I loved being back in Joe's head. This is another good book in the You series. I feel this is a much better book than the last.one.

This third installment in this series doesn’t disappoint, it still has that magic blend of humor and darkness and the right dose of thrills and scares. Am so glad the series continues as brilliantly as the first book.

Joe is back and just as creepy as ever. This series is so horribly wonderful you just can't stop reading and you just can't look away.

Oh Joe! I loved you…then I lost you. And I’m not sure we can get that spark back.💁🏻‍♀️

Joe is ready to start fresh. Perhaps this time a small, quaint town in Northern Washington State. It’s beautiful, serene, a great place for a new beginning.

Fingers crossed, hopefully this time it will work with the stunning Mary Kay. If Joe can just be patient (not his strong suit) perhaps she’ll come around. She must know they were meant to be. Destiny. And nothing can stop Joe…this time!

I absolutely loved book one,You. But sadly, this series has slowly lost its shine. Joe is the psychopath everyone loves and roots for. I hate to say it but I’m growing just a bit tired of him. You lost your Mojo, Joe! It now feels rather forced.

This third installment of the series just didn’t hold my attention. I needed Joe to do something! Anything!

Sorry Joe… but you and I just might be parting ways!😢🤷🏻‍♀️

A buddy read with Susanne 🤓📚

Posted to: https://books-are-a-girls-best-friend...

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for granting my wish

Caroline Kepnes continues the You series with this third installment. Joe Goldberg has recently returned from a stint in prison and is trying to make it in his new life. The Quinn's are in the past, and they want to keep it that way. Joe has no choice but to move forward. And that is just what he will do with Mary Kay. But, even as everything seems to be going fine, Joe struggles to let go of his old ways. Can he put his past behind him and truly move on or will his past haunt him?

Kepnes does such a wonderful job of making you feel comfortable or feel as though you have a grasp on the plot, but then pulls the rub out from under you. It is done so flawlessly and spectacularly that it is one of the reasons she continues to wow and why this series has maintained its popularity. You Love Me is a psychological thriller that makes you question who real bad guy is, and keeps you guessing till the very end. Twisted and filled with twists, no one does this type of suspense like Kepnes.

Okay!

I loved You so much!
Everything that Caroline Kepnes writes is amazing!
Highly recommend this one. Well definitely be buying a physical copy!
Thank you for the arc!

As usual Kepnes doesn’t disappoint with her new utterly chilling novel You Love Me.
She has a way of grasping fear in her readers that will leave you looking over your shoulder, and locking doors behind you. I can’t wait to see more writing from her.

I had not read the first 2 books in this series so that was a bit of a disadvantage. I assume that the lead character, Joe, did in fact kill people in the earlier books but I am not sure how he was still free given that he had apparently been in prison. The story is told from Joe's viewpoint, and while he is clearly unstable, the author does make you feel sorry for him at times. He claims he wants to "be good" and not kill anyone but things keep happening that he maintains are out of his control. The death of the girlfriend of his newest obsession was "not his fault" as she committed suicide but he had her locked up in the basement and would likely have needed to kill her had she not killed herself. Mary Kay's husband's overdose & death "wasn't his fault" but he planted the drugs in an addict's house. And so on. He still stalked & manipulated the situation to get Mary Kay to love him. If she hadn't had an accident, leaving her in a coma, would he have eventually killed her if she lost interest or went against him in some way? There are clearly other characters in the book who also have major issues. Mary Kay was no innocent and her daughter was clearly unbalanced. Hopefully the reader sees the main character for what he really is and ultimately he doesn't deserve sympathy..

Joe Goldberg is one of my all-time favorite characters and is single again. If you’ve read the previous two books, you know then that he probably has a new crush and that this time he will make things work, love will win. Haha, I love the premise and can’t reveal too much because that’s part of the fun of this series, what Joe is up to.

Although the third act was somewhat unpredictable and caught me by surprise, I still enjoyed this book. I’ve enjoyed all the books in the series and look forward to the next one. I also love the Netflix adaptations, overall, a lot of fun to read and watch

Loved it! I love this series and this book did not disappoint. I was captured from the first to last page.

