The Rachel Incident, brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three.
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and itās 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 Fredās glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.
Sparks fly when a romance novelist and a documentary filmmaker join forces to craft the perfect Hollywood love story and take both of their careers to the next levelābut only if they can keep the chemistry between them from taking the whole thing off script.
Felicity āFizzyā Chen is lost. Sure, sheās got an incredible career as a beloved romance novelist with a slew of bestsellers under her belt, but when sheās asked to give a commencement address, it hits her: she hasnāt been practicing what sheās preached. Fizzy hasnāt ever really been in love. Lust? Definitely. But that swoon-worthy, canāt-stop-thinking-about-him, all-encompassing feeling? Nope. Nothing. What happens when the optimism sheās spent her career encouraging in readers starts to feel like a lie?
Connor Prince, documentary filmmaker and single father, loves his work in large part because it allows him to live near his daughter. But when his profit-minded boss orders him to create a reality TV show, putting his job on the line, Connor is out of his element. Desperate to find his romantic lead, a chance run-in with an exasperated Fizzy offers Connor the perfect solution. What if he could show the queen of romance herself falling head-over-heels for all the world to see? Fizzy gives him a hard passāunless he agrees to her list of demands. When he says yes, and production on The True Love Experiment begins, Connor wonders if that perfect match will ever be in the cue cards for him, too.