I was excited to read this book but it didn't live up to my expectations. It felt very millennial-y, definitely not my cup of tea.
Thank you NetGalley for the arc in exchange of an honest review.

3-3.5 ⭐
Fans of raw emotion, relationships, and characters with all their flaws revealed will enjoy this book.
This book jumped around a lot and I felt like I started in the middle of a story at times. Reading the book was ok but it was a bit of a jumble of events and wasn't as clear as I would have liked it to be.
It was basically a reflection on her 21 year old self and a formative year that took place in Cork.
Once I finished reading and reflected on the book, I could see more of the story and what was being talked about and did enjoy it more.
The story is a summary of women's health, the right to abortion, being closeted, what life is like as a gay man, and the coming of age story of relationships. The evolution of your early twenties, life choices and the mistakes made that are impactful in your later years.
I didn't love any of the characters and that's a bit of a deal breaker for me when I'm reading, I REALLY want at least one truly likeable character. This book has a lot of rawness to the characters and you see their flaws clearly. A lot of people love that in a book, so if that's you, this is for you!
Thanks to netgalley for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Wow this is a well written and witty trip down a familiar time when we were happy,confused. Free and lonely at the same time ( Yes Taylor Swift lyric)
I love how Rachel was the center of it and the way you learn to balance while it’s the exact time of going out into the world with a recession post 9/11. It’s a novel to sooth the millennial soul that we were all flailing and failing together as everything we were promised was no longer a sustainable option. Thank you so much for this free preview from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review. I highly recommend ( if you are a millennial or interested in our traumas )

While this story did eventually grow on me, it took a solid 30-35% in before I started to like it. I had a hard time picking it up to push through.
Although the book started out very slowly for me, I really liked reading about Rachel/James friendship over the time they lived together: how they became quick friends and inseparable, then things took a turn with Rachel’s professor, Dr. Byrnes.
I feel like the story was read more realistically without all the added dramatics and action. You learned a lot about each character, mistakes they made, and start to mature as they look back on 2010.

🌻🌻 BOOK REVIEW 🌻🌻

Before I picked this up, I'd heard The Rachel Incident being compared to the likes of Sally Rooney and Dolly Alderton umpteen times. As a fan of these two authors, I was apprehensive and upon finishing it, I was not disappointed.

If you asked me what this book was about I'd probably say something along the lines of "Oh, I don't know...life." The good, the bad and all the things we do in everyday life. Well, for me anyway. Drinking, loving, working, and even work experience crises.

I spent the first quarter of the book hating James Devlin (Rachel's friend and soul mate) and his act against "girl code". However, by the second quarter, it was as though he had done no wrong and his happiness was equally as important as Rachel's. Probably a superb comparison to our own day-to-day relationships. Some things just aren't worth jeopardising.

Rachel talks of the loneliness of a new city and starting out brand new on life. She reminds us that trying to better one's life is not always the glamour we think we perceive.

This book genuinely made me laugh and smile, as well as feel disparity and heartbreak.

I couldn't wait to return to it. You won't either.


*Trigger warnings & slight spoiler*

- Abortion/miscarriage (it still makes me extremely sad every time I read about the harrowing and expensive process Irish girls and women have to go through to get an abortion)
- Sexual abuse

This book is definitely great for fans of Sally Rooney, Coco Mellors or Dolly Alderton. It’s brutally honest and I found it so relatable.

Protagonist Rachel is trying to navigate her way through life having graduated during the 2008 recession whilst living in conservative, Catholic Ireland. This book does feature some heavy topics but all so so important and it’s written in such a great way that it’s enjoyable whilst also hard hitting.

rachel recounts the story of her early twenties. living with a gay man named james, and dating a less than stellar boyfriend also named james (but she calls him by his last name, carey), she shares her final days of undergrad and her internship from hell.

this novel didn’t do what i expected it to do. james is the stereotypical “gay best friend” stereotype with little personality other than being gay and taking care of rachel. the way their professor, dr. byrne, acts is really despicable and nobody comments on the power imbalance and toxicity of the relationship. once again bisexual men are painted as cheaters and unable to “pick.” james never breaks out of that mold and carey is pretty damn awful in every way. the way the author writes about degrees in english & the arts is really discouraging to those of us with those degrees; they are non meaningless. while this novel tries to be different than the popular tv show “will & grace,” the frequent mentioning of the show and their own written script of a similar show only highlights the similarities, as well as sticking to the status quo of straight woman and gay best friend fiction.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book so much! Caroline O'Donoghue's writing is so lovely, I found myself thinking about the characters constantly and wishing the book was longer.

Rachel is nearing the end of her time at university when she meets James at the bookstore where they both work, and they instantly become best friends. They move in together and spend all their time together, both at crossroads in their lives.

I found the writing in this so relatable -- Caroline O'Donoghue really captured what it's like to be 21 and not sure what you're doing next in life. The endless nights of going out and meeting new people and feeling aimless.

All of the side characters are great too, and really enrich the story. Each one feels very developed, and the situations they get themselves in to made me laugh and cringe.

This was my first book by Caroline O'Donoghue and I am eager to read her backlist and will quickly read whatever she comes out with next!

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!

One of my favorite reads of the year so far and just a joy to read all the way through! I devoured this in 2 days (work be damned) and it just felt like slipping into your coziest sweats and catching up with an old friend. It was so incredibly relatable in its portrayal of our thoughts and feelings and observations in our early 20’s. I found it to be an incredibly endearing book and a slightly less pessimistic Sally Rooney style commentary. I loved it.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was so easy getting sucked into the intoxicating friendship and lives of Rachel and James. It was hilarious, awkward, bittersweet, nostalgic, sad, all the feelings. The author does a great job of weaving some social issues and moral issues like sexuality, infidelity, and abortion into the novel. It really makes for a thought provoking novel and will leave you remembering Rachel and her coming of age story. I recommend a read this summer when it comes out in July !

