Book Summary and Reviews of The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato

The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato

The Ghost Network

by Catie Disabato

  • Critics' Consensus (0):
  • Published:
  • May 2015, 288 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

Has the world's hottest pop star been kidnapped, brainwashed, or simply gone into hiding? The answer lies in the abandoned subway stations of Chicago...

One minute insanely famous pop singer Molly Metropolis is on her way to a major performance in Chicago, and the next, she's gone, her cell phone found abandoned. Has she been kidnapped? Gone into hiding?

Molly's personal assistant and a journalist who'd been writing about Molly launch a desperate search to find her using her songs and journal as a guide.

It leads them to a map of half-completed train lines underneath Chicago, which in turn leads them to the secret, subterranean headquarters of an obscure intellectual sect - and the realization that they've gone too far to turn back. And if a superstar can disappear without a trace ... what can happen to these young women?

Suspenseful and wildly original, The Ghost Network is a novel about larger-than-life fantasies - of transportation, love, sex, pop music, amateur detective work, and personal reinvention. Debut novelist Catie Disabato bursts on the scene with an ingeniously plotted, witty, haunting mystery.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. {S]imultaneously breathlessly exhilarating and beautifully haunted" - Publishers Weekly

"Artistic ambition, cultural critique, and a revolutionary philosophy drive the mysteries underlying this complex, charismatic novel." - Kirkus

"Brilliant, daring, and masterful ... Impossible to put down." - Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author of California

"A giddy mashup of pop culture, genre-tropes, conspiracy theories and dystopian fantasy...Catie Disabato is a true original, and a young writer to watch." - Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply

"As close as we'll ever get to Borges filtering Lady Gaga, Calvino analyzing Miley Cyrus, or Cortazaar obsessing over FKA Twigs, the supremely talented Disabato gives us a synthwave pop illuminati fantasy that will make your ears ring." - Maxwell Neely-Cohen, author of Echo of the Boom

"Catie Disabato's prose is as clean as a whistle and as sharp as a tack, and her imagination is wondrous. A smart and exciting debut that plays by its own rules." - Ivy Pochoda, author of Visitation Street

"Spectacularly original. Meta, ingenious, and totally fun." - Kate Durbin, author of E! Entertainment

This information about The Ghost Network was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Catie Disabato

Catie Disabato is a columnist for Full Stop. She's written criticism and commentary for This Recording, The Millions, and The Rumpus, and her short fiction was recently featured on Joyland. After growing up in Chicago and graduating from Oberlin College, she now lives in L.A. and works in public relations.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Ghost Network, try these:

  • A Gorgeous Excitement jacket

    A Gorgeous Excitement

    by Cynthia Weiner

    Published 2026

    About this book

    A dazzling novel about one young woman's summer of infinite possibility...

  • Under This Red Rock jacket

    Under This Red Rock

    by Mindy McGinnis

    Published 2025

    About this book

    From award-winning author Mindy McGinnis comes a mesmerizing YA psychological mystery following a teen girl who is grappling with the death of her brother as she starts a new job in the caverns of Ohio—only to become the number one suspect in her coworker's murder. Perfect for fans of Courtney Summers and Kathleen Glasgow.

  • Conviction jacket

    Conviction

    by Denise Mina

    Published 2020

    About this book

    The captivating, utterly unforgettable new thriller for fans of Killing Eve and The Woman in the Window: A true-crime podcast sets a housewife's present life on a collision course with her secret past.

We have 10 read-alikes for The Ghost Network, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

More Literary Fiction

Browse all Literary Fiction books

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
When No One Else Will
by Amanda Skenandore
1940s Chicago nurse risks everything at an illegal women’s clinic during a high-profile trial of courage and sisterhood.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    Look What You Made Me Do
    by John Lanchester
    A propulsive tale of intergenerational tension and revenge from the Booker Prize nominee.
  • Book Jacket
    The Jellyfish Problem
    by Tessa Yang
    A marine biologist rescues a Maine island menaced by a giant glowing jellyfish in this inventive debut.
  • Book Jacket
    Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young
    by Zayd Ayers Dohrn
    Son of Weather Underground radicals recounts life on the run and decades of revolutionary struggle.
Who Said...

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading, you wish the author that wrote it was a ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

Q S, S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.