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A bitingly funny novel about your late 20s as you stare down 30—when do you tire of morning hangovers, days of dead-end entry-level jobs, and late nights at bars? This friend group is about to find out.

Bulimia, mention of abortion.

Sometimes friends hold you together.
Sometimes they’re why you’re falling apart.

Harley, Róise, and Maggie have been friends for ages. After meeting in primary school years ago, the women are still together, spending their nights on the sticky dancefloors of Belfast’s grungiest pubs. Each woman is navigating her own tangle of entry-level jobs, messy romantic entanglements, and late nights, but they always find their way back to each other, and to the ramshackle house they share. And amidst the familiar chaos, the three are still grieving their fourth housemate, whose room remains untouched, their last big fight hanging heavily over their heads.

The girls’ house has witnessed the highs and lows of their roaring twenties—raucous parties, surprising (and sometimes regrettable) hook-ups, and hellish hangovers. But as they approach thirty, their home begins to crumble around them and the fault lines in their group become harder to ignore. In the wreckage, they must decide if their friendship will survive into a new decade—or if growing up sometimes means letting go.

Brimming with heart and humor, Thirst Trap is an exuberant ode to friendship, to not having it all figured out, and to ordering just one more round before heading home.

Don't just take our word for it...

“Think Dolly Alderton, but with the sharp edges of Eliza Clark… O’Hare has a true gift for a visceral simile, her sandpapery prose scribbling vivid pictures of messy pleasure that you can practically smell off the tequila-soaked page.”
– The Independent

“Like the literary love child of Miranda July and Carrie Fisher, transposed in Belfast – hilarious, smart and chaotic in the best way.”
– Louise Nealon, author of Snowflake

“Compulsively readable and brilliant on friendship and grief. I raced through it.”
– Daily Mail

Taste the very first page

It is almost midnight, and the three of them are trying to persuade a member of door staff to let them bring a houseplant into the nightclub. Maggie, Harley and Róise take turns to explain that the plant was a birthday present given earlier this evening by a friend who went home around nine, apparently blind to the practical challenges of accommodating a cactus on the dancefloor. Róise turns thirty next week and was informed by the gift-giver that this particular breed is known as an old lady cactus, on account of its white cobweb of spines. Maggie resents overhearing this information. The sea-urchin crown of the plant has, in her mind, taken on the earnest personality of an elderly woman for whom Maggie now feels responsible, despite Róise having been assured that it doesn’t need much watering and should in fact thrive on neglect. They are allowed eventually to check the plant into the cloakroom with their jackets, and Harley pays the attendant with a five-pound note she has folded into eighths to stop it springing back scroll-wise.

In the club, Maggie notes with disappointment that the spinning pole has been removed from its plinth on the dancefloor.

November 2025