Review: YOU by Caroline Kepnes

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

I was really looking forward to this book, and it certainly was unlike anything I've ever read before.

One day while working in his bookstore, Joe sees Beck, and he immediately becomes obsessed with her. Joe follows Beck around for months, doing whatever he can to learn everything about her. He has to know her, and he has to have her. This whole story is from Joe's perspective as he talks to Beck, calling her "You." I love stories written in second person.

This book is disturbing in every way. It made me paranoid and afraid that people like Joe really exist. This is the stalker story of the century, and it really puts into perspective how much information is available about any one person simply by use of the Internet.

Although I enjoyed this book, I also didn't. How can I say I loved a book that constantly made me uncomfortable and whose characters I despised? Besides Joe being a disgusting human being and a stalker, he was also a complete douchebag. (Sorry.) I was constantly asking myself how he thought what he was doing was okay, yet he often seemed entirely justified in his actions. And as for Beck, she was an unrelatable, irritating, and weak person. But I might be biased since I knew Joe's motives and actions while Beck didn't.

This book is for mature readers as it contains excessive swearing and detailed sex scenes. This was probably the biggest thing I disliked, more so than Joe's stalking. It was so obscene that I almost stopped reading after only a couple of chapters, but I decided to continue because I desperately wanted to know what happened.