This is a perfect book for book clubs. There is so much to unpack. First loves. Strong friendships. Can we ever really escape our pasts? I couldn't stop turning the pages. I was absolutely enthralled. I know this is going to be a much talked about book.

The Three Lives of Cate Kay tells the story of Ann that after going by many names and running from something incredibly traumatic ends up as Cate Kay, a wildly famous writer that nobody knows the real identity of. It's set as a memoir written from many different points of view to tell her story from childhood up to the moment she comes clean to the world about who she is and tries to mend relationships. Despite the different POVs technically being written by different characters I couldn't say their voices were wildly different but the writing still had me engaged and hooked. I kept wanting to return to the book so I could see the mystery of who Cate Kay really was unfold. It made me go through almost every emotion I can think of!

It's also a sapphic story that captures really well being in love with your childhood friend and then needing to outgrow that to find yourself. That was perhaps my favourite part as, sadly, the main romance followed a trope I'm not always into. (Being deeply in love after only knowing someone for a couple weeks but I do understand the feeling of wondering what it could have been long after it was over.)

Lastly, the only thing keeping me from a higher rating is there was a number of plot holes and moments I really needed to try hard to suspend my disbelief but I still really enjoyed this book and do recommend it!

Sadly ,I've had to do a soft dnf for now and come back to the book in the future. I think the writing was very good. Based on what I've read so far I would still recommend this to people I know would love this type of story.

I grabbed this book, without having read anything about it, as soon as I saw it available on NetGalley. I’ve read What Made Maddy Run by Kate Fagan and used to listen to her podcast with her wife, Kathryn Budig, so I was excited to see she was now writing fiction.

I would recommend going into The Three Lives of Cate Kay the same way I did - without reading too much about it. It will not disappoint. I really like the way Fagan writes, and at right around 300 pages, it’s a pretty quick read that I had trouble putting down. I will absolutely be recommending this to friends and as a pick for book club in 2025!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the free e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Cate Kay is an infamous author of a wildly popular trilogy. She writes under her name of Cate Kay, which is the third name she has legitimately used in her life. Born Ann, she grew up answering to either Annie or Ann Marie. After a traumatic event, she changed her name to Cass. Lastly, she is Cate Kay. This is her memoir of the 3 different versions of herself.

While I enjoyed The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, this character driven, fictional memoir did not connect with me as well. There was a lot going on and a lot of characters, in fact maybe too many. I never really connected with Ann/Cass/Cate and for the story to be successful, I needed to. Cate has been through so much and I wanted to learn more about her as opposed to the multiverse of characters that dropped in and out of the story, some only once.

If you are a fan of character driven novels, give this one a whirl. Its not that I disliked it, I just did not like it enough.

I really enjoyed this book. It kept me engaged and it only took a few days to read. I think this is going to be a good book club option for several clubs. I plan recommending to my book friends and I look forward to reading more by this author.

This is being frequently compared to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and those parallels are indeed accurate.

The Three Lives of Cate Kay is essentially the memoir of a mysterious, but hugely popular author. It details her life from adolescence and is told through primarily through the POVs of her childhood best friend, love interests, and other people whose paths she crosses.

The storytelling was both quite entertaining and also thought provoking. I thought the portrayal of adolescence and the yearning for something better was so realistic. Though I wouldn’t have necessarily made the same decisions as Cate, I can empathize and it was difficult to dislike her as a character. I really appreciated the discussions of queerness, friendship, forgiveness and what really matters in life. In particular, I thought it was a very intentional and clever choice to very slowly reveal that the main characters are sapphic. I also really enjoyed reading the little footnotes.

The biggest critique I had was that the myriad of POVs occasionally felt distracting, but ultimately that did not mar my reading experience much. I will definitely be anticipating any book Kate Fagan writes in the future.

