I loved Cat Person and sent it to all my friends to read. Sadly, that is the only story in this collection that I'm into. I had high hopes but I'm just not feeling it.

I think I wanted to read this because of the viral story. I felt like Roupenian was like a grungy Sally Rooney, or a Sally Rooney that was able to go into the gory details. The collection was good--it had a strange structural arc though that I'm still not sure about.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to review this book and to be an early reader via NetGalley! However, I will not be writing a review for this title at this time, as my reading preferences have since changed somewhat. In the event that I decide to review the book in the future, I will make sure to purchase a copy for myself or borrow it from a library. Once again, thank you so much for providing me with early access to this title. I truly appreciate it. Please feel free to contact me with any follow-up questions or concerns.

I liked these stories a lot better than I thought I would. I was morbidly curious about her writing after the buzz around "Cat Person." I didn't like that specific story, but I thought there were lots of other gems in here that are biting, insightful, and weird.

In Roupenian's short stories, love often breeds monsters. Her work first came to fame with the short story "Cat Person" that appeared in the New Yorker and ended up going viral which landed her this book deal. The visceral reaction and connection people made to Margot gave the story unexpected legs. Roupenian seems to have an uncanny ability to get into the heads of her characters and make those thoughts relatable. If there is a theme to these stories it probably comes from the story The Boy in the Pool, where someone carves into someone's chest "Love Breeds Monsters". In these stories, there is a lesbian couple that drives a man to murder his girlfriend, children punished for their mockery of the birthday girl, weird reactions to attraction, and "good people" who are not.

I think what's unsettling about these stories are the human connections that can be so betrayed. I imagined it can be cathartic for those who had difficulty in relationships. These stories are quirky and disturbing. They have a speculative fiction quality that reminds me of Harlan Ellison and also a surrealist quality like Heidi Julavitis. She is able to use a bit of the bizarre to have her point about the cruelty that can come from the people you love.

Such a strange collection of odd little stories. It reads as a series of dark comedies. Peeks into the personal lives of strangely perverse people. It made me LOL several times!

The stories in Roupenian's book are engaging while also being food for thought. The chronicle different people with very diverse personas navigating their lives as and their personal tragedies as best they can.

This is such a disturbing collection of short stories because they could nearly all be true. Some of the stories I could have sworn were ripped right out of my own life. Some of the stories are a terrifyingly realistic look about what happens to men and women when they do not get what they want, or worse, when they do.

Certain stories contain mythical elements that take the reader away from the realism of other stories, but I think that is a welcome element to this book. We need a break from the real that the authors share in bright, unfiltered detail.

I was grateful that some of the stories were told because I knew that I was not alone. Sometimes, people become so focused on getting what they desire, they will hurt anyone else in their way.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an advanced copy to read. All opinions are my own.

"Ultimately, my judgment of Roupenian’s stories is meaningless. How much people like her book, and even how intrinsically good her book is aside from critical judgment of it, has no relationship to how many copies she will sell, or how well her second book will do. The Casual Vacancy wasn’t reviewed well, but it still sold thirty jillion copies, because J.K. Rowling is famous. She, and Roupenian to a lesser degree, are publishing phenomena. How can such phenomena be judged on merit? They are too famous to be touched, too big to fail. That would unsettle me even if the stories were unassailably well-written and bore a moral center I could recognize."

https://bookandfilmglobe.com/fiction/book-review-you-know-you-want-this/

Thank you for the opportunity to review this book via NetGalley. We enjoyed meeting and getting to know Kristen when she visited Atlanta on book tour.

These are extremely well-written stories. Most of us who read 'Cat Person' when it first came out will not be disappointed by the quality and themes found here. And yet, there's something that rankles. Was the hype a bit too much so that, when we finally get the book-length work, it has no hope of living up to that hype? And is there too much "performance" on the page with these stories -- a writer trying too hard, perhaps, to shock and titillate? In the end, it's the deeper insights into human behavior and nature that seemed to be lacking somewhat. A shallow kind of reading pleasure and not much more, perhaps.

I went into these stories braced not to like them. I quite enjoyed Cat Person and the surrounding controversy, but heard these stories were full of unlikeable characters and disturbing situations. And they are, but Kristen Roupenian has an uncanny sense of the inner lives of people - their messy, uncomfortable, inner lives. There is one story in here that feels like it doesn't fit unless you think of the characters as cat people. And really, it does fit in the way that the male character is a white person upset about how the people in the country he moves to are treating him, as per usual.

