The Rachel Incident

Holy smokes, reading this book is like reuniting with your best friend from college who still loves you regardless of all the reasons you gave them not to. The Rachel Incident is messy, clever, often very funny, with just the right amount of growing pains.

Caroline O'Donoghue has written the kind of novel that makes you nostalgic for a version of your early twenties that may not have even happened. Set in Cork during the post-recession blur of the late 2000s, it follows Rachel—a smart, broke, literature-obsessed college student—and her whirlwind friendship with James, a charismatic bookstore co-worker who is both deeply perceptive and in deep denial. Together, they rent a house, throw chaotic parties, and start entangling themselves in the lives of people they probably shouldn't.

At its core, this isn't a love story—not really. It's a friendship story. A becoming story. And it's so good at articulating that blurry line between platonic intimacy and romantic confusion, especially when you're still trying to figure out who you are and what you want.

There's also an affair. Several secrets. A lot of hard lessons. And some truly glorious sentences about sex, shame, and the theatre of adulthood. Rachel narrates the past from a more settled present—older, a little wiser, and very aware of her own unreliability. You trust her inherently.

Reading this reminded me of the way people behaved before we were stuck inside these dumb phones 24/7, when our heartbreaks were localized to our city blocks and not our algorithms. It's a novel for anyone who's ever made a best friend instantly and disastrously, or fallen in love with the idea of someone smarter than you, or realized—too late—that you were the villain in someone else's story.

Anyway, it charmed my glasses right off my face. You should most definitely read it.