I loved Brown's last book, Pretty Things, so I expected a lot, especially hearing it described as the Olsen twins with a NXIVM plot. It did not disappoint! The story and characters were fascinating and well-defined with beautiful, gritty prose. The story is told in the perspective of two sisters, ethereal identical twins who were child actors. However they took separate directions in early adulthood. The twists were unexpected, but felt organic. That's not always the case with mysteries/thrillers these days. Brown has quickly become one of my favorite authors!

Thank you NetGalley and Random House / Ballantine Books and NetGalley for providing this ARC.

This was a gripping read. I loved diving into the strained sisterly relationship between the twins. I loved the nitty gritty part of addiction. I loved the sneakiness of the cult. I thought this was a thriller, and it wasn’t necessarily a thriller, but it did keep me guessing the whole way through. I really enjoyed this book. Janelle Brown has a way of writing that just sucks you in to the story and makes you want to keep reading to learn more about the characters. Such a great read!

I’ll Be You
I’ll Be You by @janellebrownie

Publishes 4/26/2022!

S for SO FREAKING GOOD. A great read :) 4.25/5 ⭐️

Thank you #Netgalley and @randomhouse for the eARC in exchange for an honest review ❤️

Twin child stars Elli and Sam are so polar opposites in everything but looks. Child stardom did a number on Sam but Elli came out seemingly unscathed. This story of familial love and addiction stems so much farther than you can even realize. Medium paced, real characters with raw problems.

Check this gem when it drops the 26th!

I’ll Be You by Janelle Brown

Published: April 26, 2022
Random House
Pages: 348
Genre: Psychological Fiction
KKECReads Rating: 5/5
I received a copy of this book for free, and I leave my review voluntarily.

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.

“…it was already the beginning of the end.”

Sam and Ellie are identical twins who have lived quite a life. First, being discovered by an agent on the beach, two starring in television shows as young adults, to growing up and growing apart. Sam fell into addiction at a young age. The demands of being a young Hollywood actor took their toll. Ellie went the traditional path- college and falling in love, and getting married. When their paths cross again, it’s after a year passes, and the changes are immense. Now, the sisters realize how much they need each other to move on. To right the wrongs of their lives and finally find forgiveness and accept redemption.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. This was an intense ride from page one. I loved everything about this novel.

The characters were so beautifully written. I loved how clear it was that while Sam and Ellie were mirror images of each other, they were very different people. I found the balance between being a single unit and two separate individuals well represented.

I loved the twists in this book. They come up so smoothly and slap you in the face. The premise of terrifying because this happens.

The aspects of this book are fiction, but their type of behavior happens and sucks people in. The charisma, charm, and desire to be accepted. Wanting to find our tribe and yet are preyed upon when we are at our most vulnerable. Powerful stuff.

I loved the concept of being an identical twin and how easy it is to trade places. Yet the complexity that comes with being able to ultimately assume another humans persona-the weight of being someone else even for a brief time. How consuming yet addicting that can be.

What starts are harmless fun quickly leads to disaster. This was impossible to put down and brilliantly delivered. I could not devour this novel fast enough. I found the twist at the end of part one so well placed- I did not see it coming.

I loved the alternating narrators between the parts, and I enjoyed how each of the characters was given a voice to be their own. This was a fantastic book, and I am excited to recommend it.

I’ll Be You by Janelle Brown
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Release Date: 4/26/22

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC! I found this book really intriguing. It was a fast read and if you are looking for something slightly different than typical psychological thrillers this is it!

Sam and Elli are identical twins that have known to switch places when necessary. They were child stars turned into messy adults.
Sam has dealt with extensive alcohol and drug abuse since she was a teen. She’s tried many stints in rehab, but it’s never stuck.
Elli stopped wanting to act in her teens and wanted to live a normal life marriage, career, kids.
When she struggles with infertility and her marriage is falling apart she turns to a “womens self-help” group called GenFem.
She leaves her “foster” daughter Charlotte behind with her parents and tells them to enlist her sisters help. After weeks of being gone Sam starts digging into GenFem and starts to believe they are a cult. She is concerned for her sisters safety, so she begins digging up the truth. She’ll be shocked at what she finds.