A huge thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

I LOVED this book. Whoever compared this to Evelyn Hugo was right but I think Cate Kay was better! I loved the alternating povs, Cate was a super strong character going through a lot and making the best of a terrible situation. I think she did what most people would do in her situation and I think it made her a stronger character. I read this as slow as humanly possible even though I still flew through it. Super engaging with interesting, compelling characters. An easy 5 stars!

The Three Lives of Cate Kay was almost a great read for me. I will definitely pick up future fiction by Kate Fagan - I am interested to see what comes next for her!

Cate Kay is a super famous author - but no one knows who she is, only that it’s a pseudonym. Cass is the real author - only she isn’t Cass either. She grew up as Annie but ran away from her life and changed her name before writing her huge hit The Very Last.

There is a lot going on in this book - a book within a book within a book, a million character perspectives (but they all have a very similar voice) and lots of characters making poor choices. It’s so hard for me to put my finger on what didn’t work but it all just feels like a little too much instead of just settling into the characters and their true story. But at the same time I was still very compelled to keep reading and to see what would happen - but the ending also fell a little flat for me. In the end this wasn’t a favorite for me but I think this would make an amazing book club pick - lots to discuss and I think many will love it!

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the free ebook to review.

The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan

Contemporary Fiction | LGBTQIAP+ | Mystery

Release date: 01/07/2025

3⭐️

This is the story of Annie and the three "Lives" she lived between 1991 and 2013. Annie skips town and hides in plain sight with a new persona after an accident in her hometown. We read about her three loves, how she manages to maintain her secret identity(ies), and ultimately how this accident in her teenage years shapes these 20ish years.

This book is billed as "Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo meets First Lie Wins," and I get this on both accounts: a hollywood story of secret love, and a changing identity for survival story all mashed together. However, because of my absolute love for the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo I feel I went in with too high of expectations....oops.

There is one plot point I could not get over: was it hard to Google obituaries in the mid-to-late 2000s? If Annie/Cass/Cate had used any sort of investigative tools to search for an obituary, we could have shortened up one of the other plot points/relationships, and this would have made a little more sense to me. For parts of it I could KIND OF understand why she wouldn't have, if that part of her life was too raw/painful to even think about.

Despite this one "issue" that I had as the reader I was still sucked into finding out how the relationships and storylines all played out, and the ending was satisfying.

TL; DR: A good story about how our past shapes us in so many ways, what we get out of our relationships: both intimate relationships and business relationships, and how it's never too late to take what you need and write the end of your own story.

This one is a "recommend if this review sounds interesting to you!" book :-)

Thank you @NetGalley & @atriabooks for the advanced eARC in exchange for an honest review.

thanks to netgalley and atria books for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

in all frankness, the three lives of cate kay is about three (four?) lesbians being overdramatic and ruining each other's lives! that is really it.
it's slow paced and i liked the intrigue in the beginning; decades-spanning almost-autobiographical stories always get me. i see the comparison to evelyn hugo, but unlike tshoeh, i couldn't root for anyone in this novel, i didn't get the fascination with annie/cate/cass by everyone she met?
thanks to the excellent writing though, i stuck through to the end even when i disliked all the characters.

3.5⭐

Loved this! I read it because of a recommendation from a friend who said it gave Evelyn Hugo vibes and she couldn’t be more right! It was entertaining to read all the different lives of Cate Kay and she how she grew as a person. I really enjoyed the snippets from her books and the “notes” from Cate Kay as well. Thanks for letting me read it early, Atria!

I enjoyed this book and it was a little slow to get started for me. Told from multiple points of view as well as past and present which could be confusing at times and oddly enough for me made it more interesting.

**Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review an electronic ARC of this book.

Having being compared to two books I just adored I was very excited to dive into this book. Annie and Amanda meet when they are just kids and quickly become each other worlds, in the way two young best friends become. When they get older a tragic accident leads Annie to run from her life to recreate a new one. The book is told as if it’s the memoir of Annie and has multiple points of view, focusing on those in Annie’s orbit that had an effect on her life the book was a very enjoyable read and it was a story that will stick with me.

