The most recent Joe Goldberg saga can only be described as… arduous. I felt this book was too long, trying too hard to extend the magic of You long past its natural end. I never connected to any of the characters and found the Sarah Beth side plot both distracting and annoying. I wanted to root for Wonder but she felt very one dimensional to me. This is probably where I jump off the Joe Goldberg train.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. At this point, the story isn't very original and yet I eat it up anyway. This one took a second to get into as Joe's narration threw me off but once I settled back into his head and the way Kepnes writes him, I flew through the pages. The last installment took me a bit to get through but I loved the premise for this one. It had been a while since I revisited this story and it was hard to keep straight at first what happened in the last book vs what happened in the show but Kepnes does a good job at reminding the reader what happened last time Joe was on the page and also how he got to be where he was. My biggest complaint about this one and why I did not give it five stars like I did the first two, is that there wasn't enough murder! I come to Joe for the murder and he didn't murder enough people. But don't worry, he's just as crazy as always (if not more so) and Kepnes does a phenomenal job of making him believe he is not the bad guy. Reading from his perspective is something I will always find fascinating and I can't wait to see who Joe selects as his next love interest. If you liked the other installments in the series, there is no reason you won't like this one too.

I love watching the series YOU. After season 2 I decided to finally read the books. The other books are good but I felt the same way with this book as the others. For me I enjoyed it, then was bored by it, I was annoyed, I found some parts to be brilliant, I enjoyed Joe's observations, then I was back to twiddling my thumbs. This must be how Joe feels every day. I still enjoyed reading this book and I would read the next one if she decides to do more but I just can't love these books. I will still recommend these books because I know others that love these books so my opinion shouldn't make someone else not read them. I still want to read her other books to see if they read differently.



Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for allowing me to read this ARC for my honest opinion.

While not my favorite of the "You" series, if you've read the rest, For You and Only You is worth the read to see what Joe, the anti-hero serial killer stalker that we love to hate, is up to now. I quite enjoyed the Sarah Beth character, and Joe bumbling through his kills just certain he was making things better for himself each time. And of course, the Harvard/Boston setting was a nice touch too.

Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for the electronic copy.

I've seen the show, but haven't read the first 3 books. I know I know!! But, I found this to be a bit boring and too long for what it was. It seems peoples favourite is still book 1, so I need to go read that one and book two and three so I can do a full ranking of the series.

I love Joe's character.

I have been a HUGE fan of Caroline Kepnes since the first day I picked up a paperback copy of You, so needless to say I was thrilled to get an ARC of For You and Only You. Caroline Kepnes has done an exceptional job of developing Joe, so much to the point that you do try to root for him even when you shouldn't. Her writing style is unmatched, and I could not have been happier with the way the book ended. For You and Only You did not disappoint!

This book really just took me for a ride. I loved the build up, the character development, and the writing. I would definitely read more from this author!

I hate that I didn't love For You and Only You. I don't know if the series has gone on too long, or if I am simply starting to be unable to suspend the disbelief that Joe Goldberg keeps getting away with everything. I didn't love any of these characters and didn't find myself particularly hooked on the story. I expected something different from a Joe Goldberg story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me the opportunity to read this EPUB in exchange for an honest review. First, I would like to say, if it is a Kepnes book, I will be reading it. I love the writing style and mood that Kepnes is able to create in each one of her books. I always find that it is easy to get pulled into a story and not want to get out. However, this book was a bit of a challenge for me to get through. I found that Joe was a bit of a challenge to "enjoy" in this particular setting. At times, he was even insufferable. I know that his character is not inherently "lovable", but I do typically enjoy his sarcasm and humor. In this particular novel I found it a bit more challenging. Overall, this book was much more of a 'hit' than a 'miss'. I cannot wait for the next installment in this incredible series.

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. This was another great installment about Joe Goldberg’s and his new love interest Wonder Parish. As always, it was well written and entertaining. I’ll continue to read more by this author in the future to see what happens to Joe!

