The Younger Woman

Cate Ray

TELLING a stranger in a bar that she hated her husband and fantasised about him dying is recalled uneasily as just a drunken confession in a haze of too much alcohol when 52-year-old Gabby wakes the following morning.

But some words can’t be taken back and before long, disturbing events from the past are uncovered and Gabby finds herself caught up in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse.

Cate Ray (pictured below) – an author known for her emotionally charged page-turners exploring issues which affect women in today’s world – digs deep into the dark corners of the human psyche and the complexities of midlife in this gripping domestic thriller.

Starring a woman reassessing her life, her empty nest in the wake of her daughter’s departure to university, and her far from perfect husband, The Younger Woman navigates the minefield of emotions, regrets, anxieties and frustrations that can rise to the surface at the arrival of what is often a pivotal era of renewal and self-discovery.

It was the day that Gabby had been dreading… her beloved daughter, Alice, has been deposited at university and with son Will already away, the absence of both children has left a yawning gap in her life. 

It’s also a time for introspection and Gabby finally has time to look back over her 21 years of marriage to Fred and recall just how much has changed between them. 

There have been ‘too many little betrayals, and some not-so-little ones’ by Fred and it’s at this point that Gabby comes to a startling realisation… she doesn’t just not love her husband any more, she absolutely hates him. Drowning her sorrows at a bar one evening, Gabby gets chatting to a very attractive but slightly unsettling younger woman named Ellis who emanates a ‘scary’ intensity. In a moment of drunken truth-telling, she tells Ellis that she wishes Fred was dead, and gets more than just a sympathetic response.

But later that night, Gabby begins to fear that she has ‘stepped over a shaky line into very dark territory.’ Even so, she doesn’t expect anything to come of it until she tries to track down Ellis again and realises that the young woman might not have been who she said she was. As Gabby begins to unravel the truth about Ellis, and what Fred might be hiding, she is thrown into a whirlwind of lies and manipulation. How much is she willing to risk to expose the truth… and who is the real target?

Ray is on fine form as she cunningly manoeuvres her readers through a tangled web of relationships, betrayals, and the experiences in Gabby’s troubled childhood that helped to mark out the course of her adult life. It’s a twisting, turning ride that takes in familiar marriage problems, long-held secrets, and hidden desires that have never been honestly voiced.

With a narrative that weaves between Gabby and the enigmatic and quietly menacing Ellis, we witness how what had seemed a cathartic chat with an unknown but receptive young woman becomes a freewheeling, unstoppable and unpredictable force that threatens to tear roughshod over more than just her life. It’s a time for realisation, reassessment and resetting, for ditching the past and searching for a new female empowerment, but as the uncertainties grow for Gabby so too do the risks, the high stakes, the emotional turmoil, and the dangers.

Packed with surprises and suspense, and a burgeoning sense of unease that creeps slowly but surely through the pages, The Younger Woman is guaranteed to hold you in its thrall right through to the final gut-punch.
(Fox & Ink Books, paperback, £9.99)