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You First

A Joe Goldberg Prequel

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You First

By: Caroline Kepnes
Narrated by: Santino Fontana
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“The most distinctive voice in thrillers is back.”—Lucy Foley, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Guest List and The Midnight Feast

How did Joe Goldberg become Joe Goldberg? What led to his first love . . . first obsession . . . first kill? Find out in the highly anticipated prequel to New York Times bestselling author Caroline Kepnes’s hit You series, which inspired the blockbuster Netflix show.

Joe Goldberg is ready for his life to start. He’s seventeen years old, working in Mr. Mooney’s bookshop, falling in love with every girl on the subway all while wondering who will be the one. He knows what he needs: A woman who will force him to get his GED, go to night school, and make something of himself. But who would ever fall in love with him?

Then he spots it: MISSED CONNECTION, NYC Bookstore Babe.

Someone is looking for Joe. And that someone is Vail Gunderson, a production assistant with a passion for rom-coms. The only catch: she’s twenty-four, which means that Joe has no choice but to lie about his age…and, naturally, nearly everything else in his life. Joe thinks he’s found true love, but when Vail needs more convincing that Joe is her happily ever after, he’s determined to convince her…no matter what it takes…

With her incisive and darkly comedic prose, Caroline Kepnes captures Joe poised on the edge of manhood, entering the vicious, dog-eat-dog New York dating scene for the very first time, and buffeted by forces that will determine what kind of man he will become—and how he will write his own twisted love story.
Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense
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First of all, I love the YOU series. I think that Kepnes is really good at making you disgusted with Joe, and also drawn in by his personality. His observations are sharp and often uncomfortably accurate about the world around him. I love that I can find him both extremely funny, and then he’ll say or think something that makes you cringe while walking to work listening to this audio book. In this prequel, I think Kepnes does a really good job of examining his warped views of love. How much he’s willing to lose his own sense of self, what experiences build the patterns he falls into in adulthood, and where these ideas come from. Some of which are predetermined by his childhood, and others by the slow drip of influence from the characters in this story. I hope she writes more.

Kepnes always has the best Characters

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