Scan barcode
gracenick3's review against another edition
3.0
A good stepping stone in the series, I thoroughly enjoyed this sequel, but not quite as much as the first book.
bookobsessed1987's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
4.0
halthemonarch's review against another edition
4.0
You is about a stalker, Joe Goldberg, and the object of his desire, with a few flashbacks to his shitty childhood. His boss/early father figure locked him in a cage in the basement when he was being naughty, and his mother frequently abandoned him in diners. Later, he grows up to stalk and kill the people around, and then eventually his girlfriend Guinivere Beck, a writer living in New York. In the books, his inner monologue reads as if he is a narcissistic force of nature who kills out of mercy. “She couldn’t have handled the world,” he would say before he bashes a girl’s head in on the rim of a bathtub. “He is conning his fans and is a toxic, unworthy person,” he would sincerely think while drugging someone and staging it as a suicide. And each time he spares a person he’s ruminated on killing, it’s because they bowed to one of his internal wills, his subconscious truths like Milo and Peach. His truth was that Peach loved Beck, so Peach had to die. Adversely, he thought he was being punked by Milo until Love reveals he is in unrequited love with her and so Milo gets to live. Forty steals his scripts (the catalyst which set him off) and then goes missing, affording him the OPPORTUNITY to kill him, immediately justifying his future actions on the grounds that Forty was smothering his twin, Love.
When he is found alive in the desert, he tells no one of the circumstances that got him there-- partially coke addled and partially of a mind to blackmail Joe, he jaywalks outside of the hospital, and Joe doesn’t learn his lesson. He killed Benji, Peach, Beck, and God, I don’t even remember who else in book one. In this book, he killed Delilah for finding evidence on Henderson, and Henderson for bragging about sleeping with Amy, tried to kill Forty, and killed a cop in Mexico on the grounds that he wasn’t a good cop. While I was reading I thought how scary and natural Joe’s hateful train of thought sounded. He hates people baldly in his mind but says things like “Am I right, or am I right?” to people’s faces. He suppresses how he loathes nearly everyone around him with a thin sheen of sarcasm. He goes back and forth between ‘We Angelenos’ and ‘those Angelenos’, on whether writers are cool or cringe, on whether wealth is a luxury he can’t grow into or an advantage he has over those he wishes to oppress.
The point, I feel, is that he uses his white privilege to stay mostly invisible, and his baseline level of politeness and human decency to seduce those around him into not seeing what’s right there. I always got the creepiest vibes from Joe. Even if I didn’t catch him hiding my panties in his apartment’s sofa, I’d have at least seen him acting sus in the meantime! Beck was dickmatized for too long, and Love is just the right flavor of codependent for him, but a person like Joe can never be happy. He sees happily ever after as a permanent state. There will always be another obstacle, or else his allegiance would change at the drop of a hat. He could even fall out of love, because it wasn’t love to begin with. Joe has a sociopathic narcissistic choke hold on every woman he’s ever loved to the point where the fact that Amy used him, stole from him and left is enough of a reason for Joe to track her to Los Angeles and spend months methodically trying to kill her.
Reading the books are making me not want to watch the show anymore, lowkey. The show has great production value and the tension is off the charts. I’d say there were small deviations in the first season, but season two is ‘loosely based’ off of Hidden Bodies. TV Joe is a charismatic, charming, pedophile killing knight in shining armor compared to book Joe, and I think it’s important to show these things as they are in the media, without all the frosting added in the Netflix writer's room. Joe is a sociopath who gets repeatedly lucky, and uses his abilities as a plain white guy to manipulate girls, kill people, and hide their bodies who only feels remorse when caught. His “mug of piss” mantra was all he felt in the wake of strangling another human being, and that was enough for his little white girlfriend to not only absolve him but help him get away with it.
Needless to say, I enjoyed this book. It’s a hypnotizing read. Joe is absolutely demented in thinking he’s justified in anything he does. What Kepnes does is show us the mind of an unrepentant criminal; our protagonist is a villain, without a doubt. We’ve all done the odd Instagram of facebook deep dive on someone, but Joe’s rationale is another monster entirely. Spooky, onward to book 3!
-I actually made it a few pages into You Love Me, before I realized I was missing this one in the middle.
When he is found alive in the desert, he tells no one of the circumstances that got him there-- partially coke addled and partially of a mind to blackmail Joe, he jaywalks outside of the hospital, and Joe doesn’t learn his lesson. He killed Benji, Peach, Beck, and God, I don’t even remember who else in book one. In this book, he killed Delilah for finding evidence on Henderson, and Henderson for bragging about sleeping with Amy, tried to kill Forty, and killed a cop in Mexico on the grounds that he wasn’t a good cop. While I was reading I thought how scary and natural Joe’s hateful train of thought sounded. He hates people baldly in his mind but says things like “Am I right, or am I right?” to people’s faces. He suppresses how he loathes nearly everyone around him with a thin sheen of sarcasm. He goes back and forth between ‘We Angelenos’ and ‘those Angelenos’, on whether writers are cool or cringe, on whether wealth is a luxury he can’t grow into or an advantage he has over those he wishes to oppress.
The point, I feel, is that he uses his white privilege to stay mostly invisible, and his baseline level of politeness and human decency to seduce those around him into not seeing what’s right there. I always got the creepiest vibes from Joe. Even if I didn’t catch him hiding my panties in his apartment’s sofa, I’d have at least seen him acting sus in the meantime! Beck was dickmatized for too long, and Love is just the right flavor of codependent for him, but a person like Joe can never be happy. He sees happily ever after as a permanent state. There will always be another obstacle, or else his allegiance would change at the drop of a hat. He could even fall out of love, because it wasn’t love to begin with. Joe has a sociopathic narcissistic choke hold on every woman he’s ever loved to the point where the fact that Amy used him, stole from him and left is enough of a reason for Joe to track her to Los Angeles and spend months methodically trying to kill her.
Reading the books are making me not want to watch the show anymore, lowkey. The show has great production value and the tension is off the charts. I’d say there were small deviations in the first season, but season two is ‘loosely based’ off of Hidden Bodies. TV Joe is a charismatic, charming, pedophile killing knight in shining armor compared to book Joe, and I think it’s important to show these things as they are in the media, without all the frosting added in the Netflix writer's room. Joe is a sociopath who gets repeatedly lucky, and uses his abilities as a plain white guy to manipulate girls, kill people, and hide their bodies who only feels remorse when caught. His “mug of piss” mantra was all he felt in the wake of strangling another human being, and that was enough for his little white girlfriend to not only absolve him but help him get away with it.
Needless to say, I enjoyed this book. It’s a hypnotizing read. Joe is absolutely demented in thinking he’s justified in anything he does. What Kepnes does is show us the mind of an unrepentant criminal; our protagonist is a villain, without a doubt. We’ve all done the odd Instagram of facebook deep dive on someone, but Joe’s rationale is another monster entirely. Spooky, onward to book 3!
-I actually made it a few pages into You Love Me, before I realized I was missing this one in the middle.
sophwest's review
3.0
Laugh out loud funny again. This one isn't second person, and the loss of that creative writing choice certainly makes it less unique and interesting in my opinion. Love was also barely a character here compared to her netflix counterpart. But it was a real fun time (yay murder lol sorry you know what I mean) and an easy read.
kaebirdie's review against another edition
2.0
Man, that got silly at the end. I thought it was going to be a dream sequence. Nope...if it wasn't for the reader (I read the audiobook), I'd have probably gone with one star.
ember_lynne's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
dianalee91024's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
brinamack95's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
ashleygee's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5