Author: Hayley Krischer
Book Title: WHERE ARE YOU, ECHO BLUE?
Character Name: Echo Blue
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
My family is complicated. My mom was a famous child star, but that experience haunted her and now she’s a recluse and a recovering addict. My father Jamie Blue is also a famous movie star. He’s what you would call a Hollywood hunk. A Brad Pitt type. But he’s an A-class narcissist. I got into acting so I could be closer to my father, but that all seemed to backfire.
What was your greatest talent?
Acting.
Significant other?
I fell in love with someone much older than me on the set of my movie, Emma. We were only 17 when we met. He was 28. I promised my agent that I would keep it under wraps from the paparazzi until I was 18. I was deeply in love with him, but we’re no longer together. I was much too young for him. Much too unstable. He should have known better.
Biggest challenge in relationships?
I’m too famous. I don’t trust anyone because I don’t know if they want to be my friend because of who I am, or because of who my parents are. It’s hard to meet friends and know if people are being real.
Where do you live?
I disappeared. So I can’t tell you where I live.
Do you have any enemies?
I’m my worst enemy.
How do you feel about the place where you are now? Is there something you are particularly attached to, or particularly repelled by, in this place?
Since I can’t talk about the place I am right now, I’d like to talk about Los Angeles, where I grew up. There’s a beauty to LA that a lot of people don’t understand. There’s a gritty side too, an ugly side, yes, but at the beach, when you’re riding your bike staring into the sunset over the Pacific, or when you’re riding up Sunset and you drive towards the Chateau Marmont and how majestic it looks, that big castle on the hill. Or when you’re riding through the canyons. There’s a peace and quiet to those moments. I don’t know if they exist in other cities. But they exist in mine.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
I’m only 19. No kids. One day I’d love to get a dog. Right now, I need to learn how to take care of myself.
What do you do for a living?
I’m an actress.
Greatest disappointment?
That my father and I couldn’t share the joy of acting together. Once my fame eclipsed his, he raged with envy. He never forgave me.
Did you ever find joy in acting?
There were moments between Belinda on set of our first two movies. (We made three together: Slugger Eight, Holly and the Hound and Holly and the Hound 2.) That’s when it was a real collaboration between the two of us. We were so young and we were uninhibited. It was a creative process, like pretend play, except we were doing it around a whole bunch of adults. We kept each other entertained and inspired. It was different with Holly and the Hound 2. That’s when things started getting messier.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
I love reading. Hiking. Walking. My favorite books are “Little Girl Lost” by Drew Barrymore and “I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jeanette McCurdy.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
Growing up too soon.
What keeps you awake at night?
I wonder if I’ll ever work again as an actress. I worry that I’ll never want to again.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
There’s this journalist who is following me. She seems like an obsessed fan. She’s harassing everyone I know. She won’t leave me alone and I’m starting to wonder if I’m not safe.
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
Privacy. Peace.
Why don’t you have it? What is in the way?
My face.
A smart, juicy, and page-turning novel about celebrity, fandom, and the price of ambition following a journalist's obsessive search for a missing Hollywood starlet
When Echo Blue, the most famous child star of the nineties, disappears ahead of a highly publicized television appearance on the eve of the millennium, the salacious theories instantly start swirling. Mostly, people assume Echo has gotten herself in trouble after a reckless New Year’s Eve. But Goldie Klein, an ambitious young journalist who also happens to be Echo's biggest fan, knows there must be more to the story. Why, on the eve of her big comeback, would Echo just go missing without a trace?
After a year of covering dreary local stories for Manhattan Eye, Goldie is sure this will be her big break. Who better to find Echo Blue, and tell her story the right way, than her? And so, Goldie heads to L.A. to begin a wild search that takes her deep into Echo’s complicated life in which parental strife, friend break ups, rehab stints, and bad romances abound. But the further into Echo’s world Goldie gets, the more she questions her own complicity in the young star’s demise . . . yet she cannot tear herself away from this story, which has now consumed her entirely. Meanwhile, we also hear Echo's side of things from the beginning, showing a young woman who was chewed up and spit out by Hollywood as so many are, and who may have had to pay the ultimate price.
As these young women's poignant and unexpected journeys unfold, and eventually meet, Where Are You, Echo Blue? interrogates celebrity culture, the thin line between admiration and obsession, and what it means to tell other peoples’ stories, all while ushering us on an unruly ride to find out what did become of Echo Blue.
Women's Fiction Friendship [Dutton, On Sale: July 16, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593473511 / eISBN: 9780593473528]
Hayley Krischer is a writer and journalist. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times, where she covers women, teenage girls, celebrities, and cultural trends. Her work has also appeared in Marie Claire, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and more. She lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with her husband, two kids, one dog, and three cats.
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