I'll be thinking about this book for years to come. It's so inherently of its setting, to the point I could imagine myself walking through the streets of Cork with Rachel. But also it's incredibly universal and relatable in its themes and issues tackled.

I was thrown for a loop about 50 pages in and after this revelation I was completely hooked on Rachel, James, Fred, Deenie, Carey, and their story. It deals wonderfully with abortion, the recession, infidelity, and the chaos that came with being a young person in your late teens/early 20s in an Ireland that was saying goodbye to the Celtic Tiger years.

I loved it. I savoured it.

The Rachel Incident is a captivating coming-of-age drama ideal for those born in the mid 80s to mid 90s, as its full of period details from that era's early adulthood which are very relatable. It’s a little slow-paced and indulgent in places, but this is purposeful and ideal for readers who enjoy voicey literary fiction.

The Rachel Incident is a coming-of-age campus comedy drama set in UCC, with messy protagonist Rachel and her gay best friend James becoming hopelessly entangled in the lives of Rachel’s English professor Dr Fred Byrne and his wife Deenie with stark consequences.

The book is a cut above all the messy-in-their-20s millennial novels, probably because it never descends into maudlin self-pity, even when life takes some really shitty turns for Rachel. Instead, it’s funny, pithy, warm, irreverent and nuanced, not to mention hugely entertaining with brilliantly drawn characters who have impeccable comic timing.

Caroline O'Donoghue's 'The Rachel Incident' delivers a captivating and relatable story that explores the complexities of identity, relationships, and the pursuit of personal fulfillment. With her trademark wit and astute observations, O'Donoghue once again proves her ability to craft engaging narratives that resonate with readers.

At the center of the story is Rachel, a young woman grappling with the pressures and expectations of modern life. Rachel's journey unfolds in a manner that is both humorous and thought-provoking. O'Donoghue expertly captures the millennial experience, skillfully exploring themes of ambition, self-doubt, and the quest for authenticity.

One of the highlights of 'The Rachel Incident' is O'Donoghue's ability to create authentic characters. Rachel, in particular, is a flawed yet endearing protagonist whose struggles and insecurities are portrayed with empathy and nuance. Through her portrayal, O'Donoghue delves into the challenges of navigating personal and professional relationships in a rapidly changing world.

O'Donoghue's writing style is engaging and laced with humor. A sharp wit and insightful commentary on contemporary issues infuses the story with depth and prompting readers to reflect on their own lives and choices.

However, at times the novel does lean on typical plot points causing events to unravel somewhat predictably. And with this there are moments when the pacing feels slightly uneven. The story occasionally meanders, with detours into subplots that, while adding depth to the characters, distract from the central narrative.

Overall though, with her keen insights and compelling storytelling, O'Donoghue proves once again why she is a writer to watch.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC for an honest review

'the rachel incident' follows 20-year-old rachel murray, a young woman living in cork, studying english at college, and working in a bookshop during the economic depression of the early noughties.

following the division of a plan to seduce her married professor, dr. byrne, with the help of her closeted gay best friend james, rachel's problems suddenly become very adult. over the course of a year, she and james find their everyday lives increasingly entwined with the byrnes'; an entanglement that peaks with expensive cheese and wine in their grotty student flat, and crashes with a well-kept secret that results in a grievous, non-retractable lie.

when rachel isn't causing general chaos with james, crushing on everyone she meets, putting off doing laundry, and falling in love with ireland's least reliable man, she is busy working overtime to make ends meet, navigating abortion access pre-repeal, and battling with her own ethical identity.

as expected, o'donoghue expertly balances the bleakness of ireland's regressive political state with the tangible excitement of these young characters who are desperate to break the mould and kickstart their lives. this novel has all of the melodrama of a compelling coming-of-age story, but is infused with nuanced observations on the sociopolitical backdrop - on this culture desperate for control.

i loved reading about the early days of rachel and carey's relationship, when they spent every day in bed being disgusting and totally addicted to each other, and i loved meeting present-day rachel at the end. but honestly, there is just so much to love about this book. o'donoghue's quintessentially gritty and humorous voice. the way she captures the exact array of emotions that come with breaking up with your former self in your twenties, over and over and over. the unexpected plot twists. the explorations of so many types of love. the acknowledgements. the uk cover. the us cover. when i wasn't reading this book, i was completely absorbed in rachel's world. i still think about it (carey), and i finished it in january.

