I'll Be You: A Novel

Front Cover
Random House Publishing Group, Apr 26, 2022 - Fiction - 368 pages
Two identical twin sisters and former child actors have grown apart—until one disappears, in this “cleverly crafted and psychologically nuanced” (Time) suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things.
 
“An addictive thriller that will keep readers burning through pages . . . sneakily hypnotic.”—Los Angeles Times


ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Public Library, PopSugar

“You be me, and I’ll be you,” I whispered.

As children, Sam and Elli were two halves of a perfect whole: gorgeous identical twins whose parents sometimes couldn’t even tell them apart. They fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breath at night, holding hands in the dark. And once Hollywood discovered them, they became B-list child TV stars, often inhabiting the same role. 

But as adults, their lives have splintered. After leaving acting, Elli reinvented herself as the perfect homemaker: married to a real estate lawyer, living in a house just blocks from the beach. Meanwhile, Sam has never recovered from her failed Hollywood career, or from her addiction to the pills and booze that have propped her up for the last fifteen years. 

Sam hasn't spoken to her sister since her destructive behavior finally drove a wedge between them. So when her father calls out of the blue, Sam is shocked to learn that Elli’s life has been in turmoil: her husband moved out, and Elli just adopted a two-year-old girl. Now she’s stopped answering her phone and checked in to a mysterious spa in Ojai. Is her sister just decompressing, or is she in trouble? Could she have possibly joined a cult? As Sam works to connect the dots left by Elli’s baffling disappearance, she realizes that the bond between her and her sister is more complicated than she ever knew. 

I’ll Be You shows Janelle Brown at the top of her game: a story packed with surprising revelations and sharp insights about the choices that define our families and our lives—and could just as easily destroy them.
 

Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
5
Section 3
8
Section 4
14
Section 5
18
Section 6
24
Section 7
38
Section 8
45
Section 20
209
Section 21
212
Section 22
218
Section 23
230
Section 24
236
Section 25
240
Section 26
246
Section 27
253

Section 9
72
Section 10
79
Section 11
89
Section 12
124
Section 13
144
Section 14
150
Section 15
154
Section 16
165
Section 17
178
Section 18
194
Section 19
205
Section 28
259
Section 29
264
Section 30
277
Section 31
286
Section 32
294
Section 33
297
Section 34
315
Section 35
317
Section 36
331
Section 37
336
Copyright

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About the author (2022)

Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things, Watch Me Disappear, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, and This Is Where We Live. An essayist and journalist, she has written for Vogue, The New York Times, Elle, Wired, Self, Los Angeles Times, Salon, and more. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children.

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