O’Donoghue’s writing pulled me in from the beginning and i binged this in a day! Rachel and James were exciting characters to follow and the drama that unfolds never felt heavy-handed - it gave me sally rooney vibes

I’m not sure how to put into words how much I adored this book! It was so well written and so incredibly relatable. At times it made me cringe because it brought me back to being that age and being young and dumb. It really encapsulates the messiness of young adulthood.

I absolutely adored both Rachel and James even when thought they were flawed and often made bad choices. I loved their friendship and seeing updates on how it was in present time. The side characters are all fleshed out well and I loved the character development.

This is a book that will for sure be at the top of my favorite books for the year- I cannot recommend it enough! My only complaint is I wanted more- I could have stayed with these characters longer although I do feel as it wrapped up beautifully.

Thank you netgalley for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

This was fantastic. Partly a coming-of-age story with a very messy MC and realistic circumstances, and those tend to skew dark and depressing, but this still had plenty of levity. Very enjoyable, with fully developed, likeable characters.

Love, love, love this tender novel from Caroline O’Donogue. A book to be SA Poland read slowly. Highly recommended.

<i>"And so now, everyone I love is called James."</i>

[4.5 Stars]

This was a slow burn of a story of friends that barely scrape by in Cork Ireland. Working together in a bookshop and sharing the same bed to keep warm Rachel and James are inseparable besties. Life has a weird way of teaching us all lessons and this novel perfectly encapsulates that time in your life where you are broke and unsure who you are and how you will eventually contribute to society. Where the best days of your life are spent attending events for the free drinks and staying up all night pondering the future with your best friend.

Who couldn't picture themselves as Rachel? Making sub par decisions until you eventually are forced to grow up. Rachel picks up an internship working for her professor's wife who is in publishing, and is in and out of immature relationships. This could be *almost* anyone's life, but watching these characters develop over the years, I was immediately invested in their futures. A character study done expertly well. Characters that are fully well rounded with faults, I could see Rachel and James as friends in my own life.

It ended, and my heart broke because I thought I had more pages, more time with these characters. I needed to know more, I yearned to know more. This is one I will be thinking about for a while.

I had no idea what to expect when I started this book, but I truly loved falling into the story of Rachel, James, and the people in their lives. I thought this was a really well done coming of age story, and I love how all of their stories came together as we watched them grow up. I particularly loved Rachel's relationships with both James and Carey, because they felt very authentic in both the love she feels for these two men and the pain they inflict upon her without wanting to.

I also really loved how this book handled tough topics, especially abortion. Although this book is fictional, it was interesting to read about the very real challenges women in Ireland faced not that long ago. I thought that this section was handled really beautifully by the author, and it didn't seem like it was forced into the story or served no purpose.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the eARC!

James & Rachel embark on a lifelong adventure that culminates in The Rachel Incident. How will they overcome? This book is a wild ride. I loved the perspectives of the emcee and the characters themselves. The first part of the book was slow for me; I wish more had happened in similar fashion to the second half. Looking forward to more books from this author!

Thank you Penguin Random House for my Netgalley copy of THE RACHEL INCIDENT by Caroline O’Donoghue, out 6/27/23.

I loved this book more than I thought I would. It is a laugh-out-loud lit fic novel about best friends in their 20’s before they figure themselves out, falling in and out of love with the wrong people and the right people at the wrong time. Sally Rooney taught me I love reading books about Ireland 20-somethings and Caroline O’Donoghue reminded me.

The ending is incredible. I loved how everything wrapped up and I adore both Rachel and James as characters. There were moments (the dinner party scene!) that made me gasp out loud in public. There are also keen little details that are so universal, but haven’t seen them descfribed like that before and I loved it! I also enjoyed learning more about the Ireland abortion referendum and how it impacted Irish women having to travel to London for abortions and how the recession and financial crash impacted places outside of the US in the 2010’s with fresh college grads and boomers alike.

I would of loved if James had a POV in this book, but I also respect the authors choice to make Rachel the forefront voice. It also was enticing to read about a closeted man in his 40’s in contrast to a young gay man coming out for the first time.

All in all, highly recommend this book! It’s a great read and will definitely seek out more from this author. I love that this book was clearly based around the authors lived experience and real-life best friend Ryan. The idea of “two friends trying to create huge, romantic worlds for themselves.” <3

This was a coming-of-age story that felt authentically real, with well-drawn side characters and believable relationships. I really enjoyed it and felt that author really captured what finding yourself in your early twenties can look like, mess and emotions and all. The Cork, Ireland setting was interesting as well, as it explored the economic hardships of the early 2000s from a new (to me) perspective.

What a great book! I loved reading all the intricacies of Rachel’s life and how she transformed throughout the book.

The story was so well crafted that it kept me coming back to it to see where it was going next.

A story of Rachel, a student in Ireland, and her best friend James. Rachel falls in love with one of her professors and plans to seduce him. However, the professor starts an affair with James.

This was a very slice of life novel for me, which isn’t really my favorite. I kept waiting for more plot. I think maybe it was the writing style. Others probably will like it more as that is more of a personal thing!

