List price: $17.99
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- ISBN9781612198910
- Publication dateFebruary, 2021
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U Up?
Catie Disabato
In the follow up to her smart debut, The Ghost Network, Catie Disabato creates a vivid portrait of a young woman investigating her best friend’s disappearance while navigating codependent friendships, toxic exes, and witchy rituals
Eve has a carefully curated online life, works occasionally, and texts constantly with her best friend, Ezra. Basically, she is an archetypal L.A. millennial. She has also been carrying on a year-long conversation with her deceased friend Miggy over text. But when Ezra goes missing on the anniversary weekend of Miggy’s death, Eve feels like her world is shattering.
Over a frantic weekend Eve investigates Ezra’s disappearance, scouring social media for clues, while drowning her anger and anxiety in drinks, drugs, and spiritual cleansing. Eve starts to spiral as her friends try to convince her that she’s overreacting, and ghosts–both real and metaphorical–continue to haunt her. When she uncovers clues to a life Ezra kept hidden, Eve starts to question how much she really knows about her best friend…and herself.
In U UP? Catie Disabato holds a mirror to the ways the phantom selves we create online permeate our emotional lives and hide our worst traits from everyone, including ourselves.
A New York Times best mystery novel of 2021
A most anticipated book of 2021 from LitHub
A most anticipated book of 2021 from The Millions
”Its text-message-saturated, paranormal-tinged examination of loss, whether through sudden death or friendship rupture, creates an existential nightmare for the novel’s main character, Eve, as she tries to find her deepest self within the wreckage of the other selves she has abandoned.” —New York Times
”This heady, sexy novel is filled with the carefree wildness of youth, with an added metaphysical bonus. Eve’s voice is enticing and compelling, and readers will be carried along with her as she learns more about herself than she ever planned.” —Booklist
”A poignant . . . story of grief, ghosts, and friendship . . . Disabato makes [the characters] come alive on the page and in her texts.” —Publishers Weekly
”Utterly bewitching—a dark, paranoid, mordantly funny LA noir that highlights Catie Disabato’s wonderfully vivid and skewed vision of our contemporary society. Disabato is one of my favorite young authors—a truly original voice!” —Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will
”Disabato is a generational voice and a voice of a generation. U Up is smart, sharp, wise, and wrenching in equal measure . . . An enviable book by an enviable writer. I loved it.” —Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women
”What a terrific, frisky novel! U Up? . . . transcends genre, and is such fun to read. Disabato’s writing is at once so smooth and sharp that you don’t immediately realize it’s cut you—and deeply. She is a remarkable talent.” —Edan Lepucki, author of Woman No. 17
”Disabato captures LA’s nightlife (and daylife!) in all of its beauty, impropriety, and conspicuous consumption as if she were the Eve Babitz of the Instagram Age. U Up? is a delight.” —Maris Kreizman, author of Slaughterhouse 90210