Special thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for an arc digital copy for an honest opinion.

Finished ✔️ The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue

4 ⭐️’s
Publish Day: June 27th, 2023
Kindle Unlimited: No

A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three.

If you ever been unsure or question what to do with your degree in English, if you’ve ever wondered when the rug-buying part of your life will start…. If you ever loved the wrong person or the right person at the wrong time, or if you’ve ever been young you’ll enjoy this book like I did.

#DeesReading #DeesRecs #DeesBookRecommendations #BookNerds #BookNerdProblems #BookNerdsUnited #BookProblems #BookProblems101 #BookNerds101 #Bookworms #BookwormProblems #BookwormProblems101 #BooksOfFacebook #DeeTheBookReviewer #DeesReadOfTheDay #DeesBookOfTheDay #DeesBookReviewsOfTheDay #BookReviewer #NewToMeAuthor #CarolineODonoghue #ReadOfTheDay #BookOfTheDay #TheRachelIncident #NetGalley

Great story! I really enjoyed the characters and plot in this novel! I will definitely be checking out more material by her!

This is a difficult book for me to review. It was easy to read and it kept my attention. At the same, I don’t think there was much of a plot. The core of the story involves a friendship that seemed a little unhealthy to me, and that is connected to several other relationships. Again, I’m not sure those were particularly healthy relationships. I didn’t really like the characters. They did grow over the course of the book but I never felt invested in their lives. The “incident” referred to in the title was not that big a deal I thought. Despite all of this, I wasn’t bored while reading it but at the same time it won’t be a book I’ll remember for a long time.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Overall, I enjoyed this book because it felt very real for someone trying to figure their sh** out in their twenties all the while being enamored by the people in their life that they find cooler. James was the most fascinating character to me and I as a reader kept going back and forth between thinking he deserved my sympathy or was a manipulative asshole.

While I do think it dragged which kept me from giving it a perfect rating, I still understand why the author wrote it this way because it defiantly felt like a stream of consciousness.

I feel so privileged to have gotten the chance to read “The Rachel Incident” before its publication. I feel like I have been let in on a secret, tipped off on the explosion that will take place when the novel is published. O’Donaghue’s novel is cozy yet sharp, deeply poignant while also bouncy. I am sad to be done with it but can’t wait to share this book with friends upon its publication.

i was expecting more from this book it wasnt good and it wasnt bad it was just mid i really wanted more

April 3, 2023
Thanks to netgalley and littlebrown for providing me with an advanced readers copy of this book.

I have been a fan of Caroline O'Donoghue's podcast since the first lockdown and have previously read all of her adult books. However previously I've found they are not quite the same level of wit and creativity she exudes on her socials. Im happy however to say that The Rachel Incident feels like O'donoghue at her best.

This novel feels similar to Dolly Alderton and Sally Rooney in ways whilst keeping O'donghues quirky voice at the forefront. I loved Rachel as a character and the novel itself felt the most well-balanced between plot and character that any of her books have.

The only reason I docked this book one star was I felt more could have been done with the friendship between James and Rachel. Even a few more scenes of them together on nights out or in the bookstore would've pushed this over the edge for me.

However, all in I can honestly say I really enjoyed this book and as always am very excited to see what's next for O'donogue as I believe she has finally found her voice in the adult fiction market.

Rachel graduates from college at what seems like the worst time, during the 2008 recession. She really didn’t have a clear plan regarding what she would do with her degree and what kind of a career she really wants to have. But when even her college bookstore job is impacted, and her parents (who are dentists), might not survive their financial downfall, at least she has James. He is her best friend and roommate, and will be the only James in her life.
The story is told from Rachel’s POV, mostly during the time she lived in Ireland and was attending university. We do get a glimpse into her future, and I don’t want to spoil anyone’s reading so that is all I will say about ‘future Rachel’.
Some heavy issues interspersed with the quirky actions of Rachel. I had a best friend in college, not named James, but we had a similar relationship, and I really like most of the choices he made( and the ones my friend made too). A page turner and a quick read that reminded me of my own happy and sad, fun and traumatic, college days.

I’m going to start with a disclaimer - I’m not a fan of modern “coming of age” books. Reading “The Rachel Incident” by Caroline O’Donoghue took me a while (about a quarter of the book) to get into. This book is not a triangle romance - far from it. There’s also a lot of present/past flipping and, at least in the version I had, it wasn’t always clear when the time period changed. However, once plot began rolling, around the half-way mark, the story moved along at a pretty steady clip and I became more interested in how the plot was unfolding. I do recommend that there be some trigger warnings, if those are something people look for in books. Let me also note - this is a bit of a heavy book. There are a number of topics discussed (thus the trigger warning suggestion) and Ms. O’Donoghue does a great job balancing the heaviness with some levity. In fact, a number of her aside comments were rather witty and appreciated. At times I did forget that this was a fictional book - the first person narrative made that easy to forget - and also how really real (especially toward the end) this book felt at times. A solid 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rachel, a college student, with a bit of a crush on her professor, struggles to navigate her way through a tangled set of situations. She interns for his wife while her best friend gets into a situationship with the professor. Adding to the drama in her life--job issues and a situationship of her own.