Hello my lovelies, I hope you’ve had a fab week! Today I’m starting off by jumping on the band wagon of the crazy popular Netflix show “YOU”. Now this show was one I had been anticipating for so long after seeing the teaser trailers and it looked so up my alley, a little creepy and intense but still stylised. A real thriller you can sink your teeth into and it did not disappoint. This show was everything I expected and more which is why when I went to my local book store and saw it sitting there, I couldn’t ignore it. I just had to pick it up.
So here I am today to talk about the differences between the Netflix adaptation and the book. I know a lot of my posts tend to be actual book reviews but due to the popularity and hype around this book and show I thought it would be time wasted as there are so so many posts about it recently. So, I thought I’d compile a quick list of differences between the two platforms for the quick readers. I hope you enjoy this blog post and if so make sure to come back and check out my other book reviews!
SPOILERS AHEAD.
Time line differences:
The progression of Joe and Bec’s relationship is a lot slower in the book, while the show is almost shot for shot when showing events in the book, their relationship is always an almost. For example, at the time of the Ikea visit they aren’t together in the book, this was a ploy Bec used to manipulate Joe into taking her places and putting her furniture together, while in the show they had already been established for a while and even engaged in some physical activities while there.
At the Dicken’s fair Bec visits with her estranged family, Joe and Bec again, are not together. A lot of the book hinges on the fact that Bec plays and toys with Joe through almost the entirety of the story. It’s cruel really, she spends weeks with him staying over, engaging in relationship-like activities, making him feel special and loved and then will ghost him and flake on him for no reason which in turn intensifies his creepy/ obsessive behaviour.
Character traits:
Bec plays Joe around a lot more in the book as I state above. She constantly cancels plans for Peach, Chyna or Lynn as they ‘need’ her more or because she’s sick. Without fail, there is always something wrong, or something she can’t get out of. She lies about plans and takes days sometimes weeks to reply to him, which is especially cruel in my eyes as she tends to do this after playing the perfect doting girlfriend. Bec in the show is depicted as a bit of a lost and confused soul, someone we are made to feel empathy for yet In the book she is extremely manipulative, a user and a cheat. A very unlikable character towards the end.
Suspicions:
When in the show we are introduced to peach initially it is very obvious she is not only overly protective of Bec but also highly suspicious of Joe and this suspicion we only see intensify as she becomes paranoid of things that seem ‘too good to be true’ regarding their run ins and ‘fated meetings’. Establishing her as the villain/enemy of Joe quite early on. While in the book peach never catches wind of Joe's stalker-ish and violent tendencies, her irritation towards Joe (hatred if you will) simply stems from an over bearing and protective friendship.
Joe’s childhood:
Joe’s childhood is kept very hush hush and yes, in the book it’s not talked about in explicit detail but we do read in the form of a few throw away comments about how he had no mother figure growing up and was left with a drunk abusive father who had no time or care for his son.
We are only provided with one example in the book about the neglect Joe faced while growing up. He talks about the time when he was locked in the cage as punishment by Mr. Mooney, the shop owner, for three days and upon returning home Joe’s father was completely unaware his child had been missing at all and expressed no concern for his well being
Confrontation:
The Dicken’s fair is where we are introduced to Bec’s estranged and dysfunctional family, yet Bec is fully aware Joe has followed her and she spots him. Instead of the fire filled confrontation we see in the show, she doesn’t confront him and he flees from the scene in a fit of panic and drives back to his home where Bec bombards him with calls and texts desperate to talk to him. He is sure it’s to confront him about his behaviour and we see through his inner dialogue he is certain the jig is up and she will brand him a loser when in actual fact she ignores the fact he followed her across the country and just wants him to keep her company and listen to her moan about her hard life. Another reason I find Bec insanely irritating.
The reveal:
The box that Bec finds at the end of the book that results in her learning about Joe’s true identity contains her belongings but he had kept no keepsakes of his other victims like it shows in the Netflix adaptation. No teeth or phones or anything tying him to the other deaths. Only the stuff he has stolen from Bec’s apartment over the passing months. including the most disturbing item in my eyes, a used tampon, that Joe justifies as normal because it’s a plastic one. (I just can’t even)
Deaths:
When we finally see Joe's intense and violent side come out with unsuspecting Benji we were all shocked. The show seemed to go from 0 to a 100 real fast. Which if you felt was a little out of the blue, there’s a reason. The show clearly changed the interaction between Joe and Benji for artistic licence. We know this because in the book Joe only sedated Benji with a drink and then drags him into the cage in his comatose state. He never strikes him in a fit of panic or rage. We never really see an overly unhinged Joe, he is always calm and collected which I personally preferred because when he does start to unravel at the end of the book it makes it a little more exciting gives the scene more of a shocking impact.
Peach’s death is quite similar in both book and show, but there are some important differences. In the show we see it set up by a panicked Joe to look like a suicide which even includes a note (a clever foreshadowing of Bec’s grisly end). After an attempted drug fuelled threesome initiated by Peach and her unsuccessful male lover (a scene we see nothing of in the book) while in the book Joe secretly stalks the girls vacation home and sees Peach spike Bec’s drink and try to seduce her through an intimate massage that results in Peach’s total dismissal of Bec once she has been rejected. He then waits for Peach to go on a run along the beach and suffocates her in the sand and finally ends it all by hitting her over the head repeatedly with a rock.
We also find out through a series of throw away comments and one scene for scene recollection in the book how Candace died, or better yet, was murdered. Confirming suspicion, it was at Joe’s hand and it was death by drowning. Joe even admits to manipulating her suspicious brother into believing she died in a body surfing accident. We hear this through his own personal narrative while conversing with Bec about lies and secrets they both keep.
Initially at the very end of both book and show we see Joe lose his temper with Bec and strangle her. Once he has calmed down and the deed is done, he shows extreme remorse and guilt. We see a whole page where he expresses a mass amount of regret and begins to break down over what he’s done and how he’s lost her. Unknowingly Bec has tricked him and surprises him by attacking him when his guard is down. This in itself annoys Joe to breaking point and through a series of mental thoughts he explains how he was wrong about her, how she could never love him and how now she has proven to him she is everything he hoped she wasn’t, he then strangles her whole heartedly and even more sickening, he seems to enjoy it.
The ending:
In the show we see in the last episode a girl walk into the shop and the narration he shared when encountering Bec for the first time begins again, insinuating it’s all come full circle and is about to repeat itself. It proves that Joe is a creature of habit and this is his vicious circle and sadly is one he is unable/ unwilling to break. But as we see this girl is Candace (a shock to us all yes) yet in the book it’s already established she was murdered at Joe's hand many years ago. In the book it is a thief we encounter briefly a few chapters back who was using a fake name and a stolen credit card, a girl who has named herself Amy Adams. While inquiring for a job it is hinted at that she is Joe’s next victim and someone he has chosen to become his new obsession.
This ending is what particularly interested me, as we see the book has a clear end and has given Candace a grisly death thus, eliminating the possibility of her return. Yet in the show, we hear nothing about her death it is just left to hearsay and suspicion. We are then thrown a curve ball by her entrance into the shop in the very last episode which leads us to believe that the show is now going off on a completely new and unknown path, something that both excites and worries fans of the books.
I am also aware a second follow on book has been written and I will be jumping on that very soon!
I hope you enjoyed this post and have a great day. Thanks for reading!