This book was definitely interesting. The story line was different, although in my opinion there were unnecessary parts that made the book drag out at times. I wanted more depth from the characters, however at the same time they were different and they grew and changed over the course of the book. I was engaged and curious to see how the story ended.

Sam and Elli are identical twin sisters, who become child stars. As they grow up, their lives follow very different paths. Elli gets married to a successful man, and lives the life of a happy homemaker. Sam spends her adult life chasing fame (unsuccessfully) and leads a life of addiction. When Elli disappears after checking into a spa, Sam finds herself caring for Elli’s adopted daughter (who she didn’t know existed) and searching for answers as to what really happened to her sister.

A story revolving around family dynamics, a cult, finding oneself and the lies that can either strengthen a relationship or destroy it.

THank you Netgalley for my advanced reader copy!

A well done thriller with a mystery and a twist! Elli was always the good twin while Sam found drugs and alcohol early. Now, though, Elli's taken off for some sort of retreat leaving behind Charlotte, a toddler she's just adopted and their parents have, at Elli's request, called Sam to come help take care of her. But Sam's worried about Elli and she sets off on a quest to find her. This moves back and forth in time between their adolescent years, when they were B list tv stars- which Sam loved and Elli hated- and the present. Sam's struggling with sobriety and she's never been one for kids but she's handling it. Her parents aren't allies but Caleb, who she meets at AA, is. Sam's the sister you would not want to have until she is- she's fierce when it comes to Elli, who is a cipher until she has the chance to tell her story. No spoilers from me so that you can experience what Sam does as she starts to question different things in Elli's life. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. Great storytelling and intriguing characters make this a page turner.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy. This book was a bit of a letdown for me. I have read a couple of the author’s other books and liked them, but this one was a miss. It was slow and just didn’t feel particularly original. It definitely is not the twisty thriller it is being billed as and the cult stuff was all too predictable. I did enjoye Sam’s voice more and felt the section that was told from Elli’s POV was unnecessary.

This book was soooo good. The story of identical twins who are former child actors. Once they were as close as sisters could be, but not they have grown apart. Addiction, booze, crippling anxiety, and infertility are just a few of the issues Elli and Sam have faced in their lifetime. But now Elli is in real trouble, possibly under the influence of a dangerous cult like group and an adopted daughter to care for. Beautifully written story of sisterhood and surviving a dysfunctional family.

3.5 rounded up. This was definitely unputdownable for me and I found it entertaining. I did enjoy the 1st half of the book more than the second, but it was a good escape read for me. I don't know if I would have loved this one if I had twins, lots of dissecting of this unique relationship. Elli and Sam are the twins and were also child actors and now have gone their separate ways. Sam is a recovering alcoholic and Elli has just adopted a daughter but is also newly separated from her husband and in deep with a women's self help group. All of this equates to a big hot mess. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an early release copy in exchange for my honest opinion. I'll Be You will be available on April 26th.

I'll be You is based on the lives of identical twins Elli and Sam. The narrative volleys back and forth between their teen years and the present. As children they were discovered by a talent agent and became actors. Sam thrived in the spotlight but Elli did not. Thus began their scheme to swap and be each other.

In the present Sam is still trying to recover from the pill and alcohol addiction started as a teen. Elli is living a perfect cookie cutter life. But sometimes looks can be deceiving. Now Elli is missing or maybe just finding herself but Sam's instincts know there's more.

With every twist and turn we are pulled further into how far sisters will go for each other even when their lives have dissected and they are no longer even speaking to the other.

This psychological thriller will pull you in with it's gripping, mysterious and intriguing plot line as you wonder what comes next.

