Literature / You (Kepnes)

You is a 2014 Thriller novel written by Caroline Kepnes.

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.

A sequel, Hidden Bodies, was published in 2016, while a television adaptation premiered on Lifetime in 2018, later moving to Netflix for its second season.

Unrelated to You, a 2013 novel about a game development company.

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You contains examples of:

• Abduction Is Love: Joe kidnaps Beck near the end of the book, after she discovers his stalking and murdering. It appears that she might have fallen for it, but it's a ruse so she can try to escape, and he kills her when she does.
• Almost Famous Name: In ironic juxtaposition to the Hero with a Unique Name, Guinevere Beck, Joe's other girlfriend is called Amy Adam. It's impossible for Joe to stalk her online as a result.
• Armored Closet Gay: Peach is a lesbian, but due to her station in life, keeps her feelings to herself. Even Joe pities her somewhat for it in the end.
• Asshole Victim: After Joe fires Curtis when the latter gives his home address to Beck, Curtis later returns with friends who beat the daylights out of Joe. Even Joe admits he's had a beating coming for a long time.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Joe kills Beck, is never arrested for his crimes, and finds a new obsession.
• Beta Couple: Ethan and Blythe. Joe frequently finds himself competing with their relationship and eventually grows frustrated when he realizes that Ethan and Blythe, for all their issues, have a genuinely stronger relationship than the whirlwind passion of the fling between him and Beck. Blythe may be rude and condescending and Ethan may be a doormat of a Nice Guy, but apparently they do get along marvelously, and they're more mature about their relationship than the Mad Love Joe is. And in the end, they move in together and get married while Joe is left to go after his next victim.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Beck frequently lies to either get out of a promise or to get what she wants. Joe, who is reading her texts and emails, is the only one who can see through them, though he never calls her out on it until the end, when he tests her on the emails she sent Nicky about him.
  • After Joe locks her in the cage, Beck plays along and tells him what he wants to hear. Joe is so delusional that he believes she really is impressed about the ingenuity of his murders of her friends and interested in reading a book with him, when really she's trying to get him to lower his guard.
• Book Worm: Joe is a book obsessive, and Beck certainly portrays herself as one. She later admits to Joe that is something of a put-on, and she doesn't actually enjoy reading that much.
• Brainy Brunette: Beck has dark hair and is Ivy-educated. Subverted in that she's not as smart as she appears.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: A meta example. If you're reading this on a Kindle, they have a joke about reading books on the Kindle.
• Cast Full of Rich People: Played for Drama. All of the main characters are very wealthy, except Joe, who is legitimately poor, and the object of his affection, Starving Student, Beck, who is constantly broke just trying to fit in. Even more so in Hidden Bodies, where Joe moves to LA and almost every single major character is a trust fund baby and/or famous, and the "poorest" other character is a cop.
• Chekhov's Gift: Beck gives Joe The Da Vinci Code for saving her life. They then read it when Joe captures Beck in the basement and Joe chokes her with it.
• Crying Wolf: In a sense. When Benji and Peach go missing, those in their lives don’t worry too much because both have a habit of disappearing every now and then (Benji on drug benders, and Peach to cause drama). So no one is too concerned when they suddenly disappear and neither are considered dead until weeks later.
• Driven to Suicide: Beck notes that Peach attempted suicide several times in the past which covers Joe's murder of her, as most people assume she died by suicide.
• Entitled to Have You:
  • Peach seems determined to use her money to get Beck all to herself.
  • Joe volleys between subtly and unsubtly. While killing Beck he drops all pretenses and flat out says he "deserves" her.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Beck. Peach does. Made especially evident as every male character, particularly in the adaptation, lusts after her.
• Everyone Has Standards: As much as Joe hates Peach, he does pity her for never having been truly loved by her parents, and blames them for all of her issues, which in itself is something of Foreshadowing when it's revealed that Joe's own parents didn't seem to care much about him.
• Extreme Doormat: Even when Joe is outright rude to Ethan, Ethan just smiles and thanks Joe for talking with him.
• Fictional Fan, Real Celebrity: All over the place.
