Over the weekend, I finally finished Hidden Bodies, the sequel to You, by Caroline Kepnes. I’d been putting off this book for a while mainly because I read the book very shortly after finishing the television series after it originally aired on Lifetime. I just felt like I wanted to take a breather before jumping back into the world of Joe. Based on how season one of the show ended verses how the book ended, I do wonder if the second season will follow Hidden Bodies plot at all.
Some research I did before picking this book up to read found that a lot of people were really disappointed in the second book, and I can see why. The appeal of the first novel (albeit being seriously messed up), was that the things Joe was doing could actually happen to someone. With that, the plot of the second novel is completely far-fetched once you finish the first hundred pages. That certainly doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. In fact, I really enjoyed it!
Spoiler: After killing MFA student, Guinevere Beck at the end of the first novel, we meet new employee and love interest, Amy Adam. She’s just like Joe, and everything Beck wasn’t, and Joe’s in love. And Joe also makes some mistakes. Amy plays with his emotions and ends up stealing $23,000 in rare books, but that’s not what’s got Joe on a tear. She broke his heart. And now Joe is going to make sure she can’t do that ever again.
After some sleuthing, Joe heads to where you go when you have “aspirations” like Amy, Los Angeles. On his quest to find Amy, he gets side-tracked and ends up meeting the love of his life, Love. Love is next-level rich and that means Joe has to deal with all his jealous rage by justifying some more murders. Truthfully, I don’t want to give anything else away, because every minor detail in the book is honestly bananas! The tone and setting of the book reminds me of Pop Kids and Love Fast Los Angeles by AFI front man, Davey Havok. If you liked those, definitely give this a read.
Ultimately, Joe is his still the same sociopath from the first novel, just in a new setting with some very new, and potentially unrealistic circumstances, but it makes for a very entertaining ride!