**Received ARC through NetGalley. Voluntarily reviewed**

This book is a story about sisters, the relationship between twins and what drives them apart and pulls them back together again. This is my first book from this author, so I am not familiar with her writing style. I went into the read looking for a good mystery, but what I ended up with felt very disjointed. The mystery was only half of the book and once the mystery was discovered, everything wrapped up too neatly and too easily. One of my biggest pet peeves is when characters play detectives themselves and, upon finding crucial or critical evidence, tell no one and decide they are going to play hero, putting themselves in unrealistic situations. I enjoyed learning about Sam and Elli, their years as adolescent superstars, and who they came to be in their current predicaments, but I felt the character of Elli was not well developed. I felt the same about Sam and Elli's parents. There was also a character introduced in the first half of the novel that then disappeared and was never mentioned again. I appreciate what this novel was attempting to do and the premise was very exciting and ambitious, but overall this read fell flat for me.

Sam and Elli are identical twins that look so similar, they always been able to impersonate each other and fool just about anyone. But they don't want identical things out of life. When they are "discovered" at age 13 and become B-list child TV stars, it is Sam's dream they are living out. Elli just wants a normal life with marriage and kids. Now adults, Sam is trying to make her latest round of rehab "stick" when her parents call her for help. Sam and Elli haven't spoken since a falling out over a year ago, and Sam is surprised to learn that although Elli is getting a divorce, she has adopted a daughter, Charlotte, who she has left with her parents to go to a mysterious spa retreat in Ojai. They ask Sam to come help take care of Charlotte after Elli texts them to say she isn't coming home yet and subsequently fails to answer any calls or texts. Sam can't shake the feeling that something is very wrong, and when she tries to find out what's going on with her sister, she realizes that Elli's life has spun further out of control than she could have imagined. Clever and twisty with intriguing characters, the story is told from both sisters' points of view, in the present and at times in their past that have defined their relationship, personalities and character.

I’ll Be You, by Janelle Brown

Short Take: Confirmation that twins are creepy.

(*I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*)

Duckies, this week is a rough one. I’m semi-laid-up with a foot injury that’s been dragging on for three months, and I am also hosting a birthday party for the Junior Nerdling. So I am performing a delicate balancing act of alternating frantic house cleaning with leftover Easter candy and comfort TV. And one of the things I’m noticing is how many shows with young children have twins playing a single character.

Let me just say, it kind of freaks me out. Like, they are two people, but also one person, and it’s just plain weird. I can’t help but wonder how much therapy those kids may need as they become adults and try to establish their own identities, outside of both twinhood and whatever role they have become famous for. Growing up is hard enough without all that, right?

And that’s where we find Sam and Elli, identical twins who grew up on the set of a TV show where they shared a role, a career, a dressing room, and basically a single life. Of course they did the usual twin switcheroo thing on occasion, too, mastering it to the point that they could actually almost believe that they were the other person.

That is, until the show ended, and life happened, and Sam took the path of addiction and tabloid exploits, while Elli married a well-to-do, perfectly nice man, and adopted two-year-old Charlotte. In other words, suburban utopia.

Or not.

Sam has been sober for a year when her parents call her for help - Elli has dropped Charlotte off with them, checked into some kind of super-secret exclusive spa, and seemingly vanished off the face of the earth.

From there we follow Sam’s search for her sister, which of course leads to some very unexpected places.

My sweet nerdlings, this book was a lot of fun. Ms. Brown hits the sweet spot with pacing and dialogue, and I found Sam to be just messed-up enough to be believable without being a total downer.

The twin thing still weirds me out, though.

The Nerd’s Rating: FOUR HAPPY NEURONS (and some fancy coffee with a picture in the foam.)

Twin sisters become Hollywood's elite childhood actors. One catches the bug divulging in its many guilty pleasures while the other has run to the hills escaping the lifestyle.

Sam and Elli, once inseparable, are now estranged. Sam is finds herself questioning Elli's mysterious disappearance after returning home to help care for her young niece when her sister does not return from a women’s retreat. After more than two weeks, Elli takes matters into her own hands to find out what is going on at the gated commune where the women are held.

This story is broken into each sisters perspective, detailing how Elli landed in what is to be deemed a "cult” and how she came to adopt her daughter.

I'll Be You is Olsen twins meets NXIVM!
11 hr, 42 min audio was simply fantastic.

