Rachel is an Irish university student who works in a bookstore to pay for her studies. There she meets a boy her age, James; it doesn't take long for them to become close friends and share a cheap and shabby flat. Both of them try to make their way in Ireland during the Great Recession while managing their chaotic lives: James is fed up with people thinking he doesn't want to come out and Rachel fantasizes endlessly about Dr. Byrne, a married professor whom she tries to seduce with a risky plan with unpredictable results. With a look that is as intelligent as it is comical, Caroline O'Donoghue delves into the aspirations, follies and clumsiness of youth to build an endearing ode to the energy of twenty years, to the friendships we forge then and that leave a permanent mark. The Rachel Factor captures like few novels the pleasures and disappointments of this stage, the intensity of first loves and the confusion that the passage to adulthood plunges us into.