The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge  is for bloggers who wish to participate by publishing a blog post every day in April except for Sundays. Each blog post will focus on a letter of the alphabet. For example April 1 will be A, April 2 will be B and on it goes. By the end of April, a blog post for every letter of the alphabet will have been posted.

Summary

This is the debut novel, by Caroline Kepnes. Guinevere Beck, an aspiring writer, wanders into a book store. Soon, she is having a friendly conversation with Joe Goldberg, who is working in the store. Joe googles her name from her credit card, to find out all he can about her. He checks out her public Facebook page, and her Twitter feed, where he gets a huge amount of general information about her and about her life.

When she posts on Twitter that she will be at a particular bar that night, Joe makes sure that he is there for a ‘chance’ meeting. From there, he makes sure he has her under his control to the point that he takes over her life.

On the surface Joe is her perfect man. However, things are not as they seem. Joe is controlling her and stalking her. This is a story about the modern age of communications and living life online. You demonstrates how vulnerable we all are in the digital age, to stalking and being manipulated, without even being aware.

My Thoughts

You has been compared to Psycho, Gone Girl and even Stephen King’s Misery. I loved all of those books, but unfortunately I can’t say the same about You. Everything that happened seemed to me to be too easy for Joe.  But perhaps that’s the way the world is today, in this digital age.  The story line seemed to me to be very contrived and convenient.

For me, You was a difficult read, as I didn’t really care too much about the characters and could have put the book down. and decided not to finish it, at any time. I definitely didn’t feel it was a page turner, though going by some of the reviews, it appears that I am in the minority. I also should state. that I’m not a huge fan of crime or psychological thrillers, so am probably not the best person to comment on this book.

About The Author

Caroline Kepnes was born and lives in the U.S, dividing her time between California, Cape Cod, and Massachusetts.

My Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️

First published in 2014 by Simon & Schuster
Paperback 424 pages

Have you read this book? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Did you enjoy it?  I promise to always reply to comments made in the section below.

*Images: Goodreads