Joe feels as if he is Beck’s gay friend and not her boyfriend. Instead, Beck begins calling Joe only when she needs someone to help her with an errand or share lunch. He thinks that if Benji is out of the picture, Beck will turn to Joe. Joe tricks Benji into meeting him at the bookstore and kills him. Benji did not even attend Beck’s public reading and spent the evening instead with a prostitute. He wants to know what she is thinking about him and is upset when he learns she is fixated on her ex-boyfriend Benji. Joe thinks this will be the beginning of his love affair with Beck and even steals the phone she almost dropped onto the subway tracks so he can monitor the messages she sends to her friends. Joe finally gets the opportunity to impress her when he saves her life by pulling her from the subway tracks after she fell while trying to catch her phone. He spends his days watching her through the windows of her apartment. He uses her name to research her online and find where she lives.

Joe is obsessed with Beck when she first walks into his bookstore. The novel presents a cast of emotionally disturbed people whose interactions with each other can be both hilarious and tragic. Joe discovers that Beck has had an affair with her married therapist about the same time that Beck learns Joe has a collection of her things, including copies of her emails, at his apartment. Unfortunately for Joe, Beck has emotional problems of her own and proves more of a challenge than he anticipated. Joe is obsessed with the beautiful Guinevere Beck from the time he first sees her in the bookstore where he works. In the novel You by Caroline Kepnes, Joseph “Joe” Goldberg is willing to do anything for the woman he loves - even commit murder. Atria/Emily Bestler Books, September 30, 2014. The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: Kepnes, Caroline.

You by caroline kepnes