Opening lines: I think you're the one I spoke to on the phone, the librarian with a voice so soft that I went out and bought myself a cashmere sweater. Warm. Safe. And if this is you—please be you —well, you're a fox, Mary Kay, inside and out. I didn't go looking for you. I didn't even know you existed when I volunteered my services to the Bainbridge Public Library and I didn't google you after we spoke. Women can tell when a guy knows too much and I wanted to come in cool—you're my boss—and I do hope this is you. You're a hot one, Mary Kay, hiding your legs in opaque black tights, as concealing as RIP Beck's curtainless windows were revealing. Your skirt is short but functional and you push Haruku Murakami on an old man. He smells like Mothballs and gin and he's eating up our time and I've already read your Murakami—I too am a hot one—and you press your finger on a page and murmur one of the best parts, all but sucked inside. It's you. I'm officially sure of it. You're the one from the phone but holy shit, Mary Kay.

Are you the one for me?
Reason I picked up the book: I'm a huge fan of the You series—I actually watched it when it was back on Lifetime, I believe, before it made it to Netflix—and I've also read the other two books in the series.
And what's this book about?
The highly anticipated new thriller in Caroline Kepnes’s hit You series, now a blockbuster Netflix show—a compulsively readable trip into the deviant mind of the uniquely antisocial, savvy bookseller Joe Goldberg.

Joe Goldberg is done with the cities. He’s done with the muck and the posers, done with Love. Now he’s saying hello to nature, to simple pleasures on a cozy island in the Pacific Northwest. For the first time in a long time, he can just breathe.

He gets a job at the local library—he does know a thing or two about books—and that’s where he meets her: Mary Kay DiMarco. Librarian. Joe won’t meddle, he will not obsess. He’ll win her the old-fashioned way . . . by providing a shoulder to cry on, a helping hand. Over time, they’ll both heal their wounds and begin their happily ever after in this sleepy town.

The trouble is . . . Mary Kay already has a life. She’s a mother. She’s a friend. She’s . . . busy.

True love can only triumph if both people are willing to make room for the real thing. Joe cleared his decks. He’s ready. And hopefully, with his encouragement and undying support, Mary Kay will do the right thing and make room for him.
Recommended for: Anyone who enjoyed the previous two books or who enjoys the Netflix show.
Favorite paragraph: I can't be here. And no I don't want to get on the ferry and ride to Seattle and stuff my face with salmon ampersand quinoa and visit a bookstore underneath a market—we get it, Seattle, you have history—only to be hungry an hour later and hunt down some restaurant with a twee pink door. All of that is really only fun if you're doing it with someone you love and I love you but you're like the rest of the islanders right now.

You're in bed.
Something to know: I'm curious to see if the TV show goes this direction for season 3, because season 2 ended with Love (Joe's now-ex, in this book) pregnant with his son. At the beginning of this book, Love has custody of their son, Forty (named after her deceased brother), and she lives in LA and Joe has just moved to Bainbridge Island, WA.
What I would have changed: It seemed really long—I guess it's about 400 pages—so I maybe would have cut it down to like 300-350 pages if possible.
Overall rating: 4 stars out of 5.

As the third in the series, I thought I knew exactly what I was getting into. And for the most part, I did. Joe Goldberg can be a pretty cringey guy (I mean, we all know he's a sociopathic murderer). There was a lot of predictable plot points in the first half or so of the book. But I knew what I signed up for, so I continued on. And it just so happens, Kepnes was able to catch me by surprise a few times. A twist at the end, I never saw coming made it all worth the read.

Joe is at it again, and he's just as crazy as he was the first two books. If you're like me, you got into the books based on the Netflix show. But I did read the other two books before I read this one. And, Lord mercy, it's a hot, sticky mess. But in a great, what-a-book kinda way. I know we aren't really supposed to like Joe because he is creepy and a psychopath and an all around terrible person, but you can't help but root for him and just hope he doesn't get caught. I hope Kepnes keeps writing ALL THE BOOKS about Joe.

5/5 Stars

I was so excited to read this one because I have loved the series. Joe is as creepy as ever, but yet he is still trying to contain his urges to stalk his current "love". I enjoyed the book from front to back and was entertained at points where Joe got himself into trouble. I especially enjoyed the best friend who was conniving and jealous and how she was having an affair with the husband. Overall, a great ending to the series.

Thoughts: Joe and his stalker romantic tendencies are still going strong. He’s moved to a new town, has a new job at the library, and has a new woman to become weirdly obsessed over for no particular reason. Honestly, despite the occasional curve balls that kept this installment slightly interesting, You Love Me just felt like a recycled version of what’s been told twice before now. The only difference was the excessive use of “lemonhead” and “Murakami”. 🤢

Verdict: I believe this is one of the rare cases where the show is actually better than the book so I’ll be sticking with that from this point on.

