I'll Be You
Fiction
Random House
April 26, 2022
Hardcover
368
Purchased
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.
My review:
This was a fresh take on the oft written trope of changing identities. In this case, the two parties involved happen to be identical twins, who have changed places many times since they were childhood actresses playing one character (think Mary Kate and Ashley Olson). Much as we know from reading the tabloids, being a star when one is a child can sometimes come with all sorts of hiccups later in life. Some of those are explored with these two sisters and their varying paths. What is interesting though, is that we discover that these manifestations may not always be as they seem. The character who appears to have it all together can really be hiding lots of trauma that sends them on a path you could never see coming, while the twin who appears to be a hot mess may just have to provide the way out. I thought the plot was very propulsive in this book, and I'm always interested in the study of identical twins, especially when they appear to be very different than what is seen on the surface. The cult aspect is also a fascinating sub plot, and I was actually invested in the very real lead up to the conclusion. Sometimes my interest can wane with these types of stories if I feel that characters are doing things so out on a limb as to not be believable. That was not the case here. The addition of the twins parents was also a very interesting character study in and of itself.
An engaging character study of identical child actors whose lives don't go according to plan once they are out of the Hollywood spotlight. Lots to unpack in this interesting novel.
