When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card. 

There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting. 

As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder. 

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Ok, silly story time.

So, there’s a handful of books on my shelves that I very closely associate with stumbling into the Bookstagram community back in 2016. And both YOU and HIDDEN BODIES by Caroline Kepnes fall into that category. If I have my dates even close (I think I do), HIDDEN BODIES would’ve been released very shortly after I joined the Bookstagram community. At any rate, the books were pretty visible on Bookstagram and caught my eye.

So I started following Caroline Kepnes on Instagram, and at some point I realized that she and I are both originally from Cape Cod. One day she posted either an old photograph or a ticket stub from a New Kids on the Block concert at a place called The Melody Tent (if you know, you know), and I was like….wait a second. I WAS THERE! It must have been 1989 or 1990 I think? And I tagged along with my sister & her friends & I SWEAR I was into Metallica, but anyway. ANYWAY. There I was, at an NKOTB show in a sweltering tent with a revolving stage. Joey was sick and couldn’t perform (fucking scandalous). It was a whole thing.

Anyhow, I commented on Kepnes’s photo, and we had a laugh, a WHAT-ARE-THE-ODDS kinda thing, and it was pretty funny. From following her on IG, I also noticed she had done a signing at the Barnes & Noble on the Cape, and while I wasn’t able to attend, I was actually visiting the Cape the following weekend, and managed to get signed copies of both YOU and HIDDEN BODIES that were still in stock. So that was pretty awesome!

And now here I am. Four years later. Finally reading YOU. This is a book that would kinda go on & off my radar periodically, and in all honesty, there were a couple times where I debated never reading it at all. It just seemed so…mean? Unlikable? And like…it is those things. In many ways. But holy shit. I’m glad I finally decided to give this a whirl, because it’s fiendishly clever, super fucking disturbing, and also just bleakly funny & kinda genius!

It seems a bit redundant for me to get into a lot of plot details for a book that has over 19,000 reviews on Goodreads. Everyone knows Joe, right? Your friendly neighborhood bookseller. Amicable. Humorous. Thoughtful. A fucking homicidal sociopath. Thrifty. It’s Joe!!

Wow, yeah. So reading a book of this length and spending the entirety of it inside the head of a man like Joe Goldberg is definitely a challenge. The book is written in the second person, which adds to the creepiness factor. There’s an urgency to the writing. It’s a page-turner in the truest sense of the term, the kind of “just one more chapter” book that jolts you out of sleepiness and keeps you up WAYYYYY too late.

It’s the sort’ve nonchalance with with Joe goes about infiltrating nearly every aspect of Beck’s life that’s so disturbing. They meet in the bookstore where he works, and he just becomes obsessed. He manufactures their relationship in his mind, and then twists and manipulates different parts of her life to suit his narrative. It’s a pretty harrowing look at how vulnerable someone can be to this level of manipulation and gaslighting. The book is played for some pretty grim laughs, and it’s incredibly effective that way. But fucking hell. It’s also just appalling on so many levels.

I guess YOU is a book that toes the line between thriller & horror, depending on your perspective? Maybe? I mean, I don’t get super hung up on genres/labels, but this definitely feels like one of those books with a foot in each world.

This is a weird one to review, because like…did I love it? I’m not sure. It was horrifying to me in so many ways. It upset me. But it is also brilliantly written & subversively funny, and loaded with some pretty scathing pop culture references. The way Stephen King factors into this book while also providing the memorable cover blurb is kind of incredible!!

I’m glad I finally gave this one a chance! Caroline Kepnes is an amazing writer & I’m definitely going to check out more of her work going forward!