Book Review: I’ll be You by Janelle Brown

About the Book

“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.

My Review

I really like the way Janelle Brown tells the story. Generally speaking I must confess that I am not a fan of twin stories. It’s a very convenient trope that is often used as a way out of corners, and so I tend to avoid such plot lines. Nevertheless I had faith in Brown’s ability to pull this one off, and pull it off she did.

From the opening pages I was completely drawn in and found the tale of Sam and Elli to be engaging, infuriating, challenging, and oddly moving – which pretty much sums up a sister relationship in a nutshell… the writing was crisp. The characters were well-developed. And if the central plot construct wasn’t a wholly original one, the way Brown deftly navigated its twists and turns certainly was – rendering it a fabulous read that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my obligation-free review copy.