Pages: 424
Published: 30th September 2014
Genre: Psychological Thriller
When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.
There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.
As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder.
This is unlike any book I have ever read before. It is a different kind of thriller; a compulsive page-turner with a bewitching plot that never ceases to intrigue. It is also exceptionally creepy, told from the point of view of an incurably twisted narrator, but in spite of this it was often too difficult to put the book down!
Even if the language at times is very explicit (perhaps too explicit for some readers), it is on the whole, very well written. It is a raw and vivid depiction of the mind of a stalker, and Joe’s thought processes make for a relentlessly chilling and manipulative narrative, told in the second person.
I am pretty sure that this is the first book I have read that is written entirely in the second person, and that makes You all the more powerful.
It all begins on the very first line. Joe sees Beck for the first time and immediately falls in love with her, becoming truly obsessed to the point where he would stop at nothing to ensure Beck ends up loving him. It is a frightening and twisted sequence of events which takes place until this does finally happen, although the unexpected twists and turns continue to the end, with fateful consequences.
I couldn’t help wondering what state of mind Kepnes had to enter when writing this book, so gritty is the subject matter, but she succeeds in something much more complex than the story of a man stalking an innocent young woman.
This is partly because Beck is not what you would call innocent. In theory, she is the character we should sympathise with, but instead she is frustrating at best and unlikable at worst. She does not cover herself in glory, and in many ways, she is pretty twisted, too.
Indeed, all of the characters are twisted or flawed in some way. This struck me as very unrealistic and it did become a bit annoying, but I guess it made them all memorable and the story even more dramatic.
The way in which the writing makes you almost sympathise with Joe is very clever. We are experiencing events solely from his point of view, and that makes it easy to dislike Beck in certain parts of the book.
Joe’s thought processes make for a very unique writing style. Punctuation is in short supply, as his random and spontaneous thoughts meant that there were numerous sentences that contained no commas. I don’t think I have ever seen the word ‘and’ repeated so much in one book!
The writing style as a whole is very witty, but also very graphic. There are a LOT of popular culture references, and there are regular themes such as Joe’s belief that everyone else has the problems and not him. Also, when things go well for him the world is perfect, and when things go badly the world is ending. It never fails to capture your attention.
However, there are some negatives. I found some of it to be a bit too explicit for me, and the amount of sexual content in the book was excessive and frankly unnecessary. While the pacing was generally very good, it did slow down a bit in the middle and become a little repetitive, before picking up again later on.
Like I said earlier, too many of the characters had serious flaws, and one or two plot elements seemed very far-fetched. But that said, a lot of it makes for a very captivating read, which gets more and more dramatic as it gets closer to the end.
So this is a book that once you get started, you will find hard to put down. It is intense, it is interesting, it is utterly compelling, and you will almost certainly need to make sure that your next read is something much lighter!
You contains a high amount of sexual content and very strong language throughout. I was genuinely taken aback by how much there was at the beginning, and it is definitely not the kind of thing I would normally read, but it was on the other hand an absorbing story.
All the same, if any of this or the whole stalker storyline is likely to trigger a negative reaction, I would suggest that you skip this book.
A book unlike any other. It will certainly live long in the memory, thanks to it being such a creepy, twisted read.
It is very well written, but not perfect.
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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