caroline o'donoghue at her very best 🖤

I absolutely LOVED this book. I understand the Sally Rooney comparisons to an extent, but it is important for me to mention that this book is also very different. I love Sally Rooney, but her writing takes itself very seriously! The Rachel Incident has a lot more warmth and humour and lightness, despite the depth and often very serious subject matter. And while there is the plotline of a couple of friends whose lives become entangled with those of a married couple, Dr. Fred Byrne is merely a catalyst in O'Donoghue's book. The real story here is that of the wonderful platonic love affair between Rachel and James (Devlin).

The beauty in this book lies in its very accurate and familiar depiction of friendship, love, womanhood and burgeoning sexuality. I really engaged with its depiction of young people being thrown into very grown-up things at a time when Ireland had barely moved out of a sexually constrictive culture. It's the coming-of-age tale I want to read again and again. It's smart, relatable, nostalgic, witty and warm, and the writing is just brilliant. I adored it.

This is the first adult novel from star author Caroline, who you may know from her superb podcast, Sentimental Garbage: here we spend a year in Cork with student Rachel and her irresistibly-convivial housemate James in their poorly-maintained flat, and follow them as they study their arts degrees, tentatively plan for the future amidst an economic crisis, scrabble for cash and cling to their much-loved jobs at a bookshop. On paper, the plot is fairly straightforward: Rachel decides she fancies her married professor, Dr Byrne, and she and James devise a scheme to get the two of them together: but the result is their lives entwining with the Byrnes’ in ways neither of them could have foreseen. The beauty of this novel is in the whip-smart detail: Rachel’s rationale for her decisions and her observations on life are both acutely funny and grimly recognisable for many; her painful on-again-off-again relationship with her boyfriend Carey is deeply touching and unnervingly real, and the hopeful naivety with which the housemates navigate life will make you cringe, yet is also intoxicatingly charming. You’ll probably charge through this in a single sitting before coming up for air: conflicted between wishing you could have lived with Rachel and James, yet also grateful to have those years in the rear view mirror.

Reviewed in the July issue of Cambridge Edition – https://online.bright-publishing.com/view/320695090/28/

This was such an engaging, well-paced and funny read – everything felt so real and incredibly well-observed, from the character dynamics between 2010 Rachel and James and Carey, and Deenie and Mr Byrne, to present-day Rachel's POV and how she filters her past self's actions (and also juxtaposes the two time periods, even though they're not really that far apart). I found it moving at the end and even though I wanted more, I liked that the ending showed the female characters getting narrative control over, and/or closure for, 'The Rachel Incident'.

This appeared as part of the 2023 Irish Times summer reads spread:
It’s 2010 in Cork, and Rachel Murray is obsessed with Dr Fred Byrne, one of her lecturers in University College Cork. After she organises a launch for his new book in the shop where she and her housemate James both work, all their lives change forever. And when Rachel starts working for Dr Byrne’s wife, things get even more complicated. In this tragicomic novel, O’Donoghue perfectly captures both Ireland immediately after the economic crash and the heady intensity of youthful friendships and shared obsessions.

This was very readable - a little predictable but still had a good build of tension. Seemed to finish quite abruptly which was disappointing.

This book was so heartbreakingly raw and honest.. Devoured over a weekend, James and Rachel's friendship makes your heart ache for the trials and tribulations of being young, lost, in love and (most importantly) able to pour it all into your best friend.

This was a bit of a slow burner for me, took me a while to get into it and tbh I nearly gave up on it but I continued and I’m glad I did as it gets so much better the further you get into it. The story of Rachel, James and Dr Byrne gets you hooked and you have to find out what happens with. It all. This is the first book iv read by this author and I’d def look for more by her. Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the chance to read this early copy

Oh I loved this book. It hooked me from the opening chapter and the writing is so warm, almost too realistic at times and it captures a point in time in Ireland with such accuracy and care.

Rachel is a final year student in UCC working parttime in a bookshop , the effects of the recession are far reaching battling with the hope and optimism you can't help but have in your early 20s. Rachel meets James when he gets a job in the bookshop and their friendship is instant. Before long they move in together, they drink, they make plans and they get caught up and their lives get intertwined with one of Rachels college professors and his wife.