  • Joe loves Prince and regards him as the great poet of the modern era. He's also a huge fan of Tim O'Brien (of The Things They Carried) and Woody Allen, especially Hannah and Her Sisters, which shows his Genre Blindness because he regards it as a pure love story.
  • Peach is a huge fan of Elton John, and listens to him all the time. This foreshadows that Peach herself is a Closet Gay, which she relates to in the music.
  • Beck's favorite movie is Pitch Perfect, though it's regarded in-universe as "basic."
• For the Evulz: Beck starts an affair with Dr. Nicky for no other reason than boredom with Joe and a desire to ruin Nicky's family life, stemming from her hang-ups about her own broken family.
• Friendless Background: Joe spends most of the book arrogantly and caustically writing off his need for social interaction outside of Beck, but towards the end, his inner monologue reveals that he has been alone for most of his life and never had any friends or family who cared about him. It becomes starkly clear that his obsessive search for his "one true love" is a way for him to seek out one person who will complete his needs and make up for all of his loneliness, not that it excuses anything he does.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Peach is disliked by all of Beck's other friends, and Joe sympathizes with them when he himself meets her and realizes that she's a massive Jerkass. Beck herself gradually becomes this to her other friends as they quickly tire of her whining about Benji and flaking out on plans to spend more time with Peach.
• Gold Digger: Benji remarks that Beck is only obsessed with him because he's rich. Indeed, Beck keeps close with those who can offer her privileges, and Joe himself notes that Beck isn't the type to hold down a part-time job when she could beg her wealthy father for money instead.
• Hates Everyone Equally: Joe. Seriously, he has a chip on his shoulder about everyone he meets. It's no surprise that he has no friends whatsoever, though he admits he doesn't even want one. He hates most women and other men as well, and lambasts everyone for having boring lives, whether they are "whores" who seek sex or dress provocatively, "boring" women who settle down and have children, children themselves, people who enjoy certain books, people who own e-readers, people who work for a living, people who don't work... The list goes on. That being said, he has rose-colored classes about Beck's flaws, often repainting them in a positive light or even praising her bad qualities and stupid decisions, though even he acknowledges her foolishness sometimes.
• Here We Go Again!: The novel ends with Joe quickly getting over his depression over Beck's death by latching onto a new cute, quirky, book-loving target to stalk.
• Hidden Depths: Inverted with Beck, who is not nearly as deep or intellectual as Joe has convinced himself she is. At the end of the novel, when Joe is holding her captive, she admits she doesn't really want to be a writer, she doesn't particularly enjoy reading and all she wants to do is go to Hollywood and become famous as an actress. Joe doesn't take this well.
• Hypocrite:
  • Joe is annoyed that Benji rails against Monsanto when Benji's own dad worked for Nestle.
  • Beck is disgusted by Joe's apartment (which is littered with discarded furniture), which briefly takes the wind out of his sails as he's proud of his thrifty abode. He inwardly criticizes her for preferring the sterile appeal of Ikea and being disgusted when she herself shoves used tissues into her filthy purse.
  • A rather dark version comes up when Beck finds Joe's Stalker Shrine that has her yearbook, at least one pair of panties and a used tampon. Joe is disappointed in her for invading his privacy, ignoring how he got those items in the first place.
• Hope Spot: For Beck, who manages to seduce Joe after he locks her in the cage and escape after he leaves the door open... Only to find herself still locked within the bookstore, with no one around to hear her cries for help in the wee hours of the morning.
• If I Can't Have You…: Joe kills Beck after he realizes that she'll never love him and is done even pretending to try.
• Incompatible Orientation: Beck and Peach.
• Improvised Weapon: Joe uses the pages of the copy of The Da Vinci Code Beck gave him to stuff pages down Beck's throat while killing her.
• It's All About Me: Every one of the books central characters is guilty of this. Even some of the more minor characters like Curtis and Nicky, except for Ethan. But Joe, Beck, and Peach are probably the top contenders for the worst. Joe outright thinks this about Beck when the latter calls herself "Death Girl" after two people close to her die within a short period.
