BookLife Review by Carol O’Day: The Three Lives of Cate Kay (Kate Fagan, author)
Contemporary fiction, romance, LGBTQ+ characters, novelist, actress, fame, accident, paraplegia, recovery.
BookLife Review by Carol O’Day: The Three Lives of Cate Kay (Kate Fagan, author)
Protagonist Cate Kay is a young writer who experiences a sudden rise to fame with the success of her debut novel. The novel becomes a hit movie and she writes two sequels which also become Hollywood smashes. Cate Kay is the pseudonym the author chose to hide her identity after a tragic accident. The author’s pseudonym is a tribute to her first love, Amanda. It is a clue to her identity that only Amanda would recognize.
When Annie Callahan fled her small town she initially landed near Plattsburgh, New York. There she adopts the name Cass Ford (an homage to a character named Cassandra from a play and to her favorite actor when she was a teen, Harrison Ford). She meets Sidney in a writing class. Sidney, a pre-law student, is instantly smitten with Cass. Sidney woos Cass and persuades her to move to New York to pursue her writing career. Before she proposes that grand adventure, Sidney visits Cass’s hometown and learns that Amanda survived the accident. But Sidney fears that she will lose Cass with that information. She lies and tells Cass that Amanda is dead. Sidney’s love for Cass is not fully reciprocated. Sidney becomes a lawyer and applies her considerable legal skills to keep Annie/Cass/Cate’s identity secret. But when the Cate Kay book is published it becomes wildly successful. Cass runs again, this time to Hollywood to meet Ryan, the actress who will play the lead in the movie version of the story.
Ryan and Cass fall instantly (and mutually) in love with one another. They enjoy a month in seclusion hiding from the press before the movie filming begins. In a Shakespearean tragedy of errors and misunderstandings, Cass believes that Ryan betrayed her to the press, and she runs once again.
The success of Cate Kay’s book ultimately reaches Annie/Cass/Cate’s hometown where Annie’s absent and formerly alcoholic mother is well into years of sobriety and recovery, and Amanda is alive and navigating paraplegia. Upon reading Cate Kay’s book, Amanda not only recognizes the pseudonym Annie chose (a name derived from an inside joke about Cate Blanchette she and Annie had shared as teens), but also recognizes the countless scenes and references in the book to the childhood and teenage experiences she and Annie shared. She knows that only Annie could have authored that book. Amanda is angry that Annie chose to disappear in the immediate aftermath of her accident. Amanda writes cryptic angry fan mail letters to Cate Kay. In true star-crossed lover form, her letters disappear into a post box not seen by the author for years, further obscuring the truth of Amanda’s survival for Annie.
Ultimately Annie learns that Amanda is alive. She also learns that Ryan was not the person who tipped off the paparazzi. After decades of living under three different identities, Cate Kay yearns to reclaim her life as Annie Callahan. She travels back to upstate New York to see Amanda, at the same time that Ryan travels East from Hollywood to reunite with Cass. As Annie Callahan reclaims her identity she must choose where her true love lies.
The Three Lives of Cate Kay has the mistaken identity overtones of Twelfth Night and borrows heavily from the age-old star-crossed lovers themes. But the characters and love stories between and among the female characters are fresh and the outcome is not certain until the very last page.
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