catherine ✿ | bookstagram

This is your sign to bring your book to a coffee shop and have a little date with yourself ❣️ (p.s. I love how my @bitchbereading bookmark matches the book 🐍)

I finished The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue over a week ago and I still can't stop thinking about it, nor have I been able to pick up anything else that captures me as much.

This is probably going to be my favourite book of the year, it was an easy 5 star read.

It is mostly set in 2010s Cork, Ireland, when Rachel is 20/21; that's when she meets James, her bookshop coworker turned best friend. Early on, Rachel has a crush on her uni professor, and James devises a plan to get him to the bookshop to sign copies of his new publication.

The book starts off in the present day now that Rachel is in her 30s, but most of it is told in a recounting of the past by present Rachel. One big thing is revealed in the present that the reader is trying to get more information on from the past, and it makes you want to read more to get to it.

The deeper you get, the more emotional things get, and the two best friends go through everything together, if "everything" could fit in your early 20s.

I went into this not knowing what it was about despite the fact that I bought it. It's better to go into it this way, with as little info as possible.

I enjoy good characters that feel real more than a juicy plot but this has both!! Highly recommend, just trust me. I would give anything to read this for the first time again 🥲

[Literary fiction, book review, book recommendations, Irish lit fic]