  • Up to eleven in the end for Joe. After Beck discovers the box of items he's stolen from her, he thinks he's the one who deserves a groveling apology, because Beck had to snoop to find it. Afterwards, even when knocking her unconscious and imprisoning her, he considers himself the victim and requires Beck to correct her behavior. Even after murdering her, he's only consumed with how his life is going to be hard without her.
• Ivy League for Everyone: Beck, Peach, and most of their friends went to Brown; Benji went to Yale. Particularly noticeable as the other major characters (Joe, Karen, Amy), didn't go to college at all. However, then subverted, because Beck and Blythe go to the New School.
• Jerkass:
  • Joe, in spades. Everything about everybody else (except Beck, of course) annoys him, down to the most innocuous action, and he is frequently rude to customers and coworkers.
  • When Beck's spunky act drops, she reveals herself to be an inconsiderate and judgmental person with a bad temper who takes out on other people.
  • Peach. It's no wonder none of Beck's other friends like her. She's incredibly impolite and condescending, and makes a host of cutting remarks to Joe about his lack of privilege during their first meeting.
• Last-Name Basis: Although Beck is her surname, her friends choose to call her this instead of her first name.
• Lethal Joke Weapon: A rare fictional example. Beck buys Joe a version of the Da Vinci Code after he saves her life. Joe chokes her with it by shoving the pages down her throat at the end of the novel.
• Life-or-Death Question:
  • Joe gives Benji a test about his favorite books (which he failed because he still lied about them). He then gives him a taste test with his soda water brand, to see if he can tell the difference. Joe claims that he's willing to let Benji go, but he's fooling himself, and he kills Benji anyway (although he does fail the quizzes).
  • When Beck has found out at the end of the novel that Joe is stalking her, he kidnaps her and holds her captive in the basement of the bookstore. He then learns that she was cheating on him with Dr Nicky, at which point he subjects her to a quiz to prove that she's in love with him and over Nicky. She manages to convince him that she is, but she tries to escape later and he kills her.
• Locked in a Room: Happens to multiple people in the novel.
• Love at First Sight: Joe becomes obsessed with Beck the minute she comes into the bookstore.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Joe believes this, and while he does act crazy, it's implied that it doesn't just come from his infatuation with Beck. This is also true of Peach and Beck, though.
• Love Makes You Evil: Joe, especially because, unlike in the adaptation, Joe at least intends to spare Benji. But it's still mentioned he has a history of disturbing behavior, like stalking, and possibly sexual assault. While it may be a stretch to call Peach evil, she's endlessly rude and cruel to everyone, particularly Joe, out of jealousy that he has Beck and she doesn't.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Joe firmly believes that it's fate that brought Beck into his life, and that she is meant to complete him and bring passion and fulfillment into his boring, quiet life. Ultimately deconstructed: she's not even trying to be his dream girl, and instead he cynically manipulates every situation he can to be her "dream guy." Furthermore, Beck herself is a manipulative liar who used Joe to get over Benji in the first place, so she is hardly a good candidate even if she wanted the position.
• Mad Love: Joe has this for Beck, although he thinks he's a Love Martyr.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Subverted. Joe doesn't intend his murders to go this way, but that's how they end up, regardless. He cremated Benji, who is thought to have died in a boating accident. He wanted Peach's body to never be found, but when it washes up with rocks in her pocket, it's assumed a suicide. And it's unclear how he disposed of Candace's body, but her family assumed she suffered a recreational accident and drowned.
• Manipulative Bastard / Manipulative Bitch: It's honestly quicker to name which main characters ''aren't' manipulative.
  • Joe is the most obvious example. He manipulates Beck into getting closer to him and robs her in order to read her private correspondence, which he uses to get even closer to her. He has absolutely no qualms about manipulating any situation to get closer to Beck.
