Reviews with content warning for Blood - You

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

You by Caroline Kepnes

31 reviews

trash_reader_'s review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book disturbed me from the the very first sentence. And what made it so unsettling was the fact that it was written in 2nd person POV. Despite the title, I was not expecting it to be written that way. It got the desired affect, though, that's for sure.

I loved the fact that the characters were far from perfect, Obviously, Joe has issues. But the fact that he's obsessing over this woman who is clearly mentally unstable and doesn't take care of herself or really care about anything other than getting laid was refreshing. Beck could have been this picture perfect, straight A student who wrote amazing prose and new all about the classics and "fine modern literature," but she wasn't. She was just as messed up as Joe was.

My biggest issues with this book, though, and why I couldn't rate it above a 3.5 despite how much I loved it, was the unbelievability of certain aspects of the plot and the characters themselves.

This book takes place in the 2010's. There's iPhones and high speed internet and bluetooth and all this great technology, and the characters ONLY communicate with each other through email? Not even a group chat through imessages or private messaging on the many social medias these girls had? Beck's email communication with Nicky at the end made sense, because they had to be secretive about it, both from Joe and from Nicky's wife Marcia, but the fact that email was the main means of communication between all of them made no sense. And if the term "email" was being used in place of texting, then that's just a poor choice of words on the author's side, and it doesn't make it any better.

Another issue I had was with the lack of police investigation into WEALTHY WHITE PEOPLE'S disappearances? Joe was smart about Benji, but what he did with Peach was careless. He bashed her in the head with a rock and they just decided not to see that when they find her body washed up? There were absolutely no forensics done and they just carted her off to a funeral? No. That's not how the authorities deal with wealthy white people who go missing and/or are found dead.

And the last thing I'm going to complain about is probably the most unrealistic to me. Joe was able to have several false identities with no identification and no questions asked? The hospital in Rhode Island I can understand. He was in and out, but absolutely no paperwork was filed and that's not real life. But he never would have been able to get an appointment with a therapist without any identification and with no insurance or proof of insurance, whether he paid for the sessions in cash or not. And the amount of cash he always seemed to have didn't make sense, either. He always had "just enough" to cover whatever emergency costs he came across, despite stating several times about how it's difficult to live on the salary he had from working in the bookstore and how he didn't have money to afford a lot of things.

All in all, this book was amazing. But the few things that I found to be inaccurate distracted from the narrative for me. I don't care to read the other two books, but this one was great and I feel like adding on the other two probably ruined it. We get it, Joe has issues.

Content Warnings

kr_gr's review against another edition

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dark funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

oceanvuongist's review against another edition

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dark reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Content Warnings

sabrinarae's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

jdineen03's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

So good, insanely tense. As a fan of the show I had high hopes for the book, and it did not fail me. The book was a bit hard to follow at times and the main characters were both a bit much at times but the descriptive imagery was phenomenal.

The biggest downfall of this book for me was the seemingly endless amount of sex. It was as if every other page was sexual in nature and many of the comparisons were uncomfortable and unnerving. Some of the book seemed to be glamorizing gaslighting and toxicity in relationships.

Overall a very good book, but could be very triggering if not in the right head space.

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ging090803's review against another edition

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dark funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

I loved the TV show and since I knew it was a book first, I wanted to read it to compare.

I liked how it was written. Not a lot of sentence but a lot of and, I felt like I was in Joe’s head all the time.

However, I found it pretty slow.

Not a lot happened. I mean, yeah, murder and shit but it was mostly sex, sex and sex. Joe has a big sex obsession. Then, bam, a dead person just to spice things up.

So, yeah, great book. The story is good, it is, however, pretty slow.

Content Warnings