This is a story of growing up, of love, friendship, secrets, desperation and optimism. Of dreams and reality and love, so much love.

I really loved this. Its so deliciously Irish. I read this a couple of weeks ago and I have been thinking about the characters since I finished reading. I gasped out loud, cried, laughed and felt every other emotion when reading this one. Wonderfully written with a deeply satisfying ending. Wholeheartedly Recommend.

4.5-5

An Irish coming-of-age novel about friendship, obsession and acceptance.

Rachel and James meet at their job at a bookstore while Rachel is doing her undergraduate degree at UCC. James, a closeted gay man with no degree, from a working class family, and Rachel, current university student from a middle class family. We see class differences, social issues such as Repeal the Eight (which dealt with abortion laws in Ireland) and what it was to be gay in early 2000s Ireland.

There’s extramarital affairs, obsessive friendships, a longing for love and acceptance.

Being from Cork and living abroad, I loved all of the Cork references. The novel is set during the recession of the early 2000s and like a lot of Irish people then, we see parallels between today’s Ireland, where young Irish people are still being forced into moving abroad for work and a more affordable life.

This novel was a great comfort read, and apart from some of the overt stereotypes, was just what I needed to get out of my reading slump.

Reading The Rachel Incident felt something like a memory: not that the events are similar to something that happened in my own life (lol), but because the context was so overwhelmingly familiar to me, and the apparent simplicity that obscures the rich depths of Caroline O’Donoghue’s writing made for a feeling like an old friend was reminding me of a time in their life I half forgot about, half remembered like it happened to me.

Rachel is a student in Cork in 2009-2010, which is the same academic year I started in another Irish university and while Cork is very important to the novel, I felt like it could have been set at the same time and place when I was in college, also doing an Arts degree when no one was likely to get a job after graduating, no matter the discipline. Rachel’s shock and hopelessness as her family’s situation changes come at a time in life when her worldview is expanding rapidly, and the state of the country exacerbates that feeling of starting to grow up and realise that the adults around you don’t have any answers either.

In that time of change a beacon is her new best friend, James, who works with her in the failing bookshop, his charisma pulling her into an intense friendship. Not only specific to that age but that time, Rachel realises James is gay but while there is ever more representation in the media, staying closeted is still the reality for many people. When they meet the Byrnes, and the friends plot to bring Rachel and Dr Byrne together, it is James who catches the older man’s eye, throwing their friendship and their insular lives in their dingy houseshare, of injokes and favourite tea mugs, into chaos.

At the beginning, Rachel is older, a journalist living in London, married and pregnant. Her life is nothing like when she was in college. She is reminded, safe in her new life, of her old professor Dr Byrne and she is forced to relive the time when her life was so taken up with him, his wife and her best friend. At first I wondered if this device was necessary, but since finishing I’ve realised it adds a certain depth to the reading experience. By having the hindsight of the “future Rachel” we can see the true impact of what happened in everyone’s lives, not just through the eyes of the person it is immediately happening to. This “future Rachel” also nicely situates people of that age as well as how Ireland has grown, through referenda and all sorts of social change. By looking at the book through her eyes, the reader allows the younger Rachel her immaturity and recklessness fondly, as opposed to purely reading it from the point of view of the student.

O’Donoghue reportedly wrote this novel during the pandemic based on her own experiences, and I think that you can tell this from reading the book. There’s a distance there, and a loneliness, and despite the painful memories we see Rachel relive, the overwhelming feeling of the book is one of intense love, and compassion, and not only towards Rachel. I think for many people, extending this compassion towards the younger character can point to a way we can better understand and forgive our younger selves.

There’s much to recommend this novel, but most importantly I believe that it could not have been set in any other time and place. Rachel is a wonderfully immature, yet loving and earnest character, and the all consuming, obsessive friendship between her and James is achingly beautiful and nostalgic. This is a real work of love from Caroline O’Donoghue, and each of her books is somehow even more incredible than the last.

🩷🩶 Fans of 'Cleopatra & Frankenstein', fans of 'Normal People', anyone who was trying to "come of age" in the late 2000's financial clusterfuck - this is for us!

