Well. This book was pretty different from the previous three. Joe didn't seem edgy enough and too worried about his damn writing which frankly, made him pretty boring and annoying. I also wasn't feeling Wonder very much, her character was also annoying and I never felt any sympathy toward her.

This was not a bad book by any means, just too long and not the Joe we are used to.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

For You and Only you starts with our Joe Goldburg joining a writing fellowship at Havard. This premise sounds like it would be the start to a bunch of new characters that would reach Peach status, but it sadly falls short. I wanted to love this book as the last Joe Goldberg novel was one of my favorites. I loved Mary Kay. This one feels like like a more subdued Joe, yes he was crazy and you start to sympathize with him like usual, but he did not feel as dangerous as his last book, and the murders that did happen weren’t thought out as well. Even stalking in the book was not as fun. Wonder the new main love interest did not draw me in, and I feel like she was made to be sympathetic, but she in all honesty was a spoiled brat in the book, and drank too much of the kool-aid. I did enjoy the premise, and there was standout character Sarah Beth. Sarah Beth was interesting and I feel like she saved the book. Sly was also an interesting character. The rest of the fellows fell very short and felt like 2d characters with no real dimension to them. I still believe the book is 3 stars as it is written well and it does play well into your head.Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Random House & NetGalley for allowing me to read this book

Was very excited to read this book, as with most people I loved You, but found it a bit lacking. Kind of disappointed.

“She is such a writer that she puts words in my mouth while I’m standing right here, rewriting life in real-time, and no, she can’t do this to me, to us.”
― Caroline Kepnes

Two years since the third book in the You series, Caroline Kepnes’s Joe Goldberg is at it again.

I noticed that most of the books in the You series follow a certain formula: Joe arrives somewhere new, he finds a girl he becomes obsessed with, the chaos around the relationship, killings, and onto the next city. Why this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, you do get a sense of what generally will happen from book to book.

Kepnes is excellent at building a setting that you become engrossed in almost like it is a character itself. This time around we are in the Harvard area. The setting affects the story in so many ways, it is great to see how it will get involved.

You can definitely tell that Kepnes knows her Joe character well. I really like how she developed Joe through all these books and yet he still has some of the same tendencies. They do say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I love the explanation of how Joe starts to spiral off course. It is like a domino effect seeing how the different situations and characters affect his thinking and his actions

One thing that bothered me a bit, was that some characters and/or storylines seemed to be dropped mid-story. I was curious about what happened and was disappointed that there were no real answers.

Overall I enjoyed For You and Only You. Kepnes just has a way with words to draw you into Joe’s life. I will always pick up books in this series to see where she will take Joe next. This is a good book for anyone who already read the other three books and someone who likes a bit of thriller and mystery. While this one in the series didn’t seem to have as many twists and turns as some of the others, it was still a read that I did not want to stop reading.

I am a You fan. The books, the series, a fan.
I made the mistake of watching the fourth season before reading this book. Because...I really enjoyed the fourth season and this book was utterly different.

The book started well. Good Ole Joe. But then I hit a wall of blah. It was like walking,walking,walking...
SMACK! Face first into a whole lotta talking between Joe and his new You. Both being writers, whose book was better, did she copy off of him, etc. Egos flying back and forth and I wanted it to stop.

I'm very happy I didn't stop. It picked up, got interesting and really developed. It became my enjoyable You.

I can't imagine I'll get tired of these books or the series. But, I need to remind myself that they truly are two different entities and don't match up. So, enjoy them for what each of them gives you...more Joe.

4⭐️

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and author for allowing me to have an advanced copy of this ebook.

Unfortunately this book was not for me. I found Joe to be absolutely terrifying in You. He made my skin crawl, and I frequently had to put the book down to compose myself because of that 2nd person narrative.

By the time For You and Only You rolled around, Joe has become just insufferable and whiny. His inner monologue is repetitive, and I am completely disinterested in his love interests. Maryanne at least had things going on, Wonder is basically wonderbread. Which makes Joes fawning all the more annoying.

It feels like Kepnes was realistically done after book 2, though kept it open ended so she could return if ever she wanted to. And only came back because of the success of the show. Girl, get your coin - I get it. A lot of people love Joe no matter what. However, for me, Joe was interesting when he was ruthless and creepy. He is too much of a "anti-hero' who isnt even doing "that much wrong" (compared to book 1 Joe - he is still breaking many laws and being an absolute creep) that I find myself hoping he'll kill someone just for something to happen.

alas - this will be my last Joe novel. But - not my last Kepnes. Her writing is solid i just hate the protagonist.

It would have helped if I read the previous books in the series. Felt as though I was missing something and ultimately, did not finish. The character was too hip for me with a lot of cultural references. I will not be reading previous books.

Joe Goldberg has earned a fellowship at Harvard at the start of this book. I really enjoyed Joe in “You”, he is a really unique antihero sort of character.

However, I feel like I’m starting to get a bit tired of Joe. His egomaniacal-sarcastic -smart ass inner thoughts are a bit much sometimes. They also seem to go on, and on, and on….

I usually enjoy the author, and this book was well written but this one was a DNF for me.

Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC of this book to read and review.

I was excited to be reunited with Joe but I feel like this series is just going off the rails. The first two books were solid books. I forgave the 3rd book because it still had some okay bits but this one is just to much. What I always loved about this series was that it had a sense of believability to it. Joe was always bat shit but I still felt like he could be a real person and thats what made the series so thrilling. Now things are going so outside that realm of possibility that the book has lost all of its stakes. We know Joe never suffers real or lasting consequences.
In the end this book alone is fine but as a whole this series has gone off for me. Its over stayed its welcome and I'm just ready for it to be over which is sad cause I never thought I would be saying that about Joe.

