A Vogue “Best and Most-Anticipated” Book of the Year • A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three.
Abortion, miscarriage, infidelity.
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.
When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.
Don't just take our word for it...
“If you’ve ever been unsure 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’ve ever loved the wrong person, or the right person at the wrong time…In short, if you’ve ever been young, you will love The Rachel Incident like I did.”
– Gabrielle Zevin, New York Times best-selling author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
“Delightful…This is a sneakily philosophical book about growing up that offers its insights with charming, effervescent ease….O’Donoghue is a unique and exciting talent, allowing her characters to puncture their solipsistic preoccupations with humor and self awareness….I galloped through this book, enchanted by its characters and its full-hearted vision of friendship. This is a book full of love, and it is extremely easy to love reading it.”
– Chloe Schama, Vogue
“Caroline O’Donoghue shines a laser beam on young adulthood, particularly the crazy intensity of those messy, beautiful friendships forged in the fires of romantic crisis. The Rachel Incident made me nostalgic for my early twenties. But even more than that, it made me wish I could go back and hug the person I was back then and tell her she’ll be okay.”
– Lauren Fox, New York Times best-selling author of Send For Me
Taste the very first page
It was never my plan to write about any of this. I know journalists say that all the time, but for me, it’s true. Almost all of us are sitting on some big life experience that we’re hoping to turn into a book one day. I swear to God, that was never my intention. The process of book-making was demystified for me at the age of twenty-one, and I’ve had no instinct to be in any way involved with them since.
You might also like
ThrillerMysteryContemporary FictionDebut NovelLGBTQ+
Liar, Dreamer, Thief
A young woman’s carefully constructed fantasy world implodes in this brilliantly conceived novel that blurs distinctions between right and wrong, comedy and tragedy, imagination and reality.
The Dream Builders
Written from the perspectives of ten different characters, Oindrila Mukherjee’s incisive debut novel explores class divisions, gender roles, and stories of survival within a society that is constantly changing and becoming increasingly Americanized
Contemporary FictionHumorousIncludes a Dog
The Sweet Spot
In the heart of Greenwich Village, three women form an accidental sorority when a baby—belonging to exactly none of them—lands on their collective doorstep.
Literary FictionAward WinningComing-of-AgeTranslatedMagical Realism
How to Turn Into a Bird
From the award-winning author of How to Order the Universe, María José Ferrada beautifully details the life and lessons of an unconventional man and the boy who loves him.
RomanceLiterary FictionHistorical FictionDebut NovelLGBTQ+Award Winning
The New Life
A brilliant and captivating debut, in the tradition of Alan Hollinghurst and Colm Tóibín, about two marriages, two forbidden love affairs, and the passionate search for social and sexual freedom in late 19th-century London.
The Key to My Heart
A Goodreads Most Anticipated Romance. A heartwarming novel about hope after loss as a young widow receives mysterious messages of love from the “must-buy author” (Jodi Picoult) of Eight Perfect Hours.
RomanceContemporary FictionDebut Novel
Twice in a Lifetime
The Time Traveler’s Wife meets Oona Out of Order in this imaginative and moving debut novel of a love more powerful than time.
Contemporary FictionDebut NovelHumorous
None of This Would Have Happened If Prince Were Alive
Perfect for fans of Maria Semple and Jennifer Weiner, this smart and witty debut novel follows Ramona through the forty-eight hours after her life has been upended by the discovery of her husband’s affair and an approaching Category Four hurricane.
Contemporary FictionDebut Novel
Aesthetica
In a debut novel as radiant as it is caustic, a former influencer confronts her past—and takes inventory of the damages that underpin the surface-glamour of social media.
Contemporary FictionDebut NovelIncludes a Cat
Meredith, Alone
Will have you laughing and crying as Meredith, after spending three years inside her house, figures out how to rejoin the world one step at a time.
Literary FictionHistorical FictionAward WinningComing-of-AgeHumorous
Factory Girls
A funny, fierce, and unforgettable read about a young woman working a summer job in a shirt factory in Northern Ireland, while tensions rise both inside and outside the factory walls.
RomanceContemporary FictionDebut Novel
Closer to Okay
Weaving culinary delights with an honest, appraising look at how we deal with the world when it becomes too much, Closer to Okay is the comfort food we all need in these, well, crazy times.
ThrillerMysteryContemporary FictionCrime
The Other Side of Night
The lives of a disgraced police officer, a prolific author, and an upstanding citizen are inextricably bound together by a series of mysterious deaths.
Literary FictionHistorical FictionComing-of-AgeIncludes a Dog
Gilded Mountain
Set in early 1900s Colorado, the unforgettable tale of a young woman who bravely faces the consequences of speaking out against injustice.
Literary FictionSci-fiMysteryDebut NovelAward Winning
Singer Distance
The odds of the planet next door hosting intelligent life are—that’s not luck. That’s a miracle. It means something.
Literary FictionHistorical FictionComing-of-Age
The Night Ship
Illuminates the lives of two characters: a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and, three hundred years later, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same island.
Literary FictionHistorical FictionGreek MythologySeries Debut
Ithaca
Beyond Ithaca’s shores, the whims of gods dictate the wars of men. But on the isle, it is the choices of the abandoned women—and their goddesses—that will change the course of the world.
MysteryContemporary FictionDebut NovelCrime
The Marsh Queen
Loni must decide whether to delve beneath the surface into murky half-truths and either avenge the past or bury it, once and for all.
Literary FictionHistorical FictionComing-of-AgeGothic FictionIncludes a Cat
The House in the Orchard
A startling gothic tale of corrupted innocence that asks—when we look closely—what it really means to know the truth.