One of our booksellers at Wonderland Books is constantly handselling The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue, and when I asked her for a book rec that would grab me from the start, she handed it to me too. She wasn’t wrong.
The Rachel Incident is about Rachel and her roommate James, who work together at a bookstore in Ireland. Rachel is about to graduate from university, and she develops a naive crush on one of her professors, which James encourages. However, things get complicated, and Rachel and James’s lives get intertwined with the professor’s – and his wife’s – in unexpected ways, with repercussions felt for decades. I really enjoyed this book. O’Donoghue is so skilled at teasing out her plot slowly, and with expert pacing, that I gasped out loud on several occasions in surprise. She also did a great job of capturing early adulthood, a time which, looking back, may leave you filled with nostalgia and regret, but which is so fundamental in making you who you are. I liked the historic Irish setting too. This was a great read (also excellent on audio).