So... This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year.... And.... I didn't like it 😭
I just couldn't really get into the story. The love interest was just "meh"...In my opinion, this one felt forced. It makes me so sad because I have adored the whole series. ...However, I won't give up on the series. I would still be first in line to buy the next book if there is another... 👀

I've read the entire series and by far this book is my least favorite. I struggled to like any of the new characters and got frustrated with the aspects of the main female character, Wonder, that Joe consistently spoke negative about. I perceived Joe consistently calling Wonder a "Goodreads girl" as an insult and that really annoyed me. This book is set in Boston, where I am from, and I thought this alone might make this my favorite of the series, but Joe constantly spoke down about Boston and aspects of Bostonian life.

Thank you to NetGalley, Caroline Kepnes, and Random House Publishing for this advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review. (less)

I loved the continuation of Joe Goldberg’s adventures. It almost seemed like you were meeting a different Joe as the book went on. With the introduction of other people in the book his references to people as RIP makes it a lot easier to follow.

92e7093fb7103bcfbc25792500776168@hous.craigslist.org

Thank you to Netgalley for this advance PDF. Josh Malerman offered one of his best novels last year with Daphne, and I was eager to see what he did with a handful of stories in Spin a Black Yarn. I was especially looking forward to it after Paul Tremblay’s The Beast You Are, a collection of mostly unfulfilled promise. It is kind of interesting to compare the collections, although both authors are different in their approaches and goals. The end result, though, is unfortunately on the same spectrum of the underwhelming.

Like TBYA, Spin a Black Yarn starts with one of its best in “Half the House is Haunted.” This is told in opposing viewpoints of a brother and sister, beginning in childhood, then adulthood, and with one sibling in elder years. Stephanie likes to torment her brother Robin in their house with various pranks and scares, but the most resonant one will torment Robin for the rest of his life—the implication that half of their house is haunted. But which half? This idea could manifest in so many ways, he reasons, driving him to paranoia. The switching POVs is at times a bit clunky with the things supposed kids say to each other, but it is a mostly useful device early and later. Some of the most effective moments probably work best because you’ve seen some variation on them in modern horror films with hauntings and can easily picture how they would be filmed, but this served his J-horror homage Daphne pretty well, too. The time jumps manage to maintain their tension. It is a promising start to the collection, and like TBYA, nothing else really threatens to achieve the same satisfaction as the opener.

Next is “Argyle,” which is more the template for the rest of the book. A dying man delivers his final confession in a verrrrrrrrrry protracted conversation with his wife, children, and friends. He is triumphant that he is dying as a good person, but that’s not who he wanted to be at all, and he’s about to unburden himself. It rather strains credulity that someone at death’s door is able to rattle off this extremely long explanation, although that’s not the real flaw. The issue with “Argyle” and, really, most of SABY is that this isn’t a collection of short stories but novellas, and frankly they should have just been short stories. Not nearly enough is going on to propel them. What you end up with in most of them is the characters are confined to one location while the concept happens around them, and that is the story. “Half the House is Haunted” is the one that probably could have lent itself to the longer word count but actually wraps up the most compactly and doesn’t keep you wondering why it continues to go on with nothing else happening.

“Argyle” still kept me invested, despite noticing it had grown beyond its needs. “Doug and Judy Buy the House WasherTM” is less merciful. A bickering couple springs for a bizarre deep cleaning mechanism in their house, smug in its usefulness as an elite status symbol. They are confined to a tubed-off section in the house during the process and objects begin to move past them in the wash, prompting recollections and arguments (mostly arguments) about how they screwed over friends, colleagues, and each other in years past. Again, there’s a short story here, but you get something a lot longer with characters you want to get away from within a couple of pages. It lacks the intrigue of “Argyle,” and as a concept begs for something more than it is. Ideally this process would lead to some kind of suspense with the couple being trapped, but it’s more of a character study of people you have no wish to study. Think of a movie where the characters are in a stressful situation and how grating it becomes to watch them scream all their dialogue. That’s this story, but their predicament is just waiting for their house to be cleaned so they can leave the tube. Not exactly riveting, especially not for thousands and thousands of words.