This book. THIS BOOK!! My favorite of the year so far, hands down. I was enthralled and now a huge fan of O'Donoghue's writing. I kept wanting to crawl back into the Rachel's world -- Cork, Ireland in 2010. Rachel is finishing her last year of university and living with her best friend James. They get caught up in a married couple's relationship in unexpected, complicated ways, but everything is very much grounded in reality and each twist and turn - crushes, young love, being broke college students and an unexpected pregnancy - is surprising, relatable, and well-earned.

There is just something refreshing and cool about how O'Donoghue writes. It goes down easy, invites you in, and keeps you guessing. THE RACHEL INCIDENT took me by surprise, and I loved how it was both complex and hilarious, heartfelt and cynical. Because its sent in Ireland and written by a young Irish woman, some will probably try to compare it to Sally Rooney but the are nothing like each other. I think O'Donoghue is much better, much more entertaining, and this book is going to be a blockbuster.

The Rachel Incident is a great read about relationships and friendships. I enjoyed the storyline and the little surprises that you don’t see coming. Well done!!

Ok I adored this book!!!! It starts off a bit slow and cliched but the writing, the story, the dialogue, the ENDING. I loved it so much I highlighted portions, something I rarely do. Anyway please read this so we can talk.

Thank you to NetGalley for an early copy -- it comes out next week!

A banger, indeed! I loved this book and so many phrases will live rent free in my mind from now on: "I felt like a child whose imaginary friend was starting to bite people."!? and "I felt like I was drowning and someone was asking me about my tax return." Just WOW.

This story pulled me in from the first few pages and I swallowed it so fast I was disappointed when it ended. I fell in love with the friendship between Rachel and James, as well as with the early stages of Rachel and Carey's relationship. It all felt like it happened to me.

I was only left wanting to hear more about the long-distance friendship and about James' successful career. Highly recommend!

I thought this story was a really refreshing one that tells of the good and bad things in relationships. This story made me laugh so many times and was a welcomed reprieve from the thrillers I usually read.

The Rachel Incident is bursting with romance--the romance of youth, of the love of books and a dream, the romance between true friends, ill-fated love affairs, and the quieter, more comfortable romance of adult love. This book made me nostalgic for my twenties at times--the way that friendships can form a whole world and how struggling to make ends meet while figuring out how to reconcile your dreams with the real world is somehow tenable with a real friend beside you. At other times it made me very happy to be happily on the other side.

It is a great portrayal of a certain kind of youthful idealism and it is fun to watch these characters grow and age out of it--particularly Rachel, who sees and recounts her transgressions (some much worse than others) with clear and critical eyes. I laughed. I cried. And I was sad to put this one down.

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue

Caroline O’Donoghue covers a lot of ground in this fascinating coming of age book of love, friendship, deception, heartbreak, anguish, and forgiveness. The protagonist, Cork born and raised Rachel Murray, hears some startling news in a bar and reaches into her past to recall her first meeting with James Devlin. She and James were bookstore co-workers who quickly became inseparable. Their co-dependence proved challenging for not only sustaining relationships outside this close-knit partnership, but also for making the transition into adulthood. Their carefree lifestyle is turned on its head when a series of events forces them to examine their lives and make some life changing decisions.

Present-day Rachel drops hints about these events which become transparent during a second (and also highly enjoyable) reading of The Rachel Incident.

Thank you to NetGalley and Alfred A. Knopf for sending this book for review consideration.

I absolutely LOVED this book, which tells the story of Rachel and her best friend James as they navigate the crush she has on her college professor. It was funny, heartfelt, a page turner...pretty much perfect. I loved the complex relationships and the portrayal of the friendship between James and Rachel. I also enjoyed the setting - Ireland, the independent bookshop where they work...and it even had something of a feel of a campus novel, since they're students and their professor is involved. It was also a bit of a coming of age story, and I liked reading about how they were kind of trying to figure things out while being messy college students. I just loved it so much!

I was pleasantly surprised by The Rachel Incident. It's another sad girl litfic/disaster girl novel with all the things you can expect from those: character-driven, slower paced, nuanced and detailed, all with characters who make questionable decisions. In the end, though, I loved these characters and I loved this story.

The Rachel Incident follows Rachel Murray in her last semester of college in 2010 and then a bit afterward, occasionally jumping to her present-day life. We see her move in with a co-worker from the bookstore she works at, James, who is a closeted gay man. They immediately hit it off, and in his plot to get Rachel to hook up with the English professor she has a crush on, he ends up hooking up with the professor instead. After Rachel graduates, she interns for the professor's wife, who works in publishing, and a myriad of chaos ensues all alongside Rachel trying to figure out life and find stable work during the 2010 economic crisis.

I really related to Rachel in a lot of ways. I felt like the general topics of finding friendship, making any kind of connection, searching for a career, and trying to find a place in the world after college were all very relatable. It made me laugh out loud at times. I loved the overall arc of the story, and the journeys these characters took from start to finish. I enjoyed the writing style and the ways in which the author caught the essence of scene-building with her words. I pictured everything vividly. I felt every emotion. And, unlike some disaster girl novels, I enjoyed watching Rachel grow into a person with merit.