‘It’s time to take a big leap’: Reese Witherspoon’s first novel hits shelves | Reese Witherspoon

FOr for more than three decades, Reese Witherspoon has been many things to many people: Oscar-winning star of Walk the Line; and the pink-hued Elle Woods from Legally Blonde; The Hollywood producer who brought Gone Girl and Big Little Lies to the screen. Now she’s adding another title to her resume: novelist.

This month, the 49-year-old author releases her debut novel, Gone Before Goodbye, which she co-wrote with best-selling thriller author Harlan Coben.

Already expected to hit bestseller lists upon publication, the book follows Maggie McCabe, a former Army combat surgeon who takes on an undercover medical job for an unidentified client – ​​only for a patient under her care to disappear, sparking an international conspiracy. “I never had an idea for a novel before,” Witherspoon said recently. “I’m always the actor who shows up and executes someone else’s vision. I thought maybe it was time to take a big leap and build the world myself.”

Witherspoon and Coben are on a book tour and will appear together at the Royal Festival Hall next week as part of the London Literary Festival. But for Witherspoon, the move is less a pivot than a continuation — the latest chapter in a career marked by reinvention and a keen sense of what audiences want.

Born in New Orleans and raised in Nashville, Witherspoon made her screen debut at the age of 14 in The Man in the Moon (1991). She spent her twenties playing intense, ambitious young women who defied expectations: Tracy Flick in Election, Woods in Legally Blonde, and Melanie Carmichael in Sweet Home Alabama. Her performance as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line earned her an Academy Award and confirmed her as one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars.

Director Alexander Payne once said: “She has that quality that men find attractive, while women want to be her friends.” “But that’s just the basics. No one else is as funny or brings such charm to things. She can do anything.”

Despite its reputation, the late 2000s were difficult professionally for Witherspoon. Her film choices faltered, and the scripts that came her way were uninspiring. “There are a lot of very big movies about robots, and there is no role for a 34-year-old woman in a robot movie,” she said at the time.

The lack of complex roles for women prompted her to start producing her own material. In 2012, she founded Pacific Standard, later merging into her larger media company Hello Sunshine, to tell stories by and about women.

This strategy has paid off. Gone Girl, Wild, and Big Little Lies were critical and commercial successes, each with complex heroines. Subsequent projects, such as The Morning Show, Little Fires Everywhere, and Daisy Jones & the Six, confirmed Witherspoon’s status as a cultural powerhouse (when Hello Sunshine sold in 2022 for $1 billion, it made Witherspoon one of the richest and most powerful women in Hollywood).

In 2017, Witherspoon launched the Reese’s Book Club, which now has millions of members and an uncanny ability to turn any selection into a bestseller—creating its own term: the Witherspoon effect. The narratives she chooses are mostly stories of female resilience and reinvention, many of which later become Hello Sunshine screen projects, creating a self-sustaining ecosystem. In 2022, she wrote the first of a series of children’s books, Busy Betty, before announcing her switch to adult novels last year.

Perhaps it was inevitable that Witherspoon would one day write a novel. In recent years, a large number of famous names have emerged as novelists. Keanu Reeves collaborated with British fantasy writer China Miéville; Hillary Clinton teamed up with mystery novelist Louise Penny. Bill Clinton co-wrote thrillers with James Patterson. According to Nielsen BookScan data, in 2023, eight of the top 100 best-selling paperback novels, and five of the top 20, were written by celebrities.

For Witherspoon and Coben, their story began nearly a decade ago when they met at a conference, he admired her work with books and she admired his talent for plotting. When she called him years later with an idea about a surgeon forced to become a fugitive, their collaboration took shape over a single three-hour call. “We knew in the end it was impossible not to do it,” Coben told USA Today. “It was just a lot of fun.”

The premise has personal resonance for Witherspoon. Her father was a military doctor who served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve, and her mother was a professor of nursing. “We didn’t want any of this to seem gimmicky,” Coben said. “Neither of us needed an autobiography. We agreed it should be our best work.”

Whether that is the case remains to be seen. Early reviews have been encouraging—the Los Angeles Times praised the novel’s ability to “draw the reader in,” and the book averaged four stars on Goodreads—but Witherspoon’s name alone will guarantee interest. Coben did reflect on the cinematic quality of the story and the suitability of his co-creator for the lead role.

But for now, Witherspoon’s ambitions are focused on the page. She said she hopes Maggie McCabe can do for the field of medicine what Elle Woods did for the field of law: inspire women to see themselves in professions that are often underestimated.