Part of the series: My Favourite Books of 2025
At a Glance
| Author | Roisin O’Donnell 🇮🇪 |
|---|---|
| Published | 2025 |
| Publisher | Serpent’s Tail |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, Contemporary |
| Themes | Coercive control, domestic abuse, housing, Ireland, intersectional feminism |
| GFP Rating | Honourable Mention — Best Books of 2025 |
Scott’s Take
Read this alongside The Names by Florence Knapp. Two novels, same subject, completely different approaches. Taken together they’re remarkable.
Ciara and Ryan are married. They have two children, and as the novel opens, Ciara discovers a third is on the way. Something is off about their relationship — something she can’t quite name. One day, hanging out the washing, she decides to leave. She packs a suitcase, takes the children, and runs before Ryan gets home.
What O’Donnell centres is not Ryan, but the system Ciara now has to navigate — and, crucially, the doubts she carries with her. Ryan has never hit her. Aren’t these his children too? Is she overreacting? O’Donnell renders this confusion brilliantly. Ciara is isolated: she moved from England to Ireland with Ryan, her family is far away, and she has no access to her own money. She gave up teaching to raise the children and run the household.
The Irish setting adds specific layers. Ryan has told Ciara she’ll need to learn Irish before she can teach here — not entirely untrue, but the implication of how long that would take versus the reality of being able to learn on the job is one of many small ways he has engineered her dependency. What makes this novel so sharp is that Ryan doesn’t need to be special. He’s barely characterised. That’s the point. There’s nothing particularly notable about him. He’s a man who has made himself indispensable by removing all other options, and the novel is entirely uninterested in explaining him. It’s interested in Ciara’s path out.
The criticism that Ryan is underdeveloped is fair — but I don’t think it matters. Consider it the feminist revenge for every female character who exists only to drive a man’s storyline. What O’Donnell does do is show how Ciara reads Ryan — his unease, his manipulation, the way he creates sympathy for himself and then uses it. You understand her confusion without ever being confused yourself.
The novel is also set against the Irish housing crisis — which, it turns out, looks exactly like the housing crisis wherever you live, with a different group of immigrants blamed and the same unchecked commodification of a basic human need. The cost of living is so high now that you can’t afford for anything to go wrong. The barriers the system puts in Ciara’s way are unreasonable and entirely ordinary. This is great intersectional feminism: not all of what impacts Ciara is specifically a women’s issue, but right now it impacts women more than men. If you’re not a feminist but you’d like to buy a house before you die, team up with one — you both want the same thing.
Watch the Full Review
Scott covered Nesting as part of his My Favourite Books of 2025 video. Watch it here:
▶ My Favourite Books of 2025 — Gunpowder, Fiction & Plot
(timestamps in the description)
Get the Book
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- 🇦🇺 Buy via Booktopia — Australian readers
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If You Liked This, Try These
Scott specifically recommends reading Nesting alongside this one:
- The Names — Florence Knapp — two novels, same subject, completely different approaches
- A Family Matter — Claire Lynch — identity and the systems that define us