“The Jupiter Drop” at least has a better foundation. A man suffering from the guilt of killing a neighbor in a freak accident opts to leave the planet for a 1-year flight to Jupiter, where he will be dropped from a huge crane in a glass apartment to Jupiter over the course of weeks. It’s of course not any kind of escape from his torment, though, locked up in a glass cage with only AI interaction for the coming weeks on his long descent to Jupiter. It would make a better short story than what it ends up being, because once again, there is not much to distract you from its lack of story beyond its concept. It is at least more compelling than “Doug and Judy,” though, and fits beside “Argyle” as something that could have been more effective in another skin but resonates enough to keep you reading.

After Tremblay’s title story “The Beast You Are,” a novella told in free verse that lurches for an eternity through preordained political commentary with anthropomorphic animals, I wouldn’t have thought you could end a collection on a longer, more frustrating note. I’m not sure “Egorov” does, but it is arguably identical in its sadism, daring you to keep going when you have lost all interest and still have another 30% to go. Brothers Pavel and Barat are seeking revenge after their brother Mikhail is murdered. Mikhail was their “other,” as the three of them were triplets. The surviving siblings want more than an eye for an eye, though; they want to drive Mikhail’s killer completely insane. The unintended irony is the reader is more likely to be the victim of this immeasurable suffering as he or she begs for an end to this excruciating story. It probably doesn’t sound half bad, but this is one of the rare entries with extra characters, so the story bloats with chapters with their father, mother, sister, wives who wonder what their husbands are up to (but do nothing about it that affects the plot), a policeman, and a man taken in for the crime who “worships” murder but didn’t actually do it. The murderer is Egorov, a crotchety old man who apparently would not shut the fuck up even if you stapled and sutured his lips and yanked out his vocal cords with a garden trowel. Despite living alone with only rare interactions with anyone else, most of the dialogue in the story must be his monologues to his empty house, particularly to entities he thinks might be there trying to haunt him even before Pavel and Barat strike up the mind games. His struggle getting up the stairs, that gets a commentary too. One is left wondering why the brothers feel like they need to bother with any sort of push. Egorov already seems completely mad. You likely will be too before you reach the oasis of the end about an hour later than you should have.

Despite the sour note on which Spin a Black Yarn ends, I think “Half the House is Haunted,” “Argyle,” and “The Jupiter Drop” are worthy enough reads versus the misery of “Doug and Judy” and especially “Egorov.” I expected this one to be far and away more enjoyable than The Beast You Are, though, so that it inhabits the same territory of only occasional pleasure is more than a little disappointing. Maybe I would find more to appreciate in the interconnected novellas of Goblin, which I have not yet read.




Thank you to Netgalley for this advance PDF. I was looking forward to this one as a long-time fan of James Ellroy, the Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction. Crime writer extraordinaire and iconoclast, Ellroy is the sort of brazen personality who seems antithetical to the sensibilities of the electronic age. Some of the things he has said and written will likely drop some jaws out there. He forged his reputation with his breakout hit The Black Dahlia, which began his landmark LA Quartet in the mid 1980s, and his popularity spiked with the lauded film adaptation of LA Confidential in 1997 (though Ellroy maintains De Palma’s far less successful The Black Dahlia earned him more sales than LAC ever did). If you’ve seen any of the entertaining documentaries with Ellroy or seen clips of his live appearances, you know he is a showman. Love Me Fierce in Danger fills in the backstory to this larger-than-life personality. From his childhood where the unsolved murder of his mother granted his dark wish to live with his father and his wayward years with his Hollywood-connected dad (who mockingly called his son “Der Fuhrer” when the boy was obsessed with the American Nazi party), to breaking and entering the bourgeois homes of girls who obsessed him, to alcohol and drug abuse, and ultimately to redeeming several wasted years with his writing career. The first third of the book or so is admittedly rather familiar to anyone who read Ellroy’s candid memoir, My Dark Places, which details his childhood, his mother’s murder, and his attempts to solve it with help from the police in the 1990s. Ellroy also wrote another candid nonfiction book, The Hilliker Curse, which detailed his “pursuit of women” and gradual breakdown during his tour for The Cold Six Thousand. There is a familiarity to these sections, although it does at least seem like there is supplemental information to the years covered by The Hilliker Curse that wasn’t offered in the book, sometimes via quotes from friends, wives, and lovers. If you’re amenable to Ellroy’s trademark “dog humor,” the book will provide you with some good laughs, and it is especially fascinating where the book speaks of the years Ellroy hasn’t covered himself. In the last chapters, it does feel like it is glossing over information to get to the end. Author Stephen Powell doesn’t have especially high regard for Ellroy’s 2nd LA Quartet in progress, but there isn’t much insight offered as to why, and there is no mention of Ellroy’s last book, Widespread Panic, since it ends with the point where Powell notifies Ellroy that he is going to do the biography. Still, there is plenty to recommend for those who love Ellroy’s work, especially if they might have missed his own nonfiction, and doubly so if you haven’t yet read My Dark Places and The Hilliker Curse.


