 2023 so far!

Ahem…this was SO SO fun! I am happy that I was given a chance to read this. It was entertaining and a great summer read. The writing was well done and clear, it was easy to follow (which is what we want in a summer story). Thank you netgalley for the earc.

Rachel is fresh off a break up, working in a bookstore, trying to finish her degree when she meets James. The connection is instant and deep as only friendships in your 20’s can be. It’s the early 2000’s in Cork, Ireland where jobs are disappearing, the economy tanking, and women don’t have reproductive health rights. As James comes to terms with his sexuality, Rachel takes on a publishing internship. Inevitably these relationships cross over, boundaries obliterated.

When the book opens Rachel is married, pregnant, and a journalist. Much of the story is told in flashbacks, so we know she figures her life out between ‘here and there’. Like reading the last chapter of a book first, knowing a character lives makes witnessing the journey no less painful. It’s easy to pass this off as a coming of age novel (and it is). It’s incredibly slow to get going and for me didn’t hit its stride until the halfway mark. The characters can be unlikable and exasperating, but this misses the big themes. O’Donoghue has swung for the fences and I think this is where the real strength is and she hits her mark. This is a story of unbalanced power in relationships, subtle and overt. It’s a look at what happens when women don’t have close, safe and legal access to reproductive health care. It’s a story about women getting thrown under the bus by men to clean up their messes. As I was talking about this with my book bestie we were incredulous “Why must women clean up the messes?!”.

Thank you to Knopf and Caroline O’Donoghue for the advance copy via Netgalley.

This book is just beautiful -- funny, refreshing, honest, and melancholy at the same time. I know I will think about it a lot and the intricate world that it weaved. Not that it was a different reality but the characters, the location, the story and the moment all feel so real. If you ever wanted to be a writer or if you ever had a quarter-life chrisis, I recommend this book. I also definitely recommend this book and this author if you like literary fiction and beautiful writing. I know I will re-read this book.

The Rachel Incident comes out next week on June 27, 2023, you can purchase HERE! You will love this book!

It was still half an hour until closing time, so the footpath was scattered with groups of girls who were either crying or getting sick.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Caroline O'Donoghue, and Knopf for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

I was so drawn to this book because my name is Rachel, and I'm a sucker for books with my name in them! Thankfully, it was right up my alley and exactly the type of book I like to read! The Rachel Incident is a comical book with a lot of heart and surprisingly a lot of depth. Although I am not like this Rachel at all, I found that I was really invested in her as a character and was rooting for her the entire time. I enjoy Irish humor, and I thought O'Donoghue did a fantastic job of writing actually funny scenarios and characters. The friendship between Rachel and James was my favorite part, as it was extremely heart-warming. Having these close friendships is such an important part of coming-of-age as young adults both in college and right after, and I though the love that was present through them was such a beautiful thing. I also though the relationship between Carey and Rachel was enjoyable to read about and played an interesting dynamic to the affair between James and Dr. Byrne. As someone who graduated in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, I could relate so much to the uncertain feelings that they were going through trying to find their place in the world. My biggest complaint is I thought the timeline jumps were a little unnecessary, and I found myself confused when they were occurring. They weren't clearly marked, and I don't think they added enough to the story as a whole to be interwoven. I also would have liked to see more of James, as I felt he was an extremely compelling character. Overall, I'm really excited to read more of O'Donoghue's work now, and I enjoyed this read!

3.5 stars. A quick, engaging read about a young woman in her 20s, living with her gay best friend, James, and wondering how to adult. Rachel and James crush on one of Rachel's professors, with long-ranging repercussions. A book about navigating your post-college years, wondering how you'll ever get a job, and looking for love and acceptance.

"Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife."

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

The synopsis and Ireland setting excited me, but this novel wasn't what I expected. It kept making me think of "Will & Grace" and wishing this book was better. James was the stereotypical gay best friend, and I wish he had been more developed. I found the Byrne character very despicable and couldn't enjoy any scenes that included him. Thank you NetGalley for this advanced copy!

It’s 2010. Rachel Murray is at university in Cork and working at a bookstore, thanks to global financial crisis that is squeezing her dentist parents, when she meets James Devlin, lower class and insistently heterosexual, who invites her to move in with him. The two of them develop a deep and caring friendship. When Rachel confides her crush on a professor, James helps her put together a book launch at the shop. But rather than Rachel connecting with her professor, it’s James who stumbles out of the closet. The resulting complications–of Rachel’s English degree, future in publishing, of the lives of her professor and his wife, of James and his dreams of writing comedy–will swirl in a direction that none of them could have foreseen.

Caroline O’Donoghue is a fantastic writer with an absolute gift for similes. (Sample: an Icelandic geyser is “Sea-World for the kind of people who read The New York Times on their phones”) Even when her characters lack compassion and insight for each other, her readers will ache for each of them trapped in impossible situations. She’s also brilliantly funny. The Rachel Incident is the best book I’ve read in ages and I enjoyed it immensely. Highly recommended.

