The Rayburn Affair is a sharp, seductive book that explores ambition, desire, and the complicated power dynamics of art, influence, and intimacy. The story follows Dr Ruth Morgan, an academic teaching AI and storytelling by day, while quietly dreaming of literary success by night, living in the shadow of her idol, celebrated author Shelby Rayburn.

When Shelby and her charismatic husband Oscar enter Ruth’s life after a chance meeting at a faculty party, everything begins to shift. The connection between the three is immediate and intoxicating, charged with admiration, envy, and unspoken tension. As Ruth is drawn deeper into their orbit, it becomes increasingly unclear whether she is being nurtured, used, or both.

The turning point comes when Shelby makes Ruth a secret offer that changes the balance of their relationship entirely. From there, the story tightens into a quiet psychological spiral, where blurred boundaries, hidden motives, and unequal power dynamics create an atmosphere thick with unease. Ruth’s sense of self, her work, and her understanding of friendship are all slowly reshaped under Shelby and Oscar’s influence.

This is a very well written book that kept me hooked from start to finish. Despite its relatively short length, it packs a surprising emotional and psychological punch. Shelby is a fascinating character, charming and generous on the surface, yet undeniably manipulative beneath it. I love morally grey women in fiction, and Shelby is a brilliant example of how warmth and self interest can coexist.

Oscar largely fulfils the expectations his role sets up, but this never feels lazy or clichéd. His character is handled thoughtfully, adding to the tension rather than detracting from it. Ruth herself is an engaging narrator, intelligent yet vulnerable, and her slow realisation that admiration can easily turn into erasure is compelling to watch unfold.

A smart, addictive book about creativity, control, and the price of proximity to greatness. I loved it.

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I enjoyed this book about the literary world and the price friendship pays in this. The story is of Ruth who befriends a 'power couple' Oscar and Shelby, who take her under their wing. At first she is flattered as she begins to get to know both separately and then she starts to realise that she is perhaps in too deep.

The book delves into Shelby, the novelist, and her charismatic husband who is a director. Not everything is as it seems and Ruth's life starts to shift and change under their influence. Do they appreciate her art or is there something else going on?

Very well written this is a short book that will keep you hooked. I loved it.

Thank you to all for the advance copy.

Acclaimed video artist, Oscar Frost, teaches in the same faculty as Ruth who counts herself as a superfan amongst his novelist wife Shelby Rayburn’s legion of ardent admirers. At the dean’s annual party, Ruth engineers a meeting with this golden couple, amazed to find herself quickly folded into an intimate friendship with her idol and the man who seems to be the most desired on campus. She’s thrilled when Shelby agrees to look at her stories, eagerly accepting the editorial advice her new friend offers, if a little unsettled by the cagey answers she’s noticed Shelby giving to questions about her own current project. When a startling proposal is put to her, she decides to accept despite the risks involved. Betrayal, retribution, and revenge ensue.
There’s a touch of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in the portrayal of Shelby and Oscar’s power couple, singling out young women for their attentions, counterbalanced by Shelby’s vulnerability revealed in flashbacks. Foreshadowing and shifting of narrative perspectives ramp up the tension to a page-turning pace in this gripping exploration of friendship and creativity, which ends in a clever denouement and a gratifying exposure of bad behaviour.

As Shelby puts it in the book, this novel was 'the made up word, unput-downable'. I read it in one sitting!

In 'The Rayburn Affair' we follow Dr Ruth Morgan PhD, a lecturer in English and who explores the role of AI in fiction writing. Aspiring author Ruth in enamoured by famed literary fiction writer Shelby Rayburn, and in a delicious moment of kismet meets Shelby and her media lecturer husband Oscar at a faculty party.

What ensues is a heady story of friendship and betrayal with an underlying sexual tension between all three of our main cast - a will they, won't they situation that embroils the reader.

One of my favourite moments in this were the little glimpses we get into Shelby's inner world; although we primarily focus on Ruth, we get short moments from Shelby's past were we see her life prior to becoming a famed author, dive deeper into her relationship with Oscar, and also catch Ruth from an outsider's perspective, away from her own deep seated insecurity.

I loved Ruth - she is real, a young woman trying to make it as both an academic and a writer, who falls head over heels into a complex friendship with this beguiling older couple. I rooted for her the whole way through, even as she makes some questionable decisions.