A stalker romance thriller that's more than a bit jarring, but in a good way.

When his ex-girlfriend Love Quinn permanently bars Joe Goldberg from any involvement in their young son’s life, Quinn moves to Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, licking his wounds. Joe begins volunteering at the local library, where he quickly becomes obsessed with librarian Mary Kay DiMarco, mother of Nomi, a defiant teenager whose favorite book is Columbine.

Since this is the first Caroline Kepnes book I’ve read, I didn’t realize at the outset that You Love Me is the third novel in a series featuring Joe Goldberg or that there is a Netflix series based on the books. So, I was completely unaware of the character’s troubling backstory. On one level, that was great for me because, in the beginning, I assumed Joe was a “normal” lonely guy for whom I felt a good bit of sympathy given his forced estrangement from his son. But little by little, as the author teases out the fragments of Joe’s troubling past and personality disorder, it becomes clear that Goldberg is not only quite delusional but perhaps more than a little dangerous. This becomes more and more evident as his obsession with Mary Kay grows, and he begins stalking and manipulating her to fulfill his own delusional fantasies. Not to mention his frequent thoughts of committing murder.

Usually a fast reader, it took me several sittings to read this book. That wasn’t because I found it insufficiently engaging, but because this author’s rather unique writing style, at least as used with this book, demands substantial focus. You Love Me isn’t a light, engaging beach read you can skim through because you will miss too many of the more subtle nuances. I attribute that to the author’s method of putting the reader into Joe’s delusional mind by writing the novel in a second-person point of view. Thus, we become privy to virtually Joe’s every thought along with his habit of moderating many of his thoughts when responding to the other characters.

You Love Me is a twisty, creepy, suspenseful, and entertaining read that should satisfy the most demanding psychological thriller fan. Free from the bias that inevitably comes from reading the previous books in the series or acquaintance with the Netflix series, I feel the book holds its own as a standalone novel. For those reasons, I probably rate it a bit higher than others who have reviewed it. On some levels, I think the book is quite brilliant.

You Love Me by Caroline Kepnes was published by Random House and is now available. I received an advance copy of the book from the publisher via NetGalley used for this review, which represents my honest opinions.

Thanks to NetGalley, I got an ebook copy of this one. It was one I was waiting for - then forgot about until this showed up in my email one day. I was so excited, I dropped everything to get started.

Big mistake.

This was not it for me. I don’t know if maybe I’m tired of Joe and his shenanigans (which I doubt but maybe), or if this storyline wasn’t good for me (again, it was different while being the same so I doubt this is the issue) or something else but man I’m disappointed! I couldn’t wait to get back into Joe’s head. I don’t know what didn’t do it for me here, but this book took me over a month to read. This is incredibly unusual for me and is usually a clue that I’m not feeling it.

Honestly there’s nothing really wrong with with this book. I love the first two (and the show), but something about this one just isn’t it for me.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

You Love Me is the third installment of the You series. This time Joe is ready for another move. We learn that his relationship with Love is over, and he has moved to an island outside of Seattle to start over. He joins the local library as a volunteer and sees….her. Mary Kay Dimarco, librarian. And her “meerkat” daughter.

The third book allows us back into he head of Joe and all his complexities. However, unlike the first two books, there is a more of a growth to Joe. He still carries the same obsessions as the previous two books, but he has a bit more maturity and self control this time around. However, the book still has the darkness and twists and turns that we have come to expect and love. You will love the twists in this book and the growth of Joe. It kept me on the edge of my seat. Definitely a must read.

An absolutely brilliant story. I loved being back with Joe, he's such a unique and well written character. Even when he's not likeable and does highly questionable things you can't help but be drawn into his world. Definitely a highlight of the year for me.

I still can’t decide if I like that all three books take place in a completely new setting with a new group of characters, or if I wish the books had more overlap. I really liked the settings in the first two books, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of a small town setting in this one. The characters were mostly likable (Oliver being my favorite obviously 🤪) and I kinda liked that Joe seemed to be doing better. The book wasn’t bad by any means, I just felt like it was kinda boring. The ending was good and suspenseful but only the last two or so chapters really captivated me.