You review: the series is better than the book

After binge-watching seasons 1 and 2 of You, I went back to the original text and read You by Caroline Kepnes to find out whether the Netflix producers succeeded in creating the perfect screen adaptation of this book. In all honesty: there are parts of the series I like better than the book.

You follows Joe Goldberg and his obsession over Guinevere Beck, a young book-loving MFA (Master of Fine Arts) student who has been through a lot. He instantly falls in love with her, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Beck doesn’t know what she feels and doesn’t know what she wants from men, and Joe’s obsession starts taking on extreme forms: he stalks her immediately after their first encounter, staring into her apartment while she’s working, changing clothes, or having a rub off with her green pillow (which originally belonged to her father, we learn later in the book. Awkward.) Joe keeps reminding himself (and us) that he loves her and that they should belong together, and that everything he does is because he loves her and will make her life better. Beck is a talented writer (maybe), and all those distractions aren’t good for her writing. One of those distractions is Peach, Beck’s wealthy, closeted best friend who is in love with her and suffers from Munchausen syndrome. Joe clearly doesn’t like this, as Beck’s time spent caring for Peach could also have been spent together with him. Spoiler: Peach dies. Oh, and in the end, Beck dies too.

My entrance into Joe Goldberg’s world has one major flaw: I watched the screen adaptation first. This means that characters are already fixed (I constantly visualise and hear Penn Badgley), know how the story ends, and expect certain things to happen. It also means that I instantly started comparing the book to the series (but this could also be my English-teacher sense working), and I noticed some interesting differences between the book and the series.

One of those differences was that Beck is an extraordinarily narcissistic and manipulative person. We saw these traits in Netflix Beck too, but Elizabeth Lail’s smile and innocent looks softened my views of her. You’d even say, to some extent, that maybe she had it coming the way she treated Joe. Disclaimer: I’m not saying people should be killed because they’re narcissists, but I really hated Beck at the end of the book.

The book is also more sexual than the series. Joe masturbates a lot and, due to the fact that the story is written in first-person, he vividly describes his sexual encounters with himself, Beck, and his new girlfriend. Kepnes probably did this to make sure the reader realises that Joe has a poor relationship with sex, but I wonder whether it does more harm than good.

The series might be the better adaptation of this story, and there are some excellent reasons for this. The Netflix adaptation added the side story of Joe’s neighbours and his efforts to care for Paco, which serves as an example of how Joe tries to make sure Paco doesn’t end up in a foster home. He stimulates Paco to read so he can escape reality, which is probably something Joe did too.

In the book, Candace is dead but returns from the dead in the series (this is probably a poor choice of words as she wasn’t really dead in the first place) and plays a significant role in the second season. This could still happen in book 2, but we don’t get the teaser at the end of book 1 as we get at the end of season one. We do get to know a different character, Amy Adams, who might be the main girlfriend in book 2.

The book’s strength is found in Kepnes’s excellent language use and writing style. I listened to the audiobook on Audible, and when combined with the superb narration of the Audible reader, the experience is phenomenal. The language lover in me was in heaven, and I enjoyed every sentence, every meticulously placed adverb and adjective used to zhuzh up the vivid descriptions of Joe’s terrible actions. What the producers and cinematographers at Netflix achieved on screen, Kepnes was able to accomplish in writing.

I look forward to reading (or listening to) the other instalments in the You universe and wonder whether Kepnes was influenced by the Netflix adaptations in her 2023 instalment titled For You and Only You. It comes out in April, so I have some catching up to do. I also need to finish seasons 3 and 4 of the Netflix version. Maybe I need to visit Joe’s basement for a while.

You is available on Amazon as in print, as a Kindle version, or as an Audible audiobook. Note: these are affiliate links, which means that if you buy your copy of the book using these links, I earn a small commission.