I have absolutely devoured this book in one day, despite working, cleaning the house, building garden furniture... any spare second I had, I could not get enough.

'The Rachel Incident' is a delight of dry humour. It is a book about:

A bookseller working her way through uni

An English professor with secret desires

An economic recession

And a love affair... but not the one you think!

Caroline O' Donoghue writes real life as very few authors can. Those big conversations that so often start with a blurted confession or accusation, rather than the well constructed discussion you had practised in your mind... the small but frequent moments of intense intimacy that I think belong exclusively to the friendships you make in your early 20s, vulnerable in the world together...

I was lucky enough to be given early access to the e-ARC of this book by Little Brown Book Group, in exchange for this honest review, but I'm going to be buying a physical copy for my trophy shelf because 😍😍

'The Rachel Incident' hits the shelves today, and if you haven't yet read anything this Pride month with a gay MC, then it should be this!

The Rachel Incident is the latest book from Irish author and podcaster Caroline O’ Donoghue, and is also my latest five star read. Ohh, how I loved this one.

The story begins with a heavily pregnant Rachel, a journalist for an Irish newspaper in London heading to an Irish bar so she can report on the most revered of all Irish institutions; The Late Late Toy Show. There she bumps into someone from home who gives her the bad news that her former UCC professor is in a coma, sending her into a tailspin and a walk down memory lane.

Rachel takes us back to 2010 when Ireland was in the throes of a recession, and she spent all her time with James Devlin, her gay best friend, and James Carey, her erstwhile boyfriend. All three of them trying to scrape out a path forward for themselves with no real clue about life or love, as you generally don’t in your early twenties. The book takes us through their years of friendship and back again to the present day, to what was possibly the most satisfying ending of any book I’ve ever read.

That said, I really didn’t want this one to finish and I now miss reading about Rachel, and James, and James. I’m also a little bit envious of people who get to read this for the first time.

At one point Rachel references Maeve Binchy, and it definitely has some warm, comforting Binchy qualities in there. It’s also hilarious; there are so many very clever lines in here that made me think “THIS is why I’ll never be a writer, because I can’t write like this!”

It felt both nostalgic (the night life scene in Ireland in the early 2010’s) and unpleasantly familiar (Catholic guilt & shame, the recession, and repeal the 8th references) but mostly this book feels so relatable it’s almost like rehashing old slightly cringe-worthy stories with friends.

One section of Rachel’s recollections were so deeply uncomfortable to read that I felt my internal organs shrivel a little, and I feel like we’ve all got an experience like that tucked away in our brains somewhere.

A love story about friendship, a coming of age story, a tale of a young woman’s emancipation; #TheRachelIncident is all of these things and more. A gorgeous read; I highly recommend!

This was quite a slow read for me but it was worth getting to the end for the resolution, and the compassion I felt for the characters in the final chapters took me by surprise. I would describe this as a slow burning novel with some painful revelations along the way.

This is a book about growing up. It starts with a grown-up, pregnant narrator, Rachel, who is trying to explain how she has arrived at her current ‘destination’. However, most of the book is set in the past and Rachel slowly reveals a tangle of lies and deception which affects many lives in the process. A lot of the story feel mundane and unimportant but they do contribute to building atmosphere for the ‘Rachel Incident.’

The book felt realistic and I could imagine the squalor of the living conditions of Rachel and her best friend, James Devlin. Rachel’s relationship with Carey is also painful to witness but felt genuine and believable. The characters Irish traits are recognisable and amusing without feeling too stereotypical.

The difficulties surrounding an unwanted pregnancy really highlight how difficult life can be and it was heart-warming to see James Devin’s unwavering support for Rachel’s plight. I liked how their friendship grew through the novel and they clearly mean the world to each other in spite of their differences.

I’d describe this book as realistic fiction. The author has done a fantastic job of creating imaginary characters and situations that depict the world and society. The characters focus on themes of growing, self-discovery and confronting personal and social problems. The language is clear, concise, and evocative, with descriptions that bring the setting and characters to life. Dialogue is natural and authentic, and the pacing is well-balanced, with enough tension and release to keep the reader engaged.

The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

This was such a good read! I hadn't read any of Caroline O'Donoghue and will definitely check her other novels. I wish she had shaped more of James' character though, as the only snippets we had were quite cliched.