Format: Audio; 11 hrs, 6 mins
Narrator: Santino Fontana
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Released: September 30, 2014
Source: Review copy from the publisher
Rating: ★★★★

How far would you go for the perfect love? A young man’s dark obsession with an enigmatic, gorgeous writer leads to murderous consequences in this erotic psychological thriller.

When aspiring writer and recent Brown graduate Guinevere Beck strides into the bookstore where Joe works, he’s instantly smitten. Beck is everything Joe has ever wanted: she’s gorgeous, tough, razor-smart, and sexy beyond his wildest dreams. Joe needs to have her, and he’ll stop at nothing to do so.

As he begins to insinuate himself into her life—her friendships, her email, her phone— she can’t resist her feelings for a guy who seems custom-made for her. So when her boyfriend, Benji, mysteriously disappears, Beck and Joe fall into a tumultuous affair. But there’s more to Beck than her oh-so-perfect façade, and their mutual obsession quickly spirals into a whirlwind of deadly consequences…

Dark, masterful, and timely, debut novelist Caroline Kepnes’s You is a perversely romantic thriller that’s more dangerously clever than any you’ve heard before. A chilling account of unrelenting passion, this tale of love, sex, and death will stay with you long after the story ends…

YOU wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but in a perverse way, I did enjoy it. The narrator is a very disturbed character named Joe, and he’s telling his deranged “love” story to you, you as in Beck, the young woman he becomes obsessed with. OMG, the characters in this book! Each one seemed more egotistical, narcissistic, and pretentious than the last, but none could top Joe.

So, Joe sees Beck as the be-all, end-all of women. I have no idea why, because she’s about as deep as a puddle, but that’s beside the point. A precarious relationship forms between them, but of course, Beck is not the perfect girlfriend he’s created in his mind. She disappoints him over and over, and things get ugly.

I thought YOU was a very well written novel, suspenseful, and heavy on the pop culture references, though it lacked the big “gotcha” twist that I was anticipating at the end. A big reason why I enjoyed this book so much was the audio performance by Santino Fontana. His narration was brilliant, one of my all-time favorites on audiobook. He brought Joe and his sociopathic behavior to life, which is actually a terrifying thought!

After reading YOU, I’ll never think of Hannah and Her Sisters, Ikea, or Dan Brown the same way again.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this audiobook from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.