  • Beck is far from the helpless damsel Joe often believes her to be. Joe's acquisition of her phone allows him to see how often she lies, plays nice, or uses sex to get out of a situation or to get what she wants. Benji even tells him she's a Gold Digger who's just looking for a rich husband. Her "first date" with Joe only happens because she tries to essentially hire free labor from Craigslist for an Ikea trip and then enlists Joe when it's clear it won't be possible. The only reason she still talks to the father she loathes is because he bankrolls her lifestyle, and later she uses her affair with Dr. Nicky to fuck with the latter's family life.
  • Peach is one, which Joe picks up on almost immediately. She frequently manipulates Beck into spending time with her instead of other people, and she undermines her relationships with men. She claims to be hounded by a disease that Joe suspects is heavily exaggerated so that she can be picky with where she eats and drinks, and so Beck will give her special treatment. She also exaggerates dramatic incidents so that Beck will take care of her, and at one point she lies to Beck and asks her to not invite their other friends on a trip so that she can have Beck all to herself.
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Beck masturbates very frequently, and often uses a green pillow that becomes a piece of Joe's obsession. Joe also can't keep his hands off of himself with thinking about Beck and he later finds risque photos of Beck that Peach had secretly taken and realizes that Peach masturbates regularly to them. Dr. Nicky also becomes obsessed with Beck and notes that he locks himself in his laundry room in order to masturbate while thinking of her.
• Mirror Character: Joe and Peach absolutely loathe each other: Joe thinks she's a pretentious, vapid, cruel rich girl while Peach is condescending towards Joe, who she considers a poor and uneducated hick Beck is making a mistake with. Neither seems to grasp that they're judgmental, caustic, friendless people whose obsessions with Beck are rooted in a lack of love in their childhoods.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Joe won't hesitate to kill those who he thinks are obstacles in his relationship with Beck.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Joe does this to Benji and Peach. There are not many people he wouldn't do it to.
• My Girl Is Not a Slut: Beck has a lot of casual hookups, but Joe alternates between being envious of her lovers and living in denial that her sex life is actually that active. He's also far more willing to believe that Beck is a naïve damsel who was taken advantage of then believe she willingly seduced Nicky for no other reason than just to screw with Nicky's life.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Joe has this reaction after killing Beck. Although, he seems to forget about her after meeting a new woman whom he becomes obsessed with.
• New Media Are Evil: Zig-zagged. Joe loves books and hates Facebook, but also uses all modern tools to cyber-stalk Beck. Her openness on such media is what allows him to worm into her life, and it's also taken as evidence of her shallowness and hypocrisy as she is a short story writer.
• Nice Guy: Ethan. Absolutely nothing stops him from being kind and polite, even being openly abused. His niceness grates on Joe even as Joe realizes he can't find a legitimate reason to hate him.
• Not That Kind of Doctor: Despite Beck calling him "Dr. Nicky" Nicky isn't actually a doctor.
• Odd Couple: Ethan, the nicest man alive, and the very demanding, condescending Blythe.
• One-Word Title: Presumably named because of one character's focus on another character. Therefore, really involved with Second-Person Narration, and the pronoun, "You".
• Opposites Attract: The minute Joe sees Beck, he's convinced that they share a connection that other people just don't understand, because they're better than everybody else. Beck, however, is the exact kind of person he considers opposite to himself, who he continuously mocks and degrades throughout the novel: a vapid, talentless, privileged, insincere Manipulative Bitch who posts every detail of her life online and wastes every opportunity she's given or wheedles into her grasp. Tellingly, when he meets Karen Minty, who is more like himself — working-class, direct, sexually aggressive, and a spontaneous romantic who develops a connection early — he is turned off and only pines for Beck.
• Parental Issues:
  • Beck has a textbook case of "daddy issues" stemming from a bad relationship with her father, who she claims passed away from addiction years before, and Joe frequently notices evidence of it in their interactions. Dr. Nicky even reveals in a tape that the green pillow Beck regularly masturbates with had belonged to her father. Her dad is revealed to be alive and well, but has a new wife and kids, and Beck only keeps a relationship with him so that he can give her money, though she openly resents his new life.
  • It gradually becomes clear that Joe, unlike in the television adaptation, wasn't close to either of his parents and was frequently caught in their fighting and bitterness.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Joe and Peach's first meeting smacks of this, with both of them intentionally calling them by the wrong name and sniping each other's pasts and lifestyles, much to Beck's dismay. Joe ruminates that she must have been honing her verbal warfare for decades.