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue is a great story of friendship and reaching adulthood in the early 2000s in Ireland.

The Rachel Incident follows Rachel and her friend James as their friendship grows, they fall in love and be come adults. The story tackles so deeper topics like coming out in the era of Will and Grace.

While I loved the story, I thought O’Donoghue’s writing was the best part. She captivated me, made me laugh out loud and even stop to read portions of the story to whomever was next to me!

I think The Rachel Incident stuck with me as I was about the same age as Rachel when the story took place and while I did not grow up in Ireland, there were a lot of similarities and I could relate.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Rachel Murray is living a most ordinary life. As a small-town, Irish student working in a bookstore searching for meaning between late shifts and paychecks, Rachel doesn't quite know what she wants out of life--she just knows she wants more. Enter James Devlin: he's unapologetically brazen, almost criminally-extroverted, and sexually-ambiguous And it's evidently a James Devlin-sized void that's been the ache in Rachel's life.

Soon, the two are inseparable and living together in Cork. James is in love with the unpredictability of life; Rachel is in love with her literature professor, Dr. Fred Byrnes. When a chance encounter at their bookstore sends Dr. Byrnes into not only Rachel's orbit, but James', their lives are interwoven--and irrevocably changed--overnight.

A poignant, endearing, deeply-human coming-of-age story, "The Rachel Incident" is sure to please fans of "Normal People" and "Frankenstein and Cleopatra." At their core, Rachel and James (and yes, the other James, too) are achingly-plausible; I rooted for them, rolled my eyes at them, pleaded with them, and ached for them. They aren't perfect characters, and there were a few moments throughout the story where I wished they were a tad more nuanced, a tad more complete. And while "The Rachel Incident" doesn't necessarily boast anything that hasn't been done before in a character-driven story, its voice is certainly refreshing and charming enough to tether readers to Rachel and James, especially readers asking themselves the same questions: "Who am I?" "Where am I headed?"

One of the more surprising standouts of the season for me, "The Rachel Incident" left a Rachel (and especially James)-sized imprint on my heart. Just lovely.

I've been on a bit of a thriller/mystery kick lately (aka all the time) and after digging through my to-be read pile, The Rachel Incident jumped out at me. It is easy to label this story as a coming of age tale but I think it is so much more. The story centers around Rachel Murray, a young woman entering into her last year at University as Ireland is on the brink of a recession. Rachel, a young woman that appears to never quite know who she is, especially in relation to those around her, finds herself drawn to her co-worker, James, at a local bookstore. Quickly, Rachel and James become inseparable, eventually moving in together. Their platonic relationship is the center of the Rachel Incident, a driving force behind Rachel's developing sense of self.

Rachel finds herself in a convoluted love triangle (love square?) between herself, James, her professor Dr. Brynes, and Dr. Byrnes' wife. I can confidently say the unraveling story and the relationships between these characters is not something I predicted, making the story that much more enjoyable. Ultimately, this is a story about friendship and how those in our lives help to structure who we are capable of becoming. By the end of the story, Rachel Murray has developed a stronger sense of self which is something she struggled to find at the beginning of the novel.

The only reason I deducted a star from my final review is because I found myself wanting more from Rachel. While I accept and appreciate her growth, and the strong relationships she is able to develop without sacrificing herself, I still feel like we lost out on some of that growth. Too much is left unsaid with the time jumps to present day (2018) London.

Thank you to the publisher, Caroline O'Donoghue, and to NetGalley for my copy of The Rachel Incident in exchange for my honest review.

4⭐️

Rachel Murray has only every had one fight with her best friend James and that happened shortly after they met at the bookstore they both worked at. But that one fight cemented a life long slightly codependent friendship. They moved into a slightly questionable flat on Shandon Street spend all of their time together. James is a closeted gay man and Rachel is the only one who knows. Rachel is attracted to her college English professor, Dr. Byrne, and James is the only one who knows.

James helps Rachel plan a book reading for Dr. Byrne's new book at their job with the hope that Rachel will be able to make her move. That night is the starting point of James and Rachel's whirlwind relationship with Dr. Byrne and his beautiful wife, Deenie. A relationship that ends in a misunderstanding but completely changes Rachel's life forever.

Did I request this book because my name is Rachel? Maybe. Did I actually enjoy this book even though I had no expectations? Yes, yes I did. This was a nice break from my normal Thriller. I really enjoyed reading about platonic soulmates and the lengths they were willing to go to protect each other. I liked seeing what Rachel was willing to sacrifice for James when he needed her most and vice-versa. I also liked how all of Rachel's future relationships have to live up to the relationship she has with James, which I think is very relatable.

I also liked how much of the pro-choice movement in Ireland this book went into. The book went into aspects of obtaining an abortion when you live in an area where they weren't available at all, including travel logistics and requirements and costs. It was a really eye-opening breakdown and is even more depressing when thinking that that is where the US is going.

Thanks Netgalley for providing this ARC to me!