I read her book Pretty Things which was fantastic so I was so excited when I got the ARC from net galley for Janelle Brown's new book. It is about twin sisters Sam and Elli who were child actresses and very close. As adults Elli takes the more conventional route in life, getting married and seemingly having a stable life while Sam had drug issues, etc. The twins have not spoken in 378 days due to an argument till her mom calls her and tell her she needs her help. That Elli has left for some kind of retreat and her husband has divorced her and also they have been trying for years to get pregnant with negative results. Plus, Elli adopted a girl who is two years old now and left her with her mother who really finds it difficult at her age to care for the granddaughter. Thus the call to the sister who had no idea what was going on in Ellie's life. It appears that Ellie went on some retreat. Also Sam has been sober for over a year. This was really not a psychological thriller and to be honest I found after a point the book dragged on. Plus the fact, the retreat was a cult which I have a hard time reading about. For me. a book is one I can't put down. I saw that there were a lot of great reviews. There were some twists and some over the top things that are revealed. I received this book from net galley and the publisher as an ARC for an honest review.

I’LL BE YOU follows twin sisters and former child TV stars Sam & Elli in the aftermath of their young careers. Once inseparable, the sisters have grown apart in their post-Hollywood years. When Elli goes missing, Sam is determined to find her estranged sister.

Janelle Brown has a knack for writing well-drawn characters with motivations you can understand, even if you don’t agree with their actions. The author also raises some interesting questions about sisterhood bonds, childhood fame, and the lengths we go for family.

The story reads like an intriguing character study rather than a traditional domestic suspense or thriller with the bulk of the action occurring in the last 20% of the book. There were a few twists along the way, but I was fully invested into the complicated relationship of the sisters that I didn’t mind the slower pacing.

The audiobook was narrated by Julia Whalen (my all-time favorite!) as well as Kate Rudd. I loved that each sister had their own voice. The POVs switched infrequently which allowed me to become fully immersed in each sister’s distinct story.

RATING: 4/5
PUB DATE: April 26, 2022

Many thanks to @prhaudio, Random House, and NetGalley for an electronic ARC and audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Review will be posted to www.instagram.com/kellyhook.readsbooks on Monday 4/25

Wow this was a twist of a story. Sam and Elli are identical twins who get noticed at the tender age of nine by a talent agent. Sam was all for it while Elli, more reserved, was happy to do it but didn’t love it. Sam, who know is coming off benders and completing sobriety, sometimes wonders if they were never discovered. While she’s trying to pick her life back up her dad calls to say Elli hasn’t come back from a wellness retreat she took due to divorce. And with it the shocking news that Elli has a two year old they’d like help with. So Sam decides to find out what happened to her sister.

So many explosive truths come out and this book has kidnapping, cults, and two sisters who have a way of being each other. The author surprised me with some of the things that happened within this story and her way to weave what I’ve read just left me dumbfounded.

I throughly enjoyed this story and didn’t put it down!

I really enjoyed Pretty Things so I was looking forward to this one. And it did not disappoint. I had no idea it was so culty going in and I loved the cult vibes. Disliked how no one trusted the alcoholic and she relapsed without thought or feeling afterwards (10 months sober myself), so I wish some through was put into that. Or it could have been completely left out- there wasn't really a need for it. But other than that, I really liked the story, the twins, the cult.

Sam and Elli are identical twins 👯‍♀️ They are discovered in California when they are very young and start acting on a show together. That’s when they start trading places.

“I’ll be you.”

Sam struggles with addiction and loses everything. Elli marries well and has a nice house but struggles with infertility.
Something tears them apart as adults and after a year of not talking to each other Elli goes away to a self help retreat and does not come back. Sam is called to take care of her niece, Charlotte, whom she didn’t even know Elli had adopted. Is she really just taking time for herself or is she wrapped up in a cult?

A thriller this was not but it was very entertaining. I like the premise of twins and a cult storyline. I enjoyed getting both POVs of the twins and was really pulling for them. It’s much more a sister drama story but I flew through it. Cults completely freak me out and I cannot figure out how people get involved but Elli explains her involvement with the self help group fairly well.

Thanks to @netgalley and @randomhouse for the eARC for review.