It took me a long time to finish this book. I would start reading and walk away, unsure if I wanted to continue. I was intrigued with Roupenian's writing after "Cat Person" and wanted to read more of her work. Some of the stories that stood out to me were of course "Cat Person" as well as "Biter" and "The Good Guy." A few of the stories deal with more fantastical and almost fairy tale-esque situations like "Sardines," "The Night Runner" and "The Mirror, the Bucket and the Old Thigh Bone." Overall a worthy but often dark read.

If you’ve been on the internet over the last year, you’ve no doubt heard of “Cat Person,” writer Kristen Roupenian’s short story that went viral after being published in The New Yorker. Roupenian’s success with “Cat Person” was a combination of razor-sharp writing and, frankly, good timing, but her voice instantly captured readers’ attention, and it was not long before a debut collection of short stories was announced. Now, a year later, YOU KNOW YOU WANT THIS has officially hit shelves to prove that Roupenian’s brilliance is here to stay.

Here, Roupenian shares 12 vivid, keenly observational and often highly uncomfortable tales on such subjects as romantic relationships turned sour, supremely mean children and, of course, what it means to be a woman. It is clear early on that she is most curious about the contradictory roles that women must play, but she also is acutely focused on the dynamics between men and women. In the first story, “Bad Boy,” a couple takes in a friend who has recently broken up with his girlfriend. As they share eye rolls and snide comments about his lot in life, they unwittingly begin to form a family unit that soon turns as sadistic as it is sexual. It is not an easy entry into the world of Roupenian’s sharp mind, but it is certainly an eye-catching one, and it overflows with her eerie comfort with the macabre.

This first display of sadism and violence is a current that runs through YOU KNOW YOU WANT THIS, but it is never gratuitous or voyeuristic. Roupenian is skilled at forcing her readers to confront some painful truths, but her questions about life and society form a foundation for the wild situations in which her characters find themselves. Her second story, “Look at Your Game, Girl,” will remind readers of “Cat Person” in the best way --- it is not only one of the stronger additions to the book, it is also filled with the same creepy promise of violence and mayhem that women will recognize with terrifying clarity.

I was initially going to skip over “Cat Person,” so if you feel similarly, I suggest you ignore this impulse and read straight through. Everything I thought I remembered about the viral story that I read countless times came rushing back to me with new life, and it perfectly sets the stage for the next entry, “The Good Guy.” Here, we meet a stereotypical “Good Guy” --- you know, the one who waits in the background as women make terrible choices dating better men, more handsome men, meaner men, never noticing that he is Right There --- and learn more about how he became the sort of man he is. Juxtaposed with “Cat Person,” this story presents an unsparing and strikingly straightforward look at the dynamics of men and women (basically, not good). Roupenian’s view is frank, yet nuanced, and painfully honest. If you are not completely riveted by the book at this juncture, you have missed the point.

The stories from this point on are some of the strongest. My personal favorite, “Biter,” closes the collection in Roupenian’s trademark grisly, fiercely feminist style --- with a fun twist that made it one of the most memorable pieces in the book. If you read only one story, let it be this one. With its unsettling tension, devilishly fun lack of impulse control and perversely intriguing revenge plot, it represents all of Roupenian’s talent perfectly --- and if I’m right, you won’t be able to stop there.

I’ll be the first to admit that not every story connected with me. I appreciated Roupenian’s use of magic in “Scarred,” but her incorporation of folktale and horror in “The Night Runner” fell flat for me. Similarly, “The Matchbox Sign” terrified me, but I am not sure it will work for all readers. That said, I applaud her willingness to explore various genres, and cannot wait to see how she grows as a writer, as she is clearly off to a tremendous start. Some may balk at the work of a “viral” celebrity, but trust me when I say that YOU KNOW YOU WANT THIS proves that Roupenian’s instant rise to fame was no mistake.

You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian

4 Stars

This is the highly anticipated short story collection by the author of the viral short story, “Cat Person” that was published in The New Yorker December 2017 during the cusp of the #MeToo revelations. We’ve all been waiting to see if that story was a fluke, wherein the author was somehow able to catch the moment of female anger at male privilege and bad behavior, or if this author really had a way of consistently capturing fireflies in a jar.

If I told you her short stories were about divorced moms and Peace Corps teachers in a foreign land, it would sounds like a boring collection of pretentious literary MFA stories, but there’s a dark underbelly to all of Roupenian’s stories–much like the dark underbelly of America that has been exposed in this recent election–and it gives a powerful pull to everything she writes.

At a recent interview in New York, she mentioned that Stephen King was one of her greatest influences, as well as Shirley Jackson, and you can really feel the darkness around the edges (and sometimes right in the middle) of these stories that are written in a surprisingly colloquial style that then surprises you with its bite.

