A Most-Anticipated Novel of 2025 - DAZED, Irish Times, RTE
'Hilarious and gut-wrenching' - Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller
Sometimes friends hold you together.
Sometimes they're why you're falling apart.
Maggie, Harley and Roise are friends on the brink: of triumph, catastrophe, or maybe just finally growing up. Their crumbling Belfast houseshare has been witness to their roaring twenties, filled with questionable one-night stands and ruthless hangovers. But now fault-lines are beginning to show.
The three girls are still grieving the tragic death of their friend, Lydia, whose room remains untouched. Their last big fight hangs heavy over their heads, unspoken since the accident. And now they are all beginning to unravel.
Thirst Trap by Grainne O'Hare is a blazing, bittersweet, bitingly funny, and painfully relatable story about the friendships that endure through the very best and the very worst of times.
'Like the literary love child of Miranda July and Carrie Fisher, transposed in Belfast - hilarious, smart and chaotic in the best way' - Louise Nealon, author of Snowflake
About the Author
Gráinne O’Hare is a writer from Belfast based in Newcastle upon Tyne. She received a Northern Debut Award for Fiction from New Writing North in 2022, and was awarded funding by the Arts Council in 2023 for the development and completion of her first novel. She has also been shortlisted for the Francis MacManus Short Story Competition and the Bridport Prize, and came in the top three of the Benedict Kiely Short Story Competition in 2021 and 2022. She is Media Sub-Editor of Criticks reviews for the British Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, and is currently completing a PhD on eighteenth-century women's life-writing at Newcastle University. Thirst Trap is her first novel.
Industry Reviews
Readers are raving about Thirst Trap:
'Made me laugh and cry in equal measure'
'Laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving . . . I loved every page of it.'
'Sharp, funny, and deeply relatable'
'This book is the moment'
'I mourned this being over. It's sad and beautiful and real and messy. It's perfect'