It is time to dive in to the 4th book in the Joe Goldberg series. This is the first time that the TV show season has aired before the book has come out and I definitely watched season 4 of You before reading this so naturally I had to wonder how different or similar they were going to be.
So far the TV show has been following the books kind of close. All the same players are there, things are just different. I’d say book one and two and seasons one and two are very similar, season three we veer off a little but it’s fine, both are still good and entertaining. Season four of You and this book, are different in almost every way. The characters are completely different and Joe is in a whole other country for the TV show lol.
That’s not to say I wasn’t guessing what was going to happen in this book because I was. I thought maybe the TV show was reflecting what would happen in the book, just that the book wasn’t published yet. Wrong. But that’s what made me want to keep reading, it would have been boring if the same twists from the TV show had been here.
So in this book, Joe is starting off in a writing fellowship at Harvard. Quite a leap from where we last left him, I barely remembered where we left him but we left him heading out to Florida where he started a new life and opened the dream bookstore that Mary Kay had always wanted.
Turns out the pandemic hit Joe’s world too and during that time he wrote a book and he decided to pursue getting it published and the only way to do that is to suck up to another writer which brings Joe to Harvard. He is currently kissing the ass of Glenn Shoddy who wrote Scabies for Breakfast. Lovely title.
But on the first day of the fellowship Joe finds love, naturally. This time in the form of Wonder Parish. Ugh. I hate her name, Wonder like I think I hate it more than Love Quinn if only because I shudder every time I have to read Joe say “Won”. Like it’s not for me. But anyway, Joe thinks this will be his most epic love yet because Wonder is a writer just like him and their going to be this writer power couple and it’ll be great.
The first hurdle that comes Joe’s way is that Wonder has a bestie called Bobby and you know what happens to a potential male love interest in this series lol. They get the axe. Except, Joe’s not on his murder shit anymore, he’s done with that, but not in an obvious way like in the last book where he was actively thinking he was reformed. He’s just not always immediately thinking “this douche has to die”.
He does however think it would be convenient of Bobby took a little trip and fall down the stairs, after all accidents happen. So you know, things go according to Joe’s plan until he finds out that Bobby is actually gay and that he’s made a horrible mistake lol. Did not see that one coming for him to be honest, but he manages to call the authorities in time and all is well. Bobby is saved, he doesn’t even suspect Joe of his attempted murder and all is well.
Except, it’s not going that well. Joe has been spending a lot of time sucking up to Glenn. He even takes up cycling so he can bond more with his mentor. Though he grows tired of this quickly, especially when he discovers that Glenn didn’t even write that book he’s so proud of. Yikes.
Turns out that Glenn has been the front man for a book that his wife, Sly, wrote. She tells Joe this in a ‘cone of silence’ and Joe is dying to tell Wonder but he doesn’t, he keeps it to himself. He realises the person he really needs to impress is Sly but Sly is all about Wonder, which is good because that means Wonder will get published but bad because Joe has to prove himself to her now.
Honestly when Sly revealed that she was the mastermind behind Scabies I was hoping this was when Joe realises he should be with Sly. I was waiting for this to go the way of the TV show where Joe and Kate get together and become a rich power couple. But nope. Didn’t happen.
Instead, what ends up happening is Glenn tearing Wonder apart during her workshop which sends Wonder off a ledge where she wants to quit writing. This is bad for Joe since it ruins his picture perfect life he’d planned out with Wonder. Joe knows deep down that Wonder is a writer and she needs support if she’s ever going to finish her book and the only way for that to happen is if they get another mentor.
So Joe decides it’s time for Glenn to go…go off a cliff lol. This is where all his cycling with Glenn comes in handy, he lures Glenn onto a trail with the premise of beating Joe’s personal best and all he needed was a bit of fishing wire in the right place to make Glenn go bye bye. Not even sad about it to be honest, he was annoying. Though I don’t think I’ve ever really been sad over anyone that Joe’s killed.
So with Glenn gone, Sly is up to bat. She becomes the new leader of the fellowship which is great news for Wonder because she is back in the game and with all the praise she is getting from Sly and her fellows she is more enthused about writing than ever.
Joe on the other hand is struggling, he made contact with Glenn’s agent at the funeral and he sent Sly a copy of his book. But Sly has been keeping quiet about his book, not mentioning anything to him until he reaches out, and when he does she showers him with praise to give him a little ego boost. How nice!
On top of this Joe is battling with another one of the fellows in class because she has figured him out. There was a murder podcast that popped up about the death of one of Joe’s victims in Madre Linda and everyone in class was talking about it. Sarah Beth, the fellow who is known for writing murder mysteries, is on the case and suspects that Joe is the killer. Oof. Not good.
So Joe tries to break into Sarah Beth’s “dead shed”, a place she goes to write, to try to find what she has on him and in doing so he triggers a knockout gas and gets tied up by Sarah Beth. And even worse, she’s gotten him to confess to everything. The deaths in Madre Linda, his murders in LA, all the way back to Beck. He just spills his guts, and this has me shook because I didn’t think he would ever confess to anything. But he hopes this is enough to let Sarah Beth let him go and she does. But she now has tapes of him confessing to a hell of a lot of murders…
Luckily for Joe, it seems like all Sarah Beth wants is a good novel so she is using Joe’s tapes as inspo. She also hints at him to kill her ex boyfriend? Which is crazy but thankfully Joe doesn’t do it because he stands by the fact he’s not actually a murderer. Especially not a hit man for hire. Though Sarah Beth hits him back with a “JK I didn’t think you actually would kill him”. But it’s not like she’d be mad if he did.
