Book Review: You by Caroline Kepnes

The Good, the Bad, and the Satirical—everything Netflix skipped and glazed over.

I love novels with unreliable, sometimes unstable or mentally unwell narrators, so You was impossible for me to pass by. Admittedly, I read it after watching all the seasons of the show, which might have influenced my perception, but it also gave me the chance to compare the book with the series. Spoiler: As is often the case, as far as I’m concerned, the book is better.

The events in the book and the show aren’t all that different — the main difference is the narrator. But that doesn’t just change the tone, I’d say it actually puts the book and the show in different genres altogether.

In the show, Joe is romanticized: his speech is smoother, he radiates self-confidence, and his disturbing sexual fantasies are toned down, which makes them less repulsive. Netflix made a clear effort to make Joe likable and sympathetic. They even added the Paco storyline, which doesn’t appear in the book, to humanize Joe by showing how deeply he can care for someone helpless and vulnerable, like a child. He’s also given a traumatic childhood backstory that helps explain his obsessive drive to protect the people he loves, especially women, at any cost. The impression from Candace’s murder is also softened — in the show, he kills her by accident while trying to get her to talk to him. All of this turns the story into a thriller with a charming antihero the audience gets attached to.

In the book, Joe comes off as a rather pathetic guy constantly sexualizing women, including Beck, and obsessing over how superior he is to everyone else. He doesn’t have a detailed backstory meant to tug at readers’ heartstrings. At times, he’s pitiful and even ludicrous. The book is more of a satirical thriller with Joe deliberately written to evoke no sympathy. And yet, you can’t stop turning the pages.

Let’s talk a bit more about Book Joe. One of the most compelling things about the novel is how real his voice feels, and that feeling makes the story all the more disturbing. In the very first line of the acknowledgments section, Caroline Kepnes writes:

I want to thank Joe Goldberg for demanding to be heard. Well done, Joe.

And combined with the overall effect of the book, it leaves a strong impression — Joe indeed feels real, real enough to want to be heard.

When I read a first-person narration, I always ask myself: Who is this person telling their story to? Who’s the audience? How honest are they being with us? Are they trying to make a particular impression? If, so what kind of impression are they aiming for? In this case, the answer is simple: Joe is speaking to Beck in his head and he’s only as honest as he is with himself. Unlike, say, Humbert Humbert, he supposedly doesn’t play with language or aestheticize his story. The story ends right when Joe stops talking to Beck, when he shifts his focus to another woman. Beck no longer interests him and the monologue ends, giving way to the next one.

The show, however, actually depicts the moment when Joe transfers his “you” to another woman, which amplifies the sense of continuity and endlessness of this story.

Joe’s entire identity is built on the belief that he’s special, better than everyone else. His story about how, as a teenager, he chose Franny and Zooey to be his favorite book instead of The Catcher in the Rye just to be different says a lot about him. For most people, it’s just a phase and they grow out of it, but not Joe. To elevate himself, he mocks Dan Brown and Stephen King, and he scoffs at people’s weaknesses and their ignorance. And when he meets someone like Ethan, who is just as well-read as he is, it doesn’t make Joe feel sympathy and seek connection — it just becomes one more thing for him to jeer about.

Joe constantly talks about his special feelings for Beck, but in reality what he really feels is an intense, compulsive desire. He masks his obsession as some deep connection or grand love because, in his mind, he’s not like everyone else and his feelings aren’t either.

At the same time, Joe also exposes people’s true flaws. He has an eye for detail and his razor-sharp comments often hit home, resonating with the reader.

She Instagrams methodically, clinically, as if she is gathering evidence for defense, like her entire life is dedicated to proving that she has a life.

I didn’t go to college, Beck, so I don’t waste my adulthood trying to recapture my time in college. I’m not a soft motherfucker who never had the guts to live life right now, as is.

This way the book satirizes millennial society as a whole. It mocks Joe who believes he’s not like everyone else, a very common and romanticized attitude among millennials, as well as mocking his victims with their phoniness, obsession with social media, and constant need to appear better than they really are. There’s Beck, who calls herself a writer but writes Twitter posts more often than stories. There’s Benji, who can’t tell his fancy artisanal soda from cheap sugary soft drinks, and who lists a book he hasn’t even read among his favorites — it’s part of the image he wants to project, and because, as he tells Joe, “it’s possible, it’s very possible to read a book without reading it in the traditional straightforward manner. You can read about a book, Joe.” And the many others. There isn’t a single likable character in the whole book, except, perhaps, Ethan.

Joe exposes the universal phoniness around him. But the further the story unfolds, the clearer it becomes that Joe is no less of a phony himself. This becomes especially evident toward the end of the book. He prides himself on not having a formal education, yet suddenly starts looking into universities solely to impress a woman. And in the comic scenes in the cage, when Joe reads a Dan Brown novel together with Beck — the very author he mocked countless times before — he’s suddenly enthralled by the book and convinced that it has deepened a special bond between them.

In addition, Joe can be seen as a response to rom-coms once so popular among millennials, and this response is harsher and darker than 500 Days of Summer.

He is unbelievably romantic, seems to anticipate a woman’s every desire, takes an active interest in her life, never forgets what she says, and is always ready to protect her at any cost. But it seems that only a psychopath could ever truly live up to such excessive expectations.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. At times it was hard to put down, though in places the plot felt a bit drawn out and occasionally not entirely logical. I find it hard to believe that someone like Peach wouldn’t have surveillance cameras in her house, especially after she started suspecting she was being stalked. I also got the impression that none of the characters in this book had a screen lock set on their phone, which feels rather unrealistic.

The book has sequels and the series runs for five seasons. But in a story like this, the point is to show that it’s continuous and will inevitably repeat itself. How exactly it repeats is no longer interesting, since we’ve already seen that. That’s why I’m not planning to read the other installments: the story feels complete and I don’t want to spoil the impression it left. But this very tendency toward repetition is the final blow to rom-coms, showing that for those who tend to go head over heels, what matters is not the person but the very idea of being in love.

I enjoyed the book more than the series. It feels like Netflix turned a good satire into the very thing it was mocking and successfully sold it. On the other hand, I don’t want to be as much of an intellectual snob as Joe, so I’ll admit that I genuinely enjoyed some of the seasons. The book and the series are simply two different works in different genres and both have their place.

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐/5.