My feelings on Shelby were more complicated - she is charming, kind but can also be manipulative. I love morally grey female main characters and Shelby is a wonderful example. Oscar unsurprisingly ended up living up to all the stereotypes I expected, however this is done thoughtfully and doesn't feel like a cliché.

This book is perfect for fans of 'The Rachel Incident' or 'Cleopatra and Frankenstein'.

Thanks to VERVE Books, Laurie Petrou and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC of The Rayburn Affair long before it’s published! I think it’s the first book ever that I’ve stayed up all night reading, physically unable to put down and stayed with me for days after I finished it. Well, in my recent memory anyway. A one-sitting wonder!

Laurie Petrou dragged me into The Rayburn Affair with both hands and didn’t let me go until I unwittingly flipped to the acknowledgments. I devoured it voraciously page after page without a clue the end was rapidly approaching and let out the biggest wail to a silent house at 3am!!! Honestly, I don’t remember checking my progress for the last 30%. I blacked out, it swallowed me whole and didn’t let up. Spoiler alert: it still has me in a chokehold. I’ve been thinking about it constantly since Sunday morning and attempting to distract myself with several trips to the fictional boy aquarium!

It's books like [book:The Rayburn Affair: A suspenseful and seductive campus novel exploring ambition, desire and power dynamics|245579592] that keep me reading. Books that have the ability to transport you to places in the world you've never been and feel like you’re in the story too. In a relatively short book (256 pages), Petrou does a tremendous job world building. I feel like I've been to Toronto and to Shelby’s cabin in the snow, while never leaving my bed in 🇬🇧. What a trip!

I dare say The Rayburn Affair will still be in my mind when it’s out in August 2026, but I can’t wait to reread it. I’ve preordered my copy and I’ll be eagerly awaiting the opportunity to pre-order the audiobook and I plan to listen on release day!

The Rayburn Affair is out 27th August!

this is one of those books that you cant help but being sucked into. its so full of that thing about some books that just somehow keep you held just like the characters were suck and stuck into their own predicaments. its one of those books you think over. you take it into your own emotional state and let it linger.
Ruth seemed like she was in a crash course to meet the pair Shelby and Oscar. this charismatic pair that bought, or so she thought some spark to her life. the connection could be soon as meant to be or immediate. but for me i still had a sense of "uh-oh" from the get go. there is that tension there, that agenda or meaning that everyone is getting something from it that maybe is or isn't so safe or sensible. i almost wanted to say "No Ruth dont." i wasn't sure whether this was a connection or her about to be used.
so when Shelby makes Ruth this offer it completely turn things upside down once again. the unsettling feelings increase do they finally increase for Ruth.
this is such a brilliant portrayal of friendship when the power dynamic and yearning are all skew wiff. do people find someone they can work? does it always start out that way? do people like being adored so much it shifts that way?
this book packed in such an emotional set of feelings,points and views. and because of its length it only made that more intense. like there was an urgency and so more fear almost behind what we are watching play out.
i never quite knew if Shelby was a person who knew EXACTLY what and why she was doing or whether she too fell pray to her position and didn't realise the impact. but that in itself is a bit off. i did though, see how someone could be pulled in by her. but would be someone id witness and tell any friend to stay clear, please.
Ruth was silly, she didn't come across as someone without her smarts. but she had those emotional and vulnerable touch points that you can see made her more susceptible to certain things or people.
watching and waiting with her was hard sometimes. i wanted someone to step in and show her or remove her from all this.
i really got stuck into this book, haha. and as you can see it rolled around in my thoughts alot. but i kind of love that from this kind of novel.
there is the undertone to it that feel in the grey areas of life and people.

I spend a lot of my time complaining about AI. Every so often, I have the self-awareness to look up and think to myself “hmm, is this what it feels like to live through historic times?”. Then I get back to complaining. I’ve read my fair share of humanity-ruining tech sci-fi, but The Rayburn Affair isn't futuristic and it isn't science fiction. It's a modern day story that involves AI, which, shockingly enough, is what reality looks like these days.

The Rayburn Affair tells the story of Dr. Ruth Morgan, an aspiring writer working as an English professor. At a house party, she meets her literary idol, author Shelby Rayburn, and quickly becomes close friends with Shelby and Shelby's husband Oscar, a (slightly less) famous photographer. Their bond is intense and intimate, constantly testing the boundaries of what both friendship and marriage should look like.

