Gabrielle's Reviews > You

Updated review with thoughts on the TV series at the bottom.

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If this book doesn’t make you amp up all the security settings on all your social media platforms, nothing will.

Remember Jeanette in “How I Met Your Mother”? The psycho who stalked Ted, justified it by saying “I couldn’t bear the idea of not meeting you!” and because she was hot he thought that was adorable? Joe, the narrator of this supremely disturbing novel, is probably Jeanette’s twin brother.

Joe meets Beck when she comes to buy a few books at the store he works at in Greenwich Village. She’s hot, she likes the same authors… Every bookworm’s fantasy, right? He spies her name from her credit card receipt and next thing you know, he is in full stalker mode. Because it is so damn easy to find everything you need to know about someone in the Internet age, especially someone with a unique name like Guinevere Beck… and especially if said Miss Beck tweets incessantly and has a public Facebook profile…

It’s impossible to say more about the plot without giving the juicy bits away, and as this is a deliciously trashy thriller, I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. Suffice to say, that book basically reads itself. The fast pace, the dark humour: a highly addictive combination, at least for suckers like me! Stuffed with cultural references and daily life details and concerns, this book also feels disturbingly real. This could happen. This might be someone’s diary. This is definitely happening to someone somewhere right now…

I have to say kudos to Kepnes for her incredibly clever use of second person narration: it is not easy to make that narrative style engaging, especially when you are seeing a story from the eyes of a psycho-stalker, but she pulls it off. You can’t hate Joe, or be flat-out horrified by him, even if he is delusional and creepy. Attraction is something that teases everyone’s psycho switch at some point in their lives, so he is bizarrely relatable (for anyone who hasn’t experienced the surreal experience of online dating, that shit turns EVERYONE into a stalker, it’s creepy). I confess I freaked myself out when I realized I was rooting for the guy, and even empathizing with him at times… I hate pretentious hipsters and readers of shitty novels too… But I am not sure that I’d let that sentiment drive me quite as far as Joe goes…

Joe is obviously an unreliable narrator: he is obsessed and delusional – but he seriously made me think about the possibility that crazy people attract each other. We soon find out that his beloved Beck is not exactly a paragon of virtue, and that Joe is not the only person who has an unhealthy attachment to her. The further you get into the book, the more you realize these two psychos might just deserve each other; just like in “Gone Girl”, except I actually liked the characters in “You” and hated everybody’s guts in “Gone Girl”…

4 stars for a very entertaining, creepy read! I will definitely be looking for the sequel!

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I was excited about the TV show, because despite the trickiness of using Kepnes' masterful use of the second person narration for a visual media, this story was basically made to be a fun and suspenseful Netflix binge. Merry Christmas to me!

While I am not sure about the casting for Joe (I imagined him hotter, like an American James Norton or something), I really loved the TV adaptation, which expands on various side characters, but especially develops Beck into something more layered than the aggravating little Brooklynite Joe fell for on the page - and Elizabeth Lail is perfect. So while it's is not strictly a faithful word for word adaptation, it keeps all the good bits (including the green pillow and the red ladle!) and the hip/trashy vibe that made the book so fun. Oh Joe, my lovable psycho, I knew you'd be a blast to watch! Looking forward to season 2.