Review: You by Caroline Kepnes

You're at work when a beautiful someone walks in and totally steals your breath away. This person has somehow managed to master the art of keeping your attention. After speaking a few words, you're sure they are meant to be with you and you alone. You see your future together and that future is filled with love, devotion, and lots and lots of sex. Before long, you're in their apartment while they're at work, or school, or with friends, taking small tokens such as their under garments, books, email passwords, and cell phones. These are small things they won't notice. You even find a way to eliminate the ones from their life that are keeping you from each other. But it's fine. You two are meant to be.

Ok, maybe that's not you. You're no homicidal maniac who's in love with Guinevere Beck. Maybe you're not Joe Goldberg. No, you don't sit around calculating ways to ingratiate yourself into this woman's life because you're sane.

You is the revealing look inside the mind of a homicidal stalker. A very creepy homicidal stalker. Joe is in love with Beck from the moment she comes into his bookstore. He feels there's some sort of connection that he's sure she will feel once she notices him. Caroline Kepnes debut effort ropes readers in from page one as the narrator Joe becomes increasingly more unstable.

What I loved most about this book is that it's written in the present tense. It feels less like we're being told a story but rather seeing the world as Joe sees it. There isn't any mystery to his obsession but what's captivating is who he'll find threatening and how he'll relinquish their hold on Beck. There is constant tension throughout the book.

Although there isn't much to like about Joe, and his past self could have been better fleshed out, his insight into the human psyche is outstanding. It's here where I wonder how/why he ever felt that Beck was worth such devotion. She has got to be the most exhausting, selfish, self-absorbed, annoying person I've read about in a while. She's so damn needy it's impossible to ever like her.

So, you eventually find this book, You and read it and realize you just might be Joe and then decide that this revealing look at obsession may not be the road you want to go down. Instead you decide to put Caroline Kepnes on your list of authors to look for and write this review on Goodreads. ****

Copy provided by Simon & Schuster via Netgalley