It’s a slow start. As with most NetGalley requests I put in, I'd forgotten what the book was about by the time I got access, so I went in blind, constantly looking for hints as to what had gotten me intrigued. Ruth and Shelby’s shared interest in writing unlikeable women led me to wonder if Petrou’s intent was to make them unlikeable themselves. I’m pretty convinced that Shelby is just Sally Rooney, whose characters truly are unlikeable. Unlike them, Ruth and Shelby made sense as people. Despite being far from perfect, they had just enough sincerity to latch onto, so I cared about them anyway. And yet, for the first half of the book, these musings were few and far between. I began wondering when the big thing that had made me interested in the first place was going to happen.

And then, a bit after the halfway mark, things picked up. Oscar’s pseudo-feminist male artist persona began to crack (expected, but done well) and the idolization-turned-friendship took a turn. I’ll admit I was apprehensive about the whole AI bit; would Petrou attempt thought-provoking commentary on art in a world with generative AI, or was it just a gimmick to boost sales? Ruth’s research supposedly focuses on the relationship between creative writing and AI, but she only wants tenure as an economic safety net, so the most we get are a few lecture snippets. At some point, she says of her students “in some ways experts in the AI they’d been using for years, had never delved into its origins”, which doesn’t quite add up timeline-wise, considering ChatGPT went public in November of 2022 and the book’s references to COVID place it at around 2025.

Ultimately, though, Petrou came through. It’s impossible to explain exactly how without giving away the ending, so I won’t, but it’s been on my mind ever since, which definitely ticks the thought-provoking box in my book (pun intended). On the scale of 3 stars for “okay” and 4 for “I liked it”, The Rayburn Affair falls somewhere in the middle. A bit of thinning out in the first half would do the book some good, but once the pace picks up, it’s an easy ride to the end.

I haven't been able to put this down for the past 24 hours. The dynamics between Ruth and Shelby, Ruth and Oscar, the trio together and apart, were really well built up and unraveled.

I actually went through it a bit with this book as I found the initial pacing slow and writing impersonal impersonal and it was a bit harder to get into that I anticipated, however around the 20% through mark, this significantly picked up and it came into its own, hence the 4 stars.

I think the subject of authorship, especially in the age of AI, was super interesting, and particularly Ruth's friendship with Shelby and Shelby as a character were extremely well created. Really enjoyed it, despite the slower start.

A little bit slow and introspective in places, but this was a fresh and intriguing story which built up slowly to some very clever twists that hit you right at the end. The build up worked well and I liked the three, very flawed, main characters and the thought-provoking finale. It definitely raises questions as to who is right or wrong...

Interesting to see this take on AI - I expect this might become a theme for many more novels!

I love Laurie Petrou. She is able to make her characters come to life in a way I don’t believe I’ve seen before. It’s the tiny details and observations. For example in this book Ruth notes Oscar’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes in one part. It’s tiny but it’s huge too. It’s these details that had me putting the book down to consider what I was reading.
The 3 main characters in this book are a mystery as you read the book; to like or loathe? Have we got them sussed? Well, they are so human it’s a hard call……another brilliant book.

This is a novel about proximity — to talent, to fame, to power — and the quiet danger of wanting to be chosen by someone you admire.

The Rayburn Affair explores that fragile space between mentorship and manipulation with precision. Laurie Petrou places Ruth Morgan in the orbit of the very life she has imagined for herself, and the result is a story less about literary ambition alone and more about what happens when admiration becomes entanglement.

Ruth is an immediately compelling narrator: intelligent, observant, and deeply aware of her own longing to create something meaningful. Her fascination with Shelby Rayburn feels authentic — not naive, but recognisable. The novel understands the emotional vulnerability that sits beneath artistic ambition, particularly when success feels close enough to touch.

The dynamic between Ruth, Shelby, and Oscar is the novel’s core strength. Their connection is charged from the beginning, shaped by admiration, desire, insecurity, and subtle power imbalances that shift scene by scene. What initially reads as opportunity gradually reveals itself as something more complicated — a relationship built as much on need as on generosity.

