 Welcome to Church of the Chair, where our tendency is to love. I'm your host, E, and today we're heading to Harvard. Today, we're talking about For You and Only You by Caroline Kepnes, the fourth book in the Joe Goldberg series. For those of you who don't want to hang around for the entire video, this one is my favorite book in the series, Sense Part 1. Part 1 is still my favorite because there is no replacing Guinevere Beck and that feeling of discovery when I first came across Joe's story, world, existence, but this is very much a different type of Joe Goldberg story. It still has the same setup, the same formula, but it is a very different Joe. He grew quite a bit in the last book and in this book he grows a little bit more. That is not to say that he doesn't get terrifying at one point because by the end I was having some fear built up for one of the characters and also just the coldness emanating off of him. Caroline Kepnes did such a wonderful job toward the end of this book reminding me how sinister Joe is. In this one, Joe Goldberg goes after a woman named Wonder. In Wonder, right off the bat I connected with her very quickly because she is what Joe calls a Goodreads girl, so she reviews books on Goodreads, while at the same time she is an aspiring author. If you don't know, I'm an author as well and I spent a lot of time in my early career reviewing other people's books to try and gain a following. As of right now, this book has a very iffy rating average over on Goodreads and we have funny things like this comment that say that Joe, that this book is absolutely nothing like any of the other ones in the worst way and then you have comments like this that say it's the same old, same old, which I find funny and I think I know why. This is not to say that these people are lying or that they don't mean what they say, but I'm going to point out some things from the book that might have turned some people off. Joe goes hard after Goodreads and the toxicity on that platform. I have left Goodreads. I've been gone ever since January 1st and I don't plan to return. I have a small account with no friends, no followers, nothing. I don't even follow anybody else. I have an account for myself just to keep track of all the books that I read because I do want that. No, I'm not sharing my Goodreads account. But Joe goes goes in hard after the Goodreads culture and some and certain types of reviewers. Now I'm saying Joe because I fully believe that Caroline Kepnes appreciates her readers, appreciates people reading her book, appreciates all reviews. I am sure of this. Now that is not to say that there aren't toxic people on that site just like there are toxic people everywhere. And that's what Joe is talking about. The culture over there and how certain people will follow along like ducks in a row. This time around I do have one slight criticism and that is that the supporting characters Matt, Lou, Annie or Ani, it's A-N-I is how her name is spelled and I think that's everybody from the fellowship and we'll talk about that what the fellowship is here in a second. They were not as well painted as some of Kepnes's earlier supporting characters. I remember falling in love with characters like Howard from Hidden Bodies, 40 from, let's see here, that was also Hidden Bodies, I'm sorry, then Melonda not really falling in love with her but loving that character and Melonda is from the third book, You Love Me. In this one the supporting characters didn't have as much of an effect as say Joe and Wonder and Sarah best swallows. So the plot of this one is Joe is now a writer, he's written a book called Me, that's literally what it's called and he has joined a fellowship at Harvard to try and win a $25,000 prize and become a published author. During this time he meets Glenn and Sly Shoddy and Glenn Shoddy is the professor that is running the fellowship and he's also famous for writing a book called Scabies for Breakfast and the plot thread, the subplot of that book is one of the more interesting parts of this book especially detailing his wife's involvement, his wife being Sly. If I remember correctly I believe there is probably the least amount of death or murder in this one. This one is really going back to a character drama and there are some very very tense scenes, don't get me wrong, but there is also a lack of tense scenes and I kind of preferred that. Getting to know these characters, watching Joe evolve over the course of the story was fun as hell, I don't know how else to put it. Now going back to the reviews, people saying it's the same old same old and then other people saying it's bad because it's different in the worst way and there are several other ones, there are some positive ones of course, there's going to be positive and negatives for every book, but with this one I am wondering how much of this is a knee jerk reaction especially the negative reviews to what Joe thinks of quote unquote goodreads girls. Having been a part of clicks in the past and having acquaintances that were complete wackadoodles over there on that site, I understand where Joe is coming from. Do I agree with him, no the entire site is not toxic, but there are definitely followers who follow a certain formula much like Caroline does in her books. At the end of this book it goes to a place I never expected and I am super hyped, stoked even more so than I have been for the past two books. Now I read you and Hidden Bodies as ARC's advanced review copies but Random House won't send me the new ones, Atria was kind enough to send me the first two books but when Caroline changed over to Random House, Random House won't send them to me for whatever reason. But I jumped right into the first two, you love me and for you and only you I took my time, I wasn't as excited for them but I am super excited for the final book because of how this one ends. This might be a minor spoiler for the ending, I'm not going to give up any of the plot points or anything like that, but Joe is off to a very interesting place with a companion this time, he's actually taking someone along with him that kind of mirrors what happens in the TV series. If you've watched a Netflix adaptation of you, you might understand where I'm going with this but it's not the person you think at all, at least I hope so. I do have a problem with not predicting predictable scenarios, instead I tend to predict unpredictable scenarios and I find certain plot twists predictable when other people didn't see them coming, whereas the obvious ones I don't see coming, I hope that makes sense, I guess it's because I overthink things, but where I'm at with this book is I absolutely love it, it's my favorite one since the first one in the series, I really loved all the Goodread stuff, I loved the picking, the playfulness of those sections and I especially loved how dark and sinister Joe gets by the end of this book. Which brings me to the fact that I read it to my wife, I've read the last two books to her over the course, this one took us about a month, the last one took about a month and a half because we only read about 20-25 pages a night and we don't read every single night, but one thing that I picked up on this one is I was always excited to get back into it and I was actually upset any of the times that she was busy or I was too busy to get back into it. I don't remember that feeling with you love me which is the third book in the series, but I do remember enjoying it a lot. I gave it five stars but now I'm thinking that I should bump that one down to four stars and you know keep this one at five, I don't know, I probably won't change anything given that I'm not publicly on Goodreads, I'm not public on Goodreads anymore, I probably won't do anything, but suffice to say this is definitely my favorite in the series since the first book and it's a return to form and not a return to form at the same time, it's a completely new experience, completely original, more so even than the last two books, it gave me that feeling of discovery again like the first book and I absolutely loved that. I loved all the author stuff that Joe goes through, I love all the publishing shenanigans that you know the hoops that you have to jump through, the fact that you have to know people to get into the upper echelons of publishing, it's all about who you know and less about what you actually write which comes into play even more with a certain editor in the book screwing up not only Joe's book but Wonder's book and that making it a viable option for publishing, it has a lot to say about editing, it has a lot to say about killing your darlings, that is a theme throughout and every single mention of tendency to love in this book which goes back to the intro I thought was far deeper than any other one of the, I don't know what to call them in terms of phrase that Caroline has used in the past like everything ship and certain other ones that she used this one tendency to love really nailed Wonder's character and she is consistent all the way throughout but that's all the time I have for you today if you have read this book for you and only you by Caroline Kepnis or if you've read any of the you series let me know what you thought of them down there in the comment section if you did not like this one I'd like to hear from you I'd like to hear why just remain respectful I guess I would say but until next time I love that song all hail the chair