The Rachel Incident - Caroline O'Donoghue

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Rachel Murray is living a most ordinary life. As a small-town, Irish student working in a bookstore searching for meaning between late shifts and paychecks, Rachel doesn't quite know what she wants out of life--she just knows she wants more. Enter James Devlin: he's unapologetically brazen, almost criminally-extroverted, and sexually-ambiguous...and the exact size of the void that's been lingering in Rachel.

Soon, Rachel and James are living together in Cork, utterly (and platonically) enamored with each other and completely inseparable. James is in love with the unpredictability of life; Rachel is in love with her literature professor, Dr. Fred Byrnes. When a chance encounter at their bookstore sends Dr. Byrnes into not only Rachel's orbit, but James', their lives are interwoven--and irrevocably changed--overnight. 

A poignant, endearing, deeply-human coming-of-age story, "The Rachel Incident" is sure to please fans of "Normal People" and "Frankenstein and Cleopatra." At their core, Rachel and James (and yes, the other James, too) are achingly-plausible; I rooted for them, rolled my eyes at them, pleaded with them, and ached for them. They aren't perfect characters, and there were a few moments throughout the story where I wished they were a tad more nuanced, a tad more complete. 

And while "The Rachel Incident" doesn't necessarily boast anything that hasn't been done before in a character-driven story, its voice is certainly refreshing and charming enough to tether readers to Rachel and James, especially readers asking themselves the same questions: "Who am I?" "Where am I headed?" 

One of the more surprising standouts of the season for me, "The Rachel Incident" left a Rachel (and especially James)-sized imprint on my heart. I devoured it in 24 hours because even in the few moments where the story itself started to lose me, these characters kept pulling me back in. Just lovely.

Rating: 4 Stars
Publication Details: Out 6/27/2023, Knopf 

*Huge thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for providing my advanced reader's copy of this title*


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