Thank you to Netgalley and to the publishers for the chance to read this advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Amanda and Annie are inseparable friends and plan to become famous movie stars after high school. Until a tragic accident separates them.

I saw this as a modern day Evelyn Hugo, which a few others have compared as well. The characters are young at the start of the story and this allows for many mistakes and difficult decisions to be made. It was interesting how different the characters lived became, but emotionally they held on to each other. I enjoyed the friendship and romance storyline. Anyone who enjoys books about books will also like this one.

“But she wouldn’t go home. She couldn’t. She knew what that felt like. And it wasn’t enough.”

The Three Lives of Cate Kay comes out on 1/7.

Wow, I wasn’t expecting to like this story as much as I did! Admittedly, it takes a minute to get into the story, and the layout is a little confusing initially. But I couldn't put it down once I got in the groove. The writing structure is different and ambitious, but the author executes it masterfully. The characters are complex, with just enough of the “miscommunication” trope to have me screaming at the pages.

I was skeptical when it was marketed as a comp for “Evelyn Hugo,” but I think it’s similar enough. Very highly recommended!

I only wish that the main "antagonists" who caused the story's complications got some karma for the heartache they caused. It would've left me satisfied because I felt they got off too easy.

*I received a copy of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for this opportunity*

Nobody knows who the infamous Cate Kay is. Shrouded in mystery (and surrounded by rock-solid NDAs), her only mark is the bestselling trilogy that rocketed her name into the stratosphere.

Until now.

Told through the eyes of Cate (also known as Cass and Annie), and the people closest to her during key points of her life, a story unfolds of a young woman desperate to make a name for herself while running from an unspeakable tragedy.

THE THREE LIVES OF CATE KAY was such a unique and intriguing story-- Fagan masterfully wove together almost a dozen different perspectives, each with a resounding amount of depth and personality (one of my favorite narrators had a single chapter near the end of the story). This story had everything: love and heartbreak, friendship and manipulation, desperation and hope, greed and forgiveness. It's being marketed as a comp to Evelyn Hugo, and while they two have very different storytelling styles and characters, they do have the same <I>feel</I>. I'm excited to see what Fagan publishes in the future!

I was intrigued with the book after seeing a lot of good reviews on Bookstagram and decided to request an ARC. I was surprised by how well the story is crafted and how meticulously crafted it is. The world of Cate Kay felt so real to me. Her friendships, relationships, books and world all seemed very real to me.

I loved the first half of the book and enjoyed getting to know all the characters and even if their actions didn't always make sense to me, I was hooked with the story. I thought it was meta and was impressed by how detailed Kate Fagan was. But the second half especially the last three-quarters seems to go on forever with nothing much really happening. I felt like the book could have been wrapped up a bit earlier but nontheless, it's a good book covering love, fame, loss and more.

Thanks to Netgalley & Atria for the advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

this was a messy but overall good and intriguing read. the multiple povs lost me a bit, especially with the changing names and the non-linear storytelling, but ultimately the main mystery was compelling enough that i kept on. the footnotes were also amazing but that might just be my love for academic language and non traditional story structures.

Told from the perspective of a memoir, “Cate Kay” sells us an image of someone who she wants us to think she is: an elusive and mysterious successful writer of the book trilogy “The Very Last” that would go on to be milked in Hollywood’s favorite ways. The facts of it is, though, Cate Kay is not her real name. In fact, two of the three names Cate Kay uses isn’t her real name. An incident involving Cate and her bff Amanda after they graduated high school led Cate to hightailing it out of Bolton Landing, New York, and into a whole new life.

Through the pages of the (fictional) memoir, we follow Cate and those near and dear to her who lended their voices for bits of the memoir. Some of it seems confusing, like why a random postmaster would have a dedicated chapter in the memoir. How would she even hunt him down? How is that pertinent to the book? Anyway, the book is mostly told from four perspectives, of which I won’t spoil. Also, just about everyone in this book is a lesbian.

In accordance with FTC guidelines, please note that this ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.