The story that stayed with me the longest was “Bad Boy,” the opener, which starts as a weird threesome and devolves into something very different. “The Good Guy” is right up there with “Cat Person” as a contemporary dating cautionary tale that will leave a resonance long after you’ve finished reading it.

Roupenian is not a female Stephen King or a contemporary Shirley Jackson. I think her work reminds most of the early dark and powerful stories of Joyce Carol Oates.

Review appeared in RomanceDailyNews.com 1/15/19

This collection will be recognized because of the short story, "Cat Person," which got instant fame, and supposedly a 7 figure advance on this collection. Unfortunately, Roupenian's stories in this collection felt more forced, often towards being more gratuitously shocking, where the characters lack humanity, even a sense of human-ness, and are more obsessed with an ugliness. Perhaps the author felt enraged as she wrote these stories, and perhaps for valid reasons, but the stories seem one dimensional because of this vibe that exists within the stories.

Most of the stories in Kristen Roupenian's You Know You Want This were... not good, trailing behind the much-hyped "Cat Person" in substance and quality. Of the twelve included, I only really enjoyed four—"Cat Person," "The Boy in the Pool," "Biter," and "The Good Guy"—but these were also the longest, had named characters, and included motivation and consequence which felt earned. (But really "Cat Person" most of all.) The rest read like first drafts, perhaps written by an ~edgy college-aged woman who read American Psycho and Tropic of Cancer "for fun" and wanted to push her readers toward discomfort for the chance to seem holier-than-thou when they (inevitably) "didn't get it." (Or perhaps I am merely projecting; I was that woman and saw a lot of my writing in Roupenian's.) There was no real perversion within the book's pages, only a facsimile of an attempt to tip-toe the line of grotesquerie. (I also can't even remember what two of the stories were about.)

After finally reading "Cat Person," I can understand why it went viral. Roupenian very clearly and cogently expresses an average first "date" of a 21st-century young, single woman who falls into a sexual encounter and then finds it's simply too much effort to extricate herself before copulation. Instead of getting to enjoy the experience, Margot must distract herself until Robert finishes, becoming emotional support to his ego until it's socially acceptable to leave. That he completely misreads her subsequent silence, that he sends a barrage of texts—at first pleasant then not—that he behaves in the exact way Margot hopes he won't is the beautiful irony of the whole reading experience.

Unfortunately, none of Roupenian's other stories are "Cat Person," and I found myself powering through like Margot, hoping each new story would be better than it was, wishing, at times, that I'd never picked up You Know You Want This in the first place.

When “Cat Person” appeared in 2018 in the New Yorker, Kristen Roupenian was immediately caught up in a fervor of critical attention. Her short story resonated strongly with readers who clamored for more information about Roupenian and scoured for any other works she may have produced. You Know You Want This, due for release in January 2019, addresses this demand by collecting eleven additional stories written by the popular author. “Cat Person” remains the strongest of the lot, but this book contains some other strong entries as well. Roupenian seems most comfortable constructing the contemporary stories, like “Look at Your Game Girl” and “The Good Guy,” addressing themes of self-respect and miscommunication between the sexes. She also experiments with some traditional forms of fairy tales, folklore, and the occult to a varying degree of success, as in “Scarred” and “The Mirror, the Bucket and the Thigh Bone.” Some readers may be put off by the eroticism and sexual violence contained in a few of the stories, but its inclusion is not excessive or gratuitous and has a purpose in terms of the thematic objectives. You Know You Want This proves that Kristen Roupenian is not a one-hit author but an interesting and strong new voice for these times.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an objective review.

You can find nearly every genre of fiction in this dynamic collection of stories, from a fairly standard relationship story to psychological horror, to speculative fiction and magical realism. Fairly consistent throughout the collection though is the focus on relationships and the power dynamics within relationships. In most of the stories the power dynamics become strained to the point of breaking, and the interesting part is watching what breaks, and how. As with almost all short story collections, some were gems and some were not so much to my liking. Some were weird (in a good way, a very good way) and some were mundane (in a less good way). One story, “the Good Guy” seems as though the first half was well fleshed out and well-crafted and the second half was more of a plot sketch, which I found disappointing. To me, Matchbox Sign was a standout. It explores the boundaries between insanity and misunderstanding. Altogether, I thought it was a very good collection, with some stories that have stuck with me.

It took several weeks to finish this book of powerful short stories. It would have been easy to gobble them up, But like a dark chocolate cheesecake, the collection goes down best with adequate time to enjoy, digest and recover from each serving.