FOR YOU AND ONLY YOU

Thank you to Netgalley for this advance PDF. One cannot blame Caroline Kepnes for striking while the iron is hot with her series of books about Joe Goldberg. While the 2nd book, Hidden Bodies, ended in such a way that you wonder if she might have been ready to move on from Joe, the popularity of the TV adaptation of You (on Netflix since its 2nd season) and the cooler reception to her novel Providence (which I really liked) probably made her reconsider. The books and the show share a strange territory with Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series, where the first season is a mostly faithful recreation of the first book, and then it completely goes off in its own direction without truly adapting the subsequent novels. Season 2 of You shares little in common with Hidden Bodies outside of “Joe goes to the west coast,” with similarly little parallel between season 3 and You Love Me. I haven’t found it difficult to enjoy each for what they do, at least until season 4 of You, where diminishing returns were glaringly obvious. I was relieved there would be another book from Kepnes to redeem the disappointment from the show and an especially ill-conceived mid season twist it could never recover from.

That said, the books are also bringing diminishing returns in their latest installments, if not on the level of the series, and For You and Only You is the least of them. However, it does at least remain more enjoyable than its counterpart, as Joe’s singular and sarcastic consciousness informs the plot machinations. Like the show, Joe is at a university, having already departed the bar he ran at the end of the last book, but he is at Harvard rather than Oxford, and rather than teaching literature, he is writing it in a fellowship with more established or privileged writers, save for his new obsession, Wonder. Joe sets about ingratiating himself with group guru Glenn Shoddy to further his and Wonder’s chances of literary success, but Glenn isn’t who he presents himself and Joe doesn’t have the smoothest start with Wonder, either.

The book more successfully navigates the literature backdrop, which is much more incidental to season 4 of the show. The relationships, expectations, and delusions among the group guide the narrative. This does have the consequence of so many of the interactions between characters becoming exchanges of psychoanalysis, though. An author writing about the process of writing isn’t such a “novel” idea and potentially alienating for those who just want a good story, rather than the inside baseball of what might go into that. It does provide Kepnes a passage of reader comments berating a character to get back to the murders of her mystery/thriller brand when she strays into romance territory, which one can’t help wondering might be a thinly veiled re-creation of the reception to Providence.

One of the best moments is unrelated to the doings of the group, when Joe attempts to deal with a rival to Wonder’s affections, and the subsequent punchline to his effort. Speaking of Wonder, though, Joe’s immediate attraction to her isn’t as easy to ride with as past books. Maybe I’d find the same sort of hesitance with RIP Beck in book one, looking back, but there seem to be several warning signs that he shouldn’t bother trying with Wonder. It’s harder to get invested in his effort, sensing how misplaced it is. Some of the references to prior events didn't ring a bell for me, and it's not always easy to glean from context what happened, so maybe consider reading a summary of the past books. Introducing the writer group upfront rather than staggering them a little also makes it a challenge to remember who is who, even with Joe’s steadfast mocking of their personalities. His expected exasperation and condemnation of people and situations remain witty, though, which is perhaps one area where the series maintains its quality—the books are always funny, though my memory is that Hidden Bodies and its Hollywood satire probably did it best. The plot is also less fluid than some of the other outings, and it feels like the table is just cleared to set the next course without concerns for cohesion. It is at least never a chore to keep the pages turning, and I found I’d read through about 2/3 of it without realizing the extent of my progress or being that concerned about it.

