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.

This was not a book I enjoyed. It's not often I skim a book so quickly, but I just wanted this to end. I didn't find the characters to be anything but selfish, and since nothing really happened (except a lot of drinking and affairs), the character-driven novel lacked in character.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to ready it though!

THE RACHEL INCIDENT is a witty and emotional story that does not pull any punches. These characters are young and immature, trying to find their way. Sometimes they say or do the wrong thing. They get up and try again. The author does a wonderful job at making the characters seem like real people. The pacing is a bit slow, and the book could have been shortened. However, overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Recommended for fans of Sally Rooney.

Thank you Netgalley for an early copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I actually could not get enough of these characters. It was the perfect coming of age story full of real emotions and challenges that young people are faced with while just trying to grow up and make a life. There was a rawness in this story that I admired. The writing and dialogue was so real and I laughed and cried my whole way through the story. I love characters that you can root for while also understanding all the mistakes they make.

If you are looking for a funny story that has loveable, realistic characters who are trying to pave their way in the world, this would be a great option.

This novel is phenomenal. It is a book about friendship, love and how despair sometimes leads people to do unthinkable things, in which they do not recognize themselves. Rachel lives in Cork. She is finishing her English major and works in a bookstore, where she meets James, a new coworker. They immediately connect and being both young and broken (like the rest of the country), they decide to live together. James is a closeted charismatic gay man. His relationship with Rachel will change the course of their lives. She is infatuated with her English professor, so between the two they devise a plan to get Rachel to capture the attention of dr Byrne. But the plan is not fool proof and the situation takes an unexpected detour. The plot is clever and the writing makes of this book a highly compelling read. But the strength of it lies in the characters. They are so flawed and desperate for attention that is really easy to picture them wandering the streets of Cork, searching for a dose of excitement that will allow them to forget about the drama and the loneliness. You can see them getting drunk with cheap liquor, making regrettable decisions that they won’t be able to mend in the morning. But they love, and struggle and fail again and that makes them relatable.
From the very beginning you know that something really bad happened (the so called “Rachel incident “) and the way that O’Donoghue gives you the little pieces of information is extraordinary.
The only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of five is because I’m not sure if I like the ending (and by that I don’t mean the resolution but the last paragraph)
I loved this book and I highly recommend it

I was initially hesitant to request this, given the marketing blurb about Rachel developing a crush on her college professor, but I'm glad I did because this infatuation is such a small aspect of the book. This has some of the same self-destructive themes as Bridget Jones' Diary or other works about college students who have trouble taking care of themselves. (Curse my postpartum brain for not being able to think of them.) The result is a surprisingly funny reflection on the recession, the concept of adulthood and career goals, and what it means to be in a healthy relationship. It also feels like a slow descent into chaos that I couldn't stop reading; I spent some moments cringing, and the husband reveal made me narrow my eyes a bit. It's a fun read, though, and it'll go quickly.

Really wonderful book that may have meandered a little too long. However in the end, everything came together full circle in a really great way. It portrayed that time in early adulthood where you're constantly flailing in all aspects of life: job, romance, friendships, ect.

The Rachel Incident has been on my NetGalley shelf for a while, but I was hesitant to read it based on the summary. Our MC, Rachel, is an Irish college student living with her newly-minted best friend/ bookstore co-worker James. Rachel has a huge crush on one of her professors and James decides he is all in on creating a grand scheme to get them together. Her professor is also 17 years older than them. And married.

I guess I just wasn't in the mood for another inappropriate student/teacher relationship book.

But I begrudgingly picked it up and was immediately hooked. The book alternated between the present-day and the year James and Rachel got intertwined in her professor and his wife's lives. The Rachel Incident is about love, loss, and trying to scrape together enough money to live on during a recession. It's about being in your early 20s wanting someone to fall in love with you but also fearing you are not loveable.

I don't want to say more as to spoil pieces of the novel. I'm excited to dive into more works by Caroline O'Donoghue.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC for my honest review.

A deeply tender, funny, heartfelt novel that acts as a confession, a coming-of-age, and the portrait of a young Irish woman. Split in time between past and present in the narrator's life, the story is infused with a sense of charm and a deeply endearing commentary of the narrator's present onto her past, while also giving herself the grace of her youth and circumstances. I loved Rachel as a narrator, I loved the Jameses of her life, the complicated mess of her relationship with the Harrington-Byrnes couple and the deeply alive setting of Cork. I absolutely loved this novel and found myself quickly drawn into Rachel and James's world, drama, and dreams.
I highly recommend this one.

This was 4 and a half stars for me. I loved the voice which was fresh and funny and real. I loved the best friendship and the cozy bookstore vibes. As a bookseller, the bookstore moments had me laughing with their very specific truths. A half a star off for it feeling a little slow here and there (which could have been a me-thing) but otherwise a great read by an impressive writer.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for a copy of this e-arc

This was a nice switch from my usual thriller and horror reads. About a young college student and her relationships that she is in both good and bad. It is a coming of age, finding yourself story that was set in Ireland during the 2008-2011 recession. If you enjoy messy and complicated relationships give this a try. I think this will be a good book club pick because there are layers of relationships that can be discussed in further detail.
4 Stars

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Overall, I gave 'The Rachel Incident' a 3.5 out of 5 stars.

What I loved:
- Seemingly fast-paced
- Loved the characters, especially the early friendship development between Rachel and James
- Super witty

What I wasn't a fan of:
- Some chapters felt a little long; I definitely had to reread a few things to keep up
- Byrne's wife rubbed me the wrong way. IDK, I can't fully describe it, but she irked me in a lot of ways.

A great read, just a few things I didn't care for! Will recommend this to my friends and followers on Instagram for sure.

This book is primarily set in 2008-2011 Cork, Ireland. The economy is in a terrible recession and Rachel is graduating with an English degree and no job lined up. I was immediately hooked by the writing and deeply invested in Rachel’s love life and the tangled web that her and her best friend James were weaving in the lives of others. The book covers many heavy topics (homophobia, abortion) while also having an amused or amusing tone at times. I’m not totally sure to explain it but I really enjoyed reading it!

A story I was sad to finish, but with a perfect ending. The story watches several characters grow into adulthood, navigating real and important issues in their lives. Middle class privilege, abortion access, and bisexuality play major roles among ordinary people. I loved each and every character and loved watching their decisions, their mistakes, and ultimate redemption. A great, great story by an author I want to read more of. Thank you NetGalley for an ARC.

Try as I might I could not get into this story. I didn’t find any of the characters entertaining nor do I care. From what I read though it was written well but I just couldn’t connect.

This books is a university-aged coming of age story following Rachel in Cork, Ireland. I felt like it captured a lot of the feelings of that age. At times, I felt like this wasn’t necessarily Rachel’s story to tell, but I still found it interesting!

I wanted to love this so much, but the characters were a bit one-note for me and I wasn't compelled to continue reading.