Loved Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried About for its diary-ripped-open devastation? Keep spiraling with The Rachel Incident by .
Curated by NextBookAfter Editors. This read-alike match weighs tone, themes, pacing, character dynamics, and emotional payoff rather than genre alone. See how recommendations are chosen.
Buy on AmazonWhy It's Your Next Read
- Same cry-laughing at your own mess energy
- Friendship betrayals hit harder than romance fails
- Irish wit sharpens the emotional chaos beautifully
- Quarter-life desperation feels like your group chat
If Klee's dissection of dead dogs and dead-end relationships made you feel violently seen, The Rachel Incident delivers that same diary-ripped-open intensity—but now your 20-something spiral involves a married professor, a broke best friend, and the kind of loyalty-testing disaster that ends friendships or immortalizes them. O'Donoghue captures the hormone-fueled wreckage of post-college life with the specificity of a group chat screenshot: recession-era humiliations, terrible workplace schemes, and the masochistic nostalgia for when every betrayal felt like the end of the world.
This is the laugh-cry validation you craved from Klee—fierce, unfiltered, and unapologetically messy. O'Donoghue turns forbidden crushes and friendship implosions into the kind of cathartic hilarity that doubles as communal therapy.
If you ugly-cried over mediocre boys before, prepare for the loyalty-testing disaster that immortalizes friendships.
What Readers Are Saying
"This is a true gem...vivid and funny, both realistic and fanciful, and unfurls in your head like a streaming series with a bit of a Fleabag vibe." — Jenna (semi-hiatus, out touching grass 🌱…!), Goodreads
"I did not expect to be as moved by this book as I was! ...O’Donoghue wrote her internal experience in a way that felt real, unguarded, and honest. I felt proud of her and her trajectory. Overall, I’m pleasantly surprised by how much this book moved me." — Thomas, Goodreads
"I had so much fun the whole time...Rachel was the perfect amount of relatable, but she also had enough drama in her life that made this book so fun!!! I completely devoured it." — Sally Darr Griffin, Goodreads
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