Thirst Trap by Gráinne O'Hare: book review
Overview: Harley, Róise, and Maggie all turn thirty this year. The novel opens as they try to get into a club with a succulent at one of these fabled birthday celebrations. The housemates and best friends are all in the same boat—jobs they don't really love, falling down house, unstable relationships, and a relationship to partying that is fueled by their dissatisfaction with life. They're also absorbing an immense amount of grief as the one year anniversary of their fourth friend, Lydia's, passing rolls around. This is the year when they need to make changes, and O'Hare proves with this novel that the coming of age arc is never really over. Overall: 4.5
Characters: 4 I really came to love all of the girls, and I'm impressed at what nuanced, complicated lives O'Hare manages to render on the page for every single character, even Lydia who is no longer physically a part of their narrative. There's messy relationship entanglements and longstanding family issues that plague their interactions with the world and particular lenses they all see through, which can be hard with such a big cast. Even the peripheral characters that touch their lives feel fully realized. The only downside of this is that at the start of the novel, such a big cast creates lots of names and a little difficulty tracking who everyone is and aligning the traits properly. It's a bit overwhelming, and meeting them in the context of a chaotic club scene is great for action, but I actually ended up reading the opening twice because that first chapter highlights their similarities more than any differences. This isn't an issue as the novel progresses, and we get to spend extended time with Harley, Róise, and Maggie in their own lives before they come back together, but it is something to note about the nature of sprawling, ensemble casts. This is the perfect group of friends where they're full of problems and complications but deeply endearing, and having this bigger group allows many interesting contrasts to emerge in the question around how they all move forward into this next chapter of their lives.
Plot: 5 The book is inevitably fast paced because we need to cram so many storylines in, but it never feels rushed or overstuffed. We get to explore the girls as friends and a unit but also deeply as individuals. Harley was a late bloomer who is now making up for lost time. She tends to take her uncertainty about life out on club nights that involve lots of drugs, alcohol, and sex. Róise is not only dealing with grief from Lydia's death but a break-up that coincided almost directly with the time of the incident. She's venturing onto dating apps, having flirtations with coworkers, and reawakening that part of her life while grappling with the fact that, despite not being as external as Harley's, she has bad coping mechanisms of her own. Finally, Maggie is trapped in an on and off relationship with a girl she's head over heels for, but her love interest seems to be rather elusive. Her cousin, who might as well be her brother, Liam, is grappling with Lydia's death as well since they were dating until right before the incident. This impacts Liam and Maggie's relationship as well. These character wants and needs heavily motivate the plot, served up with plenty of hijinks to keep the chapters moving. The format of having chapters focused on each individual and upping their individual storyline followed by group scenes that prove the impact of the time apart is quite effective.
Writing: 5 I love the writing here. This is one of the few books I've read this year that when I put it down I thought, "wow, I had an exceptionally great time reading that." I highlighted so many passages of witty turns of phrase, perfect encapsulations of modern dating, and lines that managed to briefly sum up massive feelings in a particular object or action. Beautiful, beautiful storytelling work that avoids too much neatness while offering a deeply pleasing symmetry. Almost every throwaway comment comes back around in some kind of impressive way, and the ending is affirming without trying to tie a massive bow on an obviously difficult situation that will continue to be difficult. I feel like everyone is always looking for friendship-focused books, and this delivers on that particularly tricky category in the most impressive way. This is a portrait of three housemates and a commentary on having to grow up and then grow up again and again.
It feels deeply appropriate that in the process of toting my paperback around, it got a smear of my purple lipstick across the pages. This cover is unbelievably eye catching as well. Major props there.
I'm going to leave you with a quote from the end of the book. I don't think that's too much of a sin considering that this isn't one of those high stakes novels where the end is really meant to be a surprise. It truly captures what is so lovely about the feeling of reading the novel:
"It is not only that something is ending, it is also the knowledge that things will continue to end, that in the future there will be other, greater moves away and apart, and that they will never be the same four girls and a turtle living together again."
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