Thirst Trap - Gráinne O’Hare

If this book were on a 0–5 scale, I’d give it a 10, because numbers are fake and so are rules.

Three young women in Belfast are partying, deflecting, and stumbling through messy love and work lives, while avoiding the grief and guilt of losing the fourth member of their once‑inseparable friend group. A year after the accident, they’re still running from adulthood, the future, and the truth about what happened.

Now…where to begin? Gràinne O’Hare’s writing is so good it should be illegal. The prose? Gorgeous. The humour? Sharp enough to cut me. The characters? Chaotic little disasters I would absolutely follow into poor decisions. It’s a chaotic yet blissfully beautiful story, written in a humorous way without ruining the tragic parts of the narrative. Honestly, I can’t think of a better way this could’ve been written. Gràinne O’Hare has outdone herself — I loved every bit of this novel, from the first word to the last.

O’Hare’s writing style blends the perfect prose elements together, concocting this compelling book that had me turning every page, pulled through her characters’ lives like I was a magnet and the pages were sheets of iron. I also loved how raw she painted each of the girls’ lives, and how believable they all were — painfully believable at times, which is my favourite kind. She was just so descriptive, interweaving funny metaphors and idioms to keep me engaged alongside the characters’ thoughts, and all their super interesting relationships with all the different side characters O’Hare put in there to move the story along. Ugh…it was just brilliant.

It’s sharp and contemporary, which I always admire, and very Belfast‑specific… which also seems to be something I’m naturally drawn to. There’s something about Irish writers that pleases me more than anything, and I’m not sure if it’s because Irish culture is foreign to me — I’ve never been to Ireland — and the way it’s depicted completely enraptures me; or if I simply love the personalities of these writers, which shine through their novels with an obvious amount of their heart and soul in every phrase and clause. Perhaps it’s both, but either way, I can’t get enough of it, and I will be reading this again.

Aimée Walsh and her book ‘Exile’ (a review on that can be found much further back on my book review homepage) was the first Irish novelist I read, and Gràinne O’Hare certainly won’t be my last… not after reading the masterpieces these two have created.

Not to mention O’Hare’s character work, which is incredible. Her protagonists are flawed, deeply human, and — if I’ve said this word before I’m sorry — chaotic. I love a character who just lives their life brazenly with all the emotion. It’s what keeps me reading a lot of these Contemporary, Humorous/Dark Comedy, and LGBTQ+ / Sapphic Fiction books. If I don’t like a character, for whatever reason, you’ve lost me at page one, to be honest. I want to feel excited by them, I want to dislike them for some of the human decisions they make, and I want to feel like I know them — and O’Hare’s Thirst Trap does just that.

From the start, I knew these girls had troubled lives, and that alone gave me the desire to know more. Can you tell I love a good disaster?

Furthermore, I want to share my love for female‑driven novels. A lot of the things I write are from female perspectives, and sometimes I pick up a book solely because I want to read about the lives of women. I’m often disappointed when a book is written from a male point of view. I love and relate to women a lot more than I do men, and I’m sure a lot of other girls and women out there do too — and this sort of book nails that desire on the head. It’s perfect for getting lost in a woman’s world, and because of that, I’ll be reading it again in the near future for both validation and pure enjoyment because why not?

So, if you love messy women, Irish humour, and emotional chaos, this is your book, honey. It’s perfect for anyone who feels a lot but uses jocularity to get through it — basically, anyone who wants something they can genuinely connect with while still feeling a little bit of warmth along the way. I mean, I felt for these girls the whole way through this short portion of their lives, and I found myself rooting for them and getting riled up at every bit of mistreatment they faced. If that’s not a sign telling you Thirst Trap is definitely a good book to invest in, then I don’t know what to tell you…

Buy your copy of the novel here!: https://amzn.eu/d/0aUqaj5T

No seriously…buy it. Please.

Exile - Aimée Walsh

Fiadh has lived in Belfast her whole life. She’s got friends, plans for the future, and most of all, she loves to party. But when she moves away, everything changes. She doesn’t fit in, she drinks all the time, and her friends back home have moved on – or at least that’s how it feels to Fiadh. So when she comes home for Christmas, a night out with them goes horribly wrong. There’s just one issue… she can’t remember what happened…

With only the aftermath to help her piece together the events of last night, Fiadh begins to spiral. She’s bruised, achy, bleeding, tired, hungover, and nobody seems to care. Will Fiadh ever come to terms with this, and will she be able to turn her life around to start over? To that, I say: read it. Read immediately, quickly, and right now, because I can say without a sliver of a doubt that you’ll find it too intriguing not to.

Aimée Walsh has written a knockout. This is a great novel, and I couldn’t recommend it enough. It’s an extremely gripping read, and so wonderfully poignant that I didn’t know what to do with myself each night after reading it. It left me worried for Fiadh. It left me excited for Fiadh. It left me sorry for Fiadh. And it left me angry for Fiadh. Let’s just say it was one heck of an emotional rollercoaster.

Walsh implements short sentences to maintain a thrilling narrative that is fast-paced, shocking, disturbing, and exciting. These traits are what make the plot so compelling. It’s punchy, and really quite frightening but this approach works well with how Walsh has structured the story. Though the horrific night out isn’t introduced until around page 100, which was slightly bothersome. Despite that, the choice of sentence structure ensures that every word before it matters, making this a profound page-turner. It’s the build-up that kept me reading, eager to discover how the protagonist ends up in this so called awful situation. I’ll say it now and keep saying it: every word, phrase, and clause is worth reading.

However, if I were Walsh, I would have started with the night out in chapter one to immediately hook the reader. Initially, I was teased into thinking that was exactly how the book would begin, but the night out in the first chapter wasn’t the one mentioned in the blurb. While this was a bit disappointing, each page offered a tense build-up of events that kept my eyes glued to the page. The blurb certainly enticed me, and it is in fact what many people judge a book by. In this case, it did a good job of convincing me to make the purchase, and I hope it has the same effect on you.

I didn’t anticipate the story unfolding as it did, and I appreciated the unexpected turns. That’s what makes a good book. Predictable novels are boring. I want to constantly be asking, 'What happens next?' and piece together the story myself, guessing the outcomes of events and questions that arise. 'Who did what?' and 'What did he or she truly do?' I want to wonder if the next chapter will offer explanations, but I don’t want to know everything in advance. Walsh has executed this balance nicely.

I’m captivated by her writing style too. She’s descriptive, with cool similes that have inspired me when writing my own. And while the use of short sentences might be quite abrupt, the way she’s incorporated this is perfect. Her characters feel so real that I experienced the emotions a close friend of Fiadh’s would have. I wanted her life to be good and for her to be happy. At times, I questioned her morals, but that’s acceptable because she had flaws, which give characters a relatable human complexity. Every attribute in this book, from the plot’s structure to the minor details of each character in Fiadh’s life, fits seamlessly with the mood of the story and the genre of her novel: a coming-of-age story unlike any other.

I'll warn you now though, it's dark and frankly repulsive at times, but it's a story that felt so real that I was angry for most of the last half. Honestly, it’s a whirlwind of goodness, a devastating whirlwind of goodness, but I’m so glad I read it. It was satisfying and “visceral,” as author Colin Walsh also states in his review. It wasn’t tediously long either; it was the perfect length for a quick week long or few day read, depending on how much time you have to spare. So, if a deep dive into consent, friendship, and alienation is something you wish were written about more and would like to read, then I think Exile is the novel you need to get next.

Buy your copy of the book here: https://amzn.eu/d/gOwfPiw