Anyway yeah that was a weird stint because I thought it was going to go somewhere but it doesn’t really. At first I was wondering if this was like Joe in the TV show hallucinating that someone had found out his secret but then he had too many public interactions with Sarah Beth to know, plus with her husband so I don’t think he could have made it up. But maybe he did? Either way it’s not like he’s blacking out and not remembering murdering people. There’s been surprisingly few murders in this one lol.
So while Joe has been appeasing Sarah Beth, he has been at risk of losing Wonder, and he basically does when he accuses her of plagiarizing his book. He sent his book to Wonder in the hopes she would read it but she claimed she was “too busy” with her book to even start his but when Joe reads her pages for class he sees she’s stolen one of his metaphors. Wonder claims she didn’t and that she was inspired by an old book that she read to her niece but Joe isn’t buying it. This causes Wonder to fly off the handle at him and disappear for a few days.
Naturally, Joe thinks he can handle it but he can’t, he has to know where Wonder went. At first he thinks that maybe Sarah Beth had something to do with it. Joe did try to steal his tapes back from her and he failed and so he wonders if she took Wonder as payback. But no luck, Sarah Beth doesn’t know where she is.
So Joe tries Wonder’s family, he visits all of them to see if he can track her down. And once more, I am wondering if this is like when Joe blacked out and doesn’t remember kidnapping Mary Kay in the TV show. But nope none of that here. Wonder is hiding out in a posh compound that Sly set her up in.
Joe eventually hears back from Glenn’s agent about his book and he’s excited about it only to find out that Sly basically rewrote his manuscript and is trying to sell him as “Joe Erotic” he’s gonna be the next EL James LOL. Naturally Joe is furious and so he breaks into Sly’s house because if she did this to him then he definitely did it to Wonder. Thankfully, Joe has keys to the house from being Glenn’s “bro-tern” and so gains access to Sly’s laptop to see the damage. Why this woman doesn’t have a password on her computer is beyond me but Joe sees that Sly has rewritten Wonder’s book too. He also finds texts between Wonder and Sly where Wonder admits that she stole from his book and that Sly encourages her to get out of town and focus on writing.
This leads Joe to do some serious stalker research – which he’s a pro at by now – and he tracks Wonder down. Instead of being creeped out by this though, Wonder accepts Joe in with open arms. Joe and Wonder have a brief loved up few days living the rich life and writing together. It’s the way Joe always pictured their life and it’s wonderful. Until Sly shows up.
There’s a stand-off between Sly, Joe and Wonder as Wonder wants to fight Sly for what she did with Joe’s book but she has no idea that her work was also butchered because Joe is keeping it a secret. Sly then drops the bombshell on Wonder that she made edits to her book too and Joe knew this whole time. On top of that, Sly also knows that Joe broke into her house because he left his sunglasses there. Oops.
Luckily for Joe, Wonder doesn’t believe he’s the kind of guy to break into someone’s house, but she’s still mad at him for not telling her what Sly did. So things don’t end the best with them.
Cut to Joe basically deciding he has to kill Sly because she’s not doing any favours for him or Wonder. It’s easy for him to kill her off since she’s basically drugged out all the time after Glenn’s death, he just takes her passed out body and drowns her in the hot tub. But not before writing the perfect suicide note.
As Joe is about to make his escape though, he is coming face to face with Wonder and that’s not good, she can’t find Sly’s body just yet. So Joe and Wonder talk and they go through a lot, basically Wonder pointing out Joe’s issues and telling him he’s a shit writer and Joe is furious for her seeing him as he really is and not what he wants her to see. Then Joe getting his digs in at Wonder about how she’s all about her family and too scared to actually live her life. It’s some real shit. Joe even confesses to killing Glenn but Wonder doesn’t believe he would be capable of such a thing lol.
Naturally as all this is going on I am wondering if Joe kills Wonder. I mean it seems like it’s possible, the confrontation is a lot more than Joe would have let someone get away with in the past. But he decides to give Wonder another chance, after they talk he lets Wonder find Sly’s body and he’s holding out hope that if Wonder can appreciate Sly’s suicide note aka Joe’s note that he would forgive her for calling him a shit writer.
Wonder does not appreciate the suicide note and thinks it’s just the thoughts of a crazy grieving woman lol. So that’s the end of that relationship.
Surprisingly though, Joe does not kill Wonder, she lets her go on and her book gets published, though it’s still a heavily edited version of her original vision and Joe is disappointed in her. Though I think he’s still holding out hope that they can be together. Cute. I guess.
He is also still hanging out with Sarah Beth because I guess they’re friends? And you know, she knows he murdered all those people. And so yeah that’s where we end things.
I’m not going to lie, I feel like as the book progressed, more and more things were going over my head. So I was disappointed when Joe didn’t just kill Wonder because you know, that’s what he does. I also am disappointed that nothing from the TV show happened here. I mean I didn’t need it to be exactly the same but in terms of season 4 vs book 4 I would choose season 4.
I also wonder if there will be a book 5 as the TV show is getting a fifth and final season. Not that I have any idea where we go with Joe from here. I guess he goes off and starts fresh somewhere new since that was what he was headed to do when this book ended.
Still, I think I would have preferred if we ended with the last book, to me this story wasn’t 100% needed. I looked back on my review of the last book and I remember that there were a lot of crazy twists there that I didn’t need and was glad to be at the end of it. Though I have to say, I wouldn’t have hated more action in this book, there was a lot of literary talk and that’s great and all but wasn’t for me.
So yeah, overall okay no great. Would have preferred more murder lol. But yeah, guess we buckle up and see what You season 5 will bring, I’m hoping it doesn’t disappoint.
Courtney Shek 