I’ll BE YOU

Identical twin sisters and former child actors have grown apart—until one disappears, and the other is forced to confront the secrets they've kept from each other.

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 a model homemaker: Married to a real-estate lawyer, in a house two 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.

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PRAISE FOR I’ll Be You

“This novel is her twistiest and tightest work yet. Since the publication of her debut novel in 2008, Brown… has been refining her craft and upping the ante, working her way from quiet literary novels beloved by book clubs to suspenseful works of California noir. Told from both sisters’ points of view, I’ll Be You is a cleverly crafted and psychologically nuanced yin and yang, complete with crackling observations about celebrity, California cults, wellness culture, the fertility industry, and the undertow of addiction…. Written in a voice that reads more like a juicy magazine feature than airport-thriller prose, and narrated by a pair of codependent protagonists whose versions of events stack up in wonderfully unexpected ways, the book calls to mind a tentpole of the genre, Gillian Flynn’s 2012 hit Gone Girl.” — Time Magazine

“Janelle Brown stands out for her surprise-filled plots, insights into contemporary life and willingness to plumb the depths of family dysfunction. “I’ll Be You” is a sneakily hypnotic thriller that turns on how Elli’s naïve beliefs have been twisted and whether it’s possible for an estranged family to reclaim their lives and futures.” - LA Times

"Bestseller Brown (Pretty Things) infuses this twist-packed mystery with an intense story of creating one’s identity, rife with deep family trauma and a low-key, creepy depiction of the dark side of twin intimacy… The perfectly paced emotional reveals of the twins’ shared history pull the reader toward fierce investment in Elli’s safety and the sisters’ reconnection. Brown has upped her game with this one." — Publisher’s Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

“Sharply insightful, relentlessly suspenseful and simply unputdownable, I’LL BE YOU is Janelle Brown’s best novel yet.” - Bookreporter

“Generously sprinkled with witty word choice and tasty twists, “I’ll Be You” is a page-turner.” - AP

“I could not put this book down, and I am betting that neither will you. The twists and turns Brown expertly takes us on are weaved with intensity, intrigue and suspense. This is one of your summer books.” - San Diego Tribune

“In her fifth novel, Brown returns to the family thriller for an intense story in keeping with a current trend in mysteries — a low-boil plot that is big on tension and the connections between people but has little, or, as Brown has chosen, no violence. Yet sinister doings lay just below the surface. This tack worked well in her best-seller “Pretty Things” and excels in “I’ll Be You.” - Sun-Sentinel

“A delicious work of intrigue and suspense… You won’t want to stop reading until you find out what’s happened.” —Kirkus

"In Janelle Brown's latest twisty, propulsive mystery, I'll Be You, estranged twin sisters must confront shocking pieces of their past when one of them goes missing. From the first sentence, these women will have you in their grips. You won't be able to put this novel down, and you won't want to." — Laura Dave, #1 NYT bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me

"Absolutely delicious. Janelle Brown is a surgeon of the complex relationships between women. I gobbled this up.”—Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of All Adults Here

"Janelle Brown is a terrific storyteller and stylist, and I’ll Be You is one of those books you'll devour. It has a hot mess of a narrator — actually two hot messes, twins — both of whom you will root for, even as you are screaming at them to get a grip. Also? The novel has more twists and turns than the canyon roads that snake up and around Los Angeles."— Chris Bohjalian, #1 NYT Bestselling Author of The Flight Attendant and Hour of the Witch

"Janelle Brown has done it again, created a deliciously twisty page-turner you won’t be able to put down. But I’LL BE YOU is much more than a riveting thriller; it’s a powerful and moving portrait of the fiercely tenacious bonds of familial love. With her trademark beautiful writing, depth of emotion, and sharp insights, Brown explores the dangers that lurk behind the seductive worlds of Hollywood child stardom and self-help culture. I loved this novel." — Angie Kim, Edgar award-winning author of Miracle Creek