• Popularity Cycle: Beck describes this as her problem in romantic relationships: that, as soon as she gets someone, she immediately loses interest in them. Joe observes this happening when he orchestrates a way back into Beck's life because Beck says she missed him, their relationship lasts a couple of blissfully perfect weeks, and then Beck cools off on him and starts cheating on him with Dr. Nicky, only to get sick of him as soon as he leaves his wife.
• Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Beck and Peach share a sickeningly close, cuddly, almost codependent relationship that her other friends look at sideways. Ultimately deconstructed when it becomes increasingly clear that Peach has an obsessive, psychotic crush on Beck, and Beck is playing into what Peach wants because Peach offers her privileges that other friends don't.
• Psycho Lesbian: Peach. Joe finds her stash of risque photos she's secretly taken of Beck going back years, (such as a photo of a teenaged Beck's genitals taken when the latter was sleeping, and her in the middle of having sex with other men) and it immediately becomes apparent to him that Peach has been masturbating to them regularly. She also works hard to isolate Beck from her other friends and keep her all to herself, no matter what dramatic tactics she needs to invent to do it.
• Psycho Psychologist: Nicky isn't psycho, but he does abuse his position by eventually sleeping with his patient, Beck.
• Really Gets Around: Beck has a lot of casual hookups, and Joe deludely believes that she'll change when she meets him and realizes their connection. Of course, she doesn't.
• Replacement Goldfish: Nicky and Joe describe Karen as this.
• Rescue Romance: Joe and Beck's relationship kicks off when he rescues her when she drunkenly falls on the train tracks.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Peach's place is broken into once and it's enough for her to declare that she has a stalker. She's right in that a stalker did break in. But it wasn't necessarily for her, and the stalker actually hates her guts.
• Stalker with a Crush: Joe uses Beck's social media accounts to learn where she's going so that he can "coincidentally" bump into her.
• Too Dumb to Live: Joe's ex, Candace, from his perspective. After breaking his heart, he asked her to walk down the beach to the water with him, and instead of leaving, she agreed, only for him to drown her.
• Unreliable Narrator: Joe, in spades. He's extremely delusional and narcissistic, and he's extremely biased toward his own beliefs and cynical about others. For example, he claims Candace joined him at the beach after breaking up with him because she was so cruel that she loved to see him heartbroken, but since he views everyone as being out to get him, it's impossible to know for sure what Candace was really like.
• Villain Protagonist: The story is told from Joe's perspective, and he always uses "you" when talking about or to Beck.
• Willing Suspension of Disbelief: The plot of the novel relies heavily on Beck ignoring every piece of common sense regarding her personal security, as well as many coincidences working in Joe's favor, but it works for the story.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Peach's favorite tactic to get to Beck is to fake a dramatic incident so that Beck will feel guilty about spending time with anyone else. Joe sees right through it and is frustrated by how effective it is.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Joe, spectacularly. He believes that he a Dogged Nice Guy in a Romantic Comedy, and that his villainy is just innocent attempts to get the world to start playing along. He is in fact a Stalker with a Crush and eventual Serial Killer, the story he is in is a dark, psychological thriller, and his actions are far beyond the pale from the start, and run screaming for the Moral Event Horizon from there.
• Yandere: Joe. He starts off as an average guy who becomes infatuated with Beck. As the story progresses and his relationship with Beck deepens, he becomes obsessed with her, stalks her, collects her trash for his Stalker Shrine, and kills anyone who gets in the way of his relationship with her. When she learns how messed up he is and rejects his feelings for her, he retaliates by killing her.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Joe usually calls Beck by her surname, as she insists. His last words to her before he murders her are "Open up, Guinevere."
• "You!" Exclamation: Peach does this when she realizes that Joe is Beck's stalker.
• Your Favorite: Joe gets Beck all of her favorite things when he kidnaps her and locks her in the basement. It doesn't help much of course, and does very little to comfort or reassure her.

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