Tag: caroline kepnes

Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes

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After reading You, I absolutely had to know where the story would go.

I thought that it would be more about what happened to Joe after he killed Beck, how he was worried about the mug, the therapist, etc. There was a little about that and it was sort of interested, but for the most part it felt like this story wasn’t going anywhere.

After Beck, Joe dated Amy. Again there were obvious red flags with her, but he thought he was in love. She, of course, left him and stole from him. It made him feel like an idiot, so he decided to hunt her down.

I honestly would have preferred that the story just be about getting back at Amy. Instead he meets a woman named Love (completely ridiculous to literally name a character in this story love). I really have no idea why the author felt the need to distract him from everything else going on by having him fall in love with a character literally named Love. Then there’s a whole side story with her brother that I’m not even going to get into. It all just felt like a distraction.

The only purpose of Love is that Joe ends up confessing his crimes to her and she goes and gets the mug from the Salinger house. Honestly, I feel like there had to be a better way to get Joe in there to get that mug. It’s a bit of a stretch honestly.

It’s crazy too that she was just cool with his entire confession, all because she has a crazy brother. It was incredibly dumb and made me hate it honestly.

Eventually Joe runs into Amy, but it’s very anticlimactic. He just sees her and decides not to kill her because he’s in love with Love.

Joe finally gets caught at the end, but it doesn’t really come together well. There were just little things here and there, no real evidence was found against him. The part about Joe and Love having to figure out the answer to the police officer’s question was dumb.

Just overall, I wasn’t very happy with the storyline. It doesn’t feel like it was well thought out and it’s too complicated. There were also way too many celebrity name drops. It was almost like the author thought that the first season would get picked up as a tv show or movie so she wrote the second novel to see how many celebrities she could actually get into it.

I actually would not recommend this to anyone that liked the first book. I’m interested to see how true to the storyline the show will be in it’s second season. I hope they simplify it some.

You by Caroline Kepnes

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Yet another Netflix inspired read! I promise I’ll start reading books that haven’t been made into movies or tv series eventually.

I’m so glad I read this one though. The book was 100% creepier than the show. Joe was so creepy and the worst kind of stalker. Watching Beck from outside her apartment, stealing her phone, reading her emails. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to find out someone was doing that to me.

As much as Joe creeped me out, Beck was honestly worse. She was a terrible person, so I didn’t care that Joe was so creepy toward her. I felt like she deserved it, or like it’s what she actually wanted.

I don’t want to victim blame, but Beck really didn’t care about anyone other than herself. She was miserable and wanted to make people around her miserable, and she expected these people to worship the ground she walks on.

I do really hate to say it, but I feel like she was just asking for something like this to happen to her and I think she actually enjoyed the drama of it all. She even mentions that she knew he had followed her, like she didn’t mind that he was stalking her from the beginning. It’s all pretty messed up honestly. As much as I didn’t like Joe I felt like he deserved better than Beck.

Beck definitely needed a better therapist because she clearly had a lot of issues that she needed to deal with.

The craziest thing is how relatable the story actually is. I thought to myself “how many times have I looked up someone I just met and stalked their social media accounts?”. We all do it.

You look at someone’s profile online and immediately make up your mind on if this is someone that you want to get to know better or not. I can definitely understand creating this image of someone in your head and what your future would look like together. I can understand the willingness to look past the bad stuff about them because you have this perfect future planned out.

It’s so crazy dating in a world with social media, especially with the jealousy and insecurity that it creates. I’ve been here. I spent two years trying to date someone who never gave me the attention that I craved from him. I would see him like other girls’ pictures when he never liked mine. It made me feel like shit about myself, but then also made me feel like it was a challenge. Like maybe if I did something differently it would get his attention. Why do we hold on to people who don’t want us?

This book definitely does a good job portraying how bad it can really get. I’m going to have to read the next book in the series now.