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“You” was a good series and I really appreciate that they had the guts to kill Beck in the end BUT I am not here for their Candice shenanigans

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You

You is a thriller written by Caroline Kepnes. It follows Joe Goldberg, a man who works at a bookstore, and becomes obsessed with You, or rather Guinevere Beck, a young writing MFA. He starts stalking her in order to prepare himself for their perfect life as a couple, but of course, things don’t go as planned. I labored over my rating for this novel a lot. On the one hand, this book was very well written; Joe was a convincing unreliable narrator and the thriller aspects, though not very prominent did keep me engaged enough to finish it. However, I have to be honest; reading this book was not fun. At 420 pages it’s just too long, and very long stretches are spent with no progress on the plot, and being trapped in Joe’s head was honestly exhausting. So let’s start with the good and then we can talk about the bad. Like I said, the writing of this book was excellent. It’s written in a mix between first and second person, as Joe switches between narrating his life, and talking specifically to you, the reader. I imagine this was done to make the readers more easily involved with the story, because the prospect of this man stalking and being obsessed with you, is way more creepy than just him stalking a random person. However, this didn’t really work for me, because other than living in New York, I have nothing in common with Beck. In fact, Beck was one of the issues I had in this book, because the way she acts and the things she does were so wildly out of the ordinary, that I don’t see how anyone can relate to her. The good thing about being stuck in Joe’s head, is that, at least at first he is very likable. He is cynical, sarcastic and charming; there were many moments where he shit-talks mass media, the publishing industry, consumerism, high ed, etc, that I was genuinely shocked at how relatable I found him. Because I was in his head, I implicitly went along and rooted for what he was doing, because that’s what you’re supposed to do with a protagonist, which I am happy to say achieved exactly the intended effect. Joe is so good at both lying to the readers and himself that what he does is for Beck’s own good, that she really is obsessed with him, that he’s being reasonable, and combined with his sense of humor and good planning, makes the audience side with him, when in fact, he is clearly the villain. I found myself questioning if the characters I hated because Joe hated them were really that bad, or was his unreliable narration what made me dislike them. This was the strongest part of the novel for me, but like I said, it also became exhausting. Obsession is overwhelming, and after the 200th page of Joe incessantly talking about Beck, I was done. Being in his head was at times fun, but for the most part it was unbearable. Especially towards the end, when he really goes off, I found his delusions so annoying, because they were clearly not matching up with what was happening, and I just wanted the book to end. I had long stopped rooting for him at that point. Another thing I liked about the book, was New York. There aren’t many books that I feel capture the duality of New York well, and this one did very well. It’s a city of extremes; extreme wealth and extreme poverty, many opportunities and even more people fighting with you over said opportunities. Since Joe is a native from Bed-Stuy I found this quite entertaining, and I liked that there was a theme of class throughout the book. Joe being incredibly smart and well read for someone who is lower class and never went to college, and thus coming into conflict with Beck, her friends and her lifestyle was very entertaining; again I found myself relating to a lot of Joe’s anxieties, as someone who came from a very different background than most of the students at the private college I went to. Speaking of college, the other thing that definitely didn't help with my enjoyment of this book, were the characters. I don’t necessarily need the characters to be likable, but if they are not, then I at least want them to be interesting. Unfortunately I found most of the characters rather annoying or bland. Chana and Linn were not in the book enough for me to like them, and I probably hated Peach even more than Joe did. Nicky was entertaining in how horrible he was at his job, and I wanted Benji to drown in the club soda he was selling. Which leads me to Beck and Joe. Beck is Joe’s object of fixation, and as such it’s difficult to tell how much of what we know about her personality is real and how much is Joe’s imagination. If we take their dialogue and her actions as truthful, then Beck was probably as bad of a person as Joe, in terms of being vain, self-absorbed and selfish. In some ways I did like this a lot, because it made her a more human character than just a pure innocent woman who gets stalked by a man, and likewise, just because she was self-absorbed or had issues, doesn’t mean that she deserves to have a man stalk and obsess over her (and many other things, but spoilers). However, her life was so much of a drama-fest cliche that I was wondering if I accidentally sat on the remote and turned on Lifetime channel. She has daddy issues, an exhibitionist and narcissistic streak, every man she meets falls in love with her, and she’s constantly in some sort of trouble. This isn’t to say that I don’t know real life people with lives that are that dramatic, but for fuck’s sake, Joe saves her from falling on the subway tracks after she drops her phone. Really?? Joe we already covered, but I do want to point out, that he absolutely didn’t need to do any of this to get Beck. They had chemistry, they had banter and they clearly were physically attracted to each other. He could have just simply asked her out, and he would’ve probably gotten the same result. Obviously, Joe is a horrible human, and he does some truly heinous things in this book, but I think because I was so done with Beck and her BS and all the other characters, I didn’t care when bodies started piling up. I need to stress that I am in no way justifying his actions in this novel, just that because of the characters, I didn’t find the horrible things he did as impactful, since I didn’t care what happened to them. Overall, if the premise sounds intriguing and you like thrillers, maybe check this out. If you are like me, and any of the things I mentioned bothered you, then skip this one. Maybe watch the show instead; I hear it’s pretty good.

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