Title- You
Author- Caroline Kepnes
Published- 2015
Genre- Fiction, thriller, crime
Length- 432 pages
Rating- 3.5/5
Synopsis (Goodreads) – 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.
Review – So the point of this book is basically that unlike most stalker books that are told from the point of view of the victim, this story is told from the point of view of the stalker. It’s a nice idea.
Not being a stalker myself I’m not really sure what to make of a lot of the story or how realistic it really is. At first I thought “no way” would the average stalker do this, and that might be true but there is no claim that Joe is supposed to be an average stalker, so his behaviour might be exactly what some stalkers do. The book is quite long for what it is so there is a lot of detail and after a while you do just get used to the extreme behaviour. There was one point where I started to feel sorry for Joe, really all he wants is love, he’s just not capable of doing things normally. I suppose the way he tries to justify his behaviour is interesting, I imagine it might annoy some people though as it comes across as victim blaming.
Thrillers are as far as I am aware, supposed to have a twist and this didn’t really. I suppose one thing could be considered a twist but if you have to think about whether or not it is really a twist then it’s not really a good one, if it is one at all. In the end what happens is what you expect to happen basically the whole time. At no point was I on the edge of my seat and this book is very easy to put down, I did always want to pick it up again though.
It’s an ok book that is worth reading but there are much better ones in the genre.
bookdrblog 
Oh man. So sorry you didn’t like it much. It’s one of my favorite books. I agree that it’s not realistic because I’m surprised that Joe is so lucky to get away with some of the things he did, but I took the story as just an entertaining read. And I agree that it could have been shorter.
I loved it for Joe’s voice, the fact that it’s told in the second person narration, and because the reader is tricked into sympathizing with Joe. But I do agree that there isn’t much of a twist at the end. My immediate reaction was to disagree with you there but when I really thought about it, I had to agree. The story does provide a good commentary on increased narcissism in most folks these days and how much of people’s private life is exposed on social media.
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