Joe Goldberg is back, and he's ready for a fresh start. He's taken a break from selling books to write one of his own, and his manuscript, cheekily titled Me, has earned him entry into the hallowed halls of Harvard University. He'll be part of a fellowship with several other writers, studying under an acclaimed literary author named Glenn Shoddy.

On the first day of the fellowship, Joe is feeling dejected after meeting his privileged, already-successful classmates...but then Wonder walks into the room, fresh off her shift at Dunkin' Donuts. Just like Joe, she's a talented writer with no pretensions and no leg up in the world...and well, I think you can figure out where this is going.

Despite covering familiar territory in For You and Only You, Caroline Kepnes's fourth entry in the Joe Goldberg Saga still manages to feel fresh and fun rather than formulaic. Yes, being inside Joe's head is exhausting sometimes, and the pop culture references can be a bit over the top, but Caroline Kepnes has rendered the character of Joe so perfectly that it's impossible not to root for him, even when -- sometimes especially when -- he is indulging his homicidal tendencies. The boy is batshit and we love him for it.

This time around, we get to see Joe take on the literary elite, and it's fascinating. Setting her novel firmly in the writing world allows Kepnes to make some scathing, thought-provoking observations about publishing, writing, and literary criticism -- and even Goodreads reviewers get a few special shout-outs. Her writing is sharp and acerbic and brilliant, revealing a keen understanding of human nature beneath the dark humor of Joe's inner monologue.

As for Wonder -- well, she isn't my favorite of Joe's conquests, and I think that was an intentional choice on Kepnes's part. Joe thinks he and Wonder have so many things in common, but all of those things are surface-level. They process the world in completely different ways and really aren't compatible at all, which is why Joe has to mold Wonder into who he wants her to be. Watching his attempts to do this over the course of the novel is gripping, chilling, and yes, incredibly fun.

I will continue to read these books as long as Kepnes continues to write them. Thank you to NetGalley and Atria/Emily Bestler Books for the advance reading opportunity.

I was so excited to see where this story went next! I will read anything about Joe Goldberg. This book, like the others, really took me away as I got lost in this devious and complicated world. I really enjoyed it!

I think we all love to hate Joe, and it was fun seeing him again. He’s still as unlikeable and creepy, and I enjoyed the extra lit talk with this one!

I absolutely love the You/Joe Goldberg series! I started reading it after season one came out on Netflix and immediately loved how the books are written and how complicated the character of Joe is. In the first three books the stalker thing was always here but didn't bother me because it was always different in a way and the feminine character was also different and it was great. However in this book, I hated the female character, she's so unlikable in my opinion and it was so frustrating for me to read, Joe is still the same and I like him for it but I felt like he was overshadowed by her and it upset me. I like the vibes of Harvard and it was too in the last season so it was really enjoyable, the little similarities between this book and the last season made me quite happy. Overall it was great but definitely my LEAST favourite book of the saga sadly

The only part of this book I liked was the woman who figured Joe out and blackmailed him. Other than that, this book was not great. I love Joe, but this one made me not want to read more about him.

I think you will enjoy this book if you like knowing how Joe's mind works and knowing his inner thoughts. This book is different than the show - I watched the newest season and it doesn't match the book. Which, I don't mind that at all but I know some people don't like that. Although, I think that you will like this book if you enjoyed that last three in the series!

The 4th You book coming June 27, 2023. Now that I've seen the Netflix show, I can vision Joe and his personality in this book. Joe is back again, this time in Harvard. I have to say its kind of boring. Why? Its the same as previous, Joes talking in his head, his little side chats. If I didn't watch the show and understand how his mind works, I would probably get a little confused at the back and forth.
Joe has a new obsession, Wonder. Why does she have a name Wonder?? Is it to keep you guessing, and wondering? lol . Joe is of course just as dark and twisted . Even though this one is a little slow I would still read more from the author.

While I enjoyed Joe and all his crazy antics, this wasn't my favorite of him.

Something just wasn't clicking for me, and I can't put my finger who, what or why?

Did I enjoy the book and characters? Yes and mostly. Will I continue to read them if there is more? Hell yes. I just hope my missing piece is found in the next book!

Oh, Joe … Caroline Kepnes once again weaves an addictive web in the world of everyone’s favorite narcissistic psychopath. (Okay maybe he’s not everyone’s favorite narcissist psychopath but he’s mine). Even though it’s the fourth book in the series, it’s just as unputdownable as the first three. Five well-deserved stars!!!

I was so excited to get my hands on this book! Kepnes manages to make you want Joe to get away with everything even though he's such a repugnant creep. It's an amazing formula of Joe being the romantic love interest who will do anything for the women he's interested in, and he WILL do anything. Wonder is an interesting love interest because she is just like Joe, an underdog, but she's a more talented writer. Joe loves to call himself a feminist, and believed Malanda was a hypocritical, bad feminist in the prior book. It's comical to see Joe call out misogyny, call himself a feminist, yet desire to control and violently dispose of women. The dynamic of Joe's misogynistic jealous of Wonder's book being so highly praised, while he felt overlooked really showed how much he wants to control women out of his own insecurity. I would have loved if the class discussion on his book had happened. It would have been interesting to see if Joe's perception of his book was truly off-base as most of his perception is. Overall, if you liked the series prior to this book, you're in for a treat! Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was so happy to learn that this book does not align with Season 4 of You on Netflix. I liked the show, but the book stays true to the same Joe Goldberg while the series takes a different direction. As always, I really enjoy Caroline Kepnes writing style. I love hearing Joe's thoughts and his twisted way of thinking. If you have enjoyed the book series, then I highly recommend this book!