You by Caroline Kepnes

by:  Caroline Kepnes
published by:  Atria
publish date:  September 30, 2014

When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.  There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.

As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder.

This book was quite a thing.  I think most readers will have strong feelings about You.  My first thought are that Caroline Kepnes must be quite the firecracker.   You was very dark and...dirty is the word that kept coming to mind most often.  

Beck walks into a bookstore one day and walks out with Joe as her new stalker.  He steals her phone so he can read all her emails and monitor her social media accounts.  He kidnaps her boyfriend and orchestrates his disappearance with a series of social media posts.  He worms his way into her life until he is everything she has ever wanted.  All is right in Joe's world until Beck stops behaving as expected.  Then everything goes wrong...very, very wrong.  

Like I said this book is dirty.  The language is rough.  The way Joe talks is really bad.  I didn't think I could run across anyone that could cuss more creatively than nursing students, but Joe is in the running.  It's also written from Joe's point of view as if he's talking to Beck.  "You did this"  "You did that"  That type of writing might be a bit of a turn off, but I got used to it after awhile.  

As it turns out, this is a series.  The second book is slated to come out in September, 2015.  According to Goodreads it's called Love.  I'll probably read it, because Joe and his obscene mouth cracked me up.