One of the book’s most interesting threads is its engagement with authorship in the age of AI. Rather than offering simple commentary, the novel uses this theme to deepen its central question: who owns a story, and what does creation mean when influence, collaboration, and identity blur? These ideas mirror the emotional narrative, reinforcing the sense that boundaries — artistic and personal — are constantly being negotiated.

Shelby emerges as a particularly compelling figure. Charismatic, generous, and quietly opaque, she embodies the tension at the heart of the novel: the difference between supporting another artist and shaping them. The ambiguity is intentional and effective, allowing the reader to sit inside Ruth’s uncertainty rather than resolve it too quickly.

The pacing reflects the psychological arc. A measured opening gives space for the relationships to feel believable, which makes the later shifts land with greater impact. As secrets accumulate and alliances shift, the story tightens into something sharper — less about aspiration and more about authorship, ownership, and the cost of proximity to brilliance.

The Rayburn Affair is a thoughtful, quietly seductive campus novel that examines ambition, intimacy, and the unstable line between inspiration and erasure. It is particularly effective in how it captures the emotional complexity of creative life — the desire to be seen, the fear of being overshadowed, and the complicated power of being invited into someone else’s world.

The Rayburn Affair was an enjoyable, character-driven read. While the writing is a little simplistic at times and the plot doesn’t always surprise, the characters feel genuinely believable and easy to like. I found myself invested in their relationships and emotional dynamics, which made up for the book’s quieter moments. Engaging and thoughtfully done overall.

3.5⭐️

Thank you Verve Books & NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.75 stars for me

I enjoyed this book. Was a very different read for me but none the less I loved it!

It starts off a bit slow, but once it gets going, I was completely invested and ended up really enjoying it.
I was drawn to Ruth’s friendship with Shelby. Their dynamic felt real and layered, and Shelby’s imperfections made her all the more believable.

I also liked the way the book tackles authorship with AI in the mix, really made me think.

A well-written book that builds up to the unexpected twists throughout. I particularly liked the discussion around AI and authorship.

The lengths Shelby and Ruth went to in pursuit of their individual success, often highlighted the unlikeable sense of being ‘used’ in a friendship. The ending left me feeling terrible for Ruth.

Thank you Verve Books, Laurie Petrou and NetGalley for the ARC!! ☺️

The Rayburn Affair by Laurie Petrou is a compelling and emotionally layered novel that completely lived up to my expectations. I absolutely loved Stargazer, so I was thrilled to have the chance to read this upcoming release early - and it didn’t disappoint.

One of the things Petrou does so well is create characters who feel utterly real. She captures the many layers within people so that they come across as flawed, complex, and deeply believable. No one feels simplified or neatly defined, which makes the emotional dynamics of the story feel especially authentic.

What stood out most to me was how vividly the novel portrays the intensity of fast-forming friendships. Petrou perfectly captures that rush of connection - the excitement, the vulnerability, and the sense of emotional closeness that can develop so quickly. At the same time, she doesn’t shy away from showing how these relationships can shift and fracture, revealing the more complicated or even toxic sides that sometimes emerge beneath the surface.

I also appreciated how the story unfolds gradually. The pacing allows the tension and emotional stakes to build naturally, and I found myself increasingly drawn into the characters’ lives as their relationships evolved.

I won’t say too much about the plot because part of the joy of this book is discovering how everything develops, and I wouldn’t want to spoil that experience. What I can say is that if you enjoy novels that explore messy, complicated relationships and the emotional complexities of friendship, The Rayburn Affair is absolutely worth picking up. Petrou once again proves herself to be a thoughtful and perceptive storyteller.

I was so excited to get the chance to read this after loving Stargazer last year, and it lived up to my expectations.

I adore books where people quickly become obsessed with each other, and where the characters are people I'm enthralled by but wouldn't want to meet in real life. Laurie Petrou does such a good job at writing both aspects.

It took me until about the 20% mark to become fully engrossed (although I was still enjoying it before that), but once I did, I struggled to put it down. It's hard to say more without spoiling key aspects of the story, but I enjoyed how the relationship between the main three unfolded. It many ways, it didn't go how I thought it was going to go.

I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading about complicated friendships and relationships, especially where the characters concerned are in their 30s, rather than their early 20s as we often see with characters like this.

Thank you Verve Books and Net Galley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.