Book Review: Thirst Trap by Grainne O'Hare
About the book
Belfast: three girls are living for the weekend, their friendship the only thing that matters.
Harley: hurtling from club to club in a wild and blurry quest for meaning.
Maggie: navigating a situationship with an unavailable woman, and, of course, therapy.
Róise: only bothering to turn up to her boring office job due to an ill-advised crush on her boss.
But the three of them used to be four. And now, one year on from a tragic accident that almost ripped the group apart, Harley, Maggie and Róise still can't face up to any of it: to adulthood, the future, or to one another.
Why we love it
Let's face it, female friendship in your twenties can be horribly messy sometimes. No one knows you better and no one has the ability to hurt you more. Thirst Trap captures all of that vulnerability and angst as three young women, house-sharing in modern-day Belfast, try to deal with relationships, grief, dead-end jobs and increasingly questionable wild nights out in the aftermath of their friend Lydia's untimely death. At the same time, they're navigating the uncomfortable transition into their thirties and the dawning realisation that life isn't quite going to plan.
What I loved most was how real these characters felt. Even when their choices and actions were frustrating, I quickly found myself fully invested in Harley, Róise and Maggie because at its heart, this novel is a compassionate exploration of friendship, loss and letting go. Their simultaneous desire to move forward with their lives while stubbornly clinging to old habits and toxic emotions is completely relatable no matter what your age.
Graiine O'Hare cleverly infuses Lydia's absence on every page of the book and it's the struggle of these three friends to process their anger and grief towards her which adds so much emotional punch to the book.
The Belfast setting is another real highlight for me. I’ll confess this isn’t the Belfast of my youth (a little too old for that!), but Gráinne O’Hare brings the city vividly to life. There are just enough recognisable spots to spark a jolt of recognition in even in an occasional visitor and she writes a city that feels vibrant and buzzing with youthful energy.
With razor sharp wit and enough genuinely funny laugh out loud moments to counter-balance the more painful moments, this is a refreshingly clever book that adds to the wealth of incredible story-telling that's been coming out of Belfast in recent years.
A true, unexpected delight and definitely one worth reading!