Ultimately, For You and Only You has more apparent flaws than its predecessors but remains an entertaining read that shows Joe isn’t wearing out his welcome on both the literary and TV fronts. I’ll be much more eager for book 5 than season 5, with the hope that each is an improvement on the last.

Why is it with every book I get sucked into the pages and can’t stop turning them. I at least now know that the books in this series mess with my head for a few while reading it. I will never forget how much with that first book. Read it because you have to know…because you wanna know…who can pass up going into Joe’s head for another ride no matter what or who he is with?!?

So. I got into this whole series because I got this ARC. I was intrigued by the story and I’ve heard about the show. So began my journey with Joe, and I think that even if this isn’t the last in the series, it will be for me. I’ve found all the books after the first to be lacking. Maybe the first was just too much to live up to? Maybe it never needed to be a series?

Part of what makes Joe so special is your ability to like him and emphasize with him even though he’s done so many terrible things. I didn’t like him in this book. He is whiny, he is pathetic, he is jealous, and he just hasn’t learned a bit. This was dragged out, boring, and repetitive. Nothing that hadn’t been done in the other three.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Creepy Joe is back and his new obsession is named “Wonder”. They meet at Harvard when they join a writers fellowship, taught by a famous author. Joe is back to his obsessive ways, but he’s not quite as stalker-y as previous novels, which is why they worked. He is a little bit “warm” instead of hot crazy, and I think that makes him less interesting. Also, the RIP before everyone’s name drove me nuts. But still a fun JOE story.

3.5 stars

I have loved following Joe Goldberg throughout the You series! His hilarious and often times dark inner monologue is unmatched and purely genius. While we still get the same Joe we have come to know and love, the storyline this time around fell flat for me.

There has been an underlying purpose to Joe’s journey since the very beginning, one in which he tries to develop a meaningful relationship with a woman he has his sights set on but ultimately it turns into a precarious obsession that triggers his murderous tendencies. This theme is present in For You and Only You, however the story just didn’t grab my attention as much as I’d hoped it would.

Usually I can sense some sort of connection between Joe and his love interests, but in this instance, it felt more forced and juvenile. The over-the-top, romantic narrative that he constantly tries to breathe into existence has never worked out for him, and it was even more apparent this time around; so much so that I found it a bit annoying at times. I also didn’t help that I didn’t like Wonder…at all.

Now, the story did pick up a little towards the end, when we see him reveal his true nature in typical Joe fashion, but it wasn’t enough to redeem the book as a whole. I do hope Ms. Kepnes continues to build on Joe’s story because he’s such a fantastic character, and I would hate for it to end on this note.

*Thank you to NetGalley and AtriaBooks/Emily Bestler Books for providing a copy of this book to review.*

I don't know why I consume Joe's mental ramblings as though I am starving for nourishment. All I do know is that Kepnes created one of the most enticing psychotic characters I have ever read and no book is ever enough. I will always come back for more. I try to read slowly to savor it, but I need to know who we are stalking and how twisted it's going to get!

There were some plots variations this time that I wasn't entirely on board with so at times I did find this one slower on its own than previous books within the series. It was never so bad that I was deterred from continuing on. And there were plenty of juicy bits to keep me interested.

Basically as long as Joe Goldberg is "alive" I'm going to be interested in whatever crazy shit he comes up with next. I am here for it.

Many thanks to Random House and #netgalley for this ARC :)

This was slow and couldn’t connect with Joe in the same way or the characters. Seemed like it as dragging and didn’t grip me as a reader.