Thrillers & Suspense
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For You and Only You: A Joe Goldberg Novel
New York Times bestselling author Caroline Kepnes, whose acclaimed YOU series inspired the hit show on Netflix, follows Joe Goldberg to the hallowed halls of Harvard, where he earns a coveted place in a writing fellowship . . . and leaves crimson in his wake.
"Joe Goldberg might be a narcissistic, manipulative, murderous, utterly unreliable narrator, but he's damn entertaining."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Joe Goldberg is ready for a change. Instead of selling books, he's writing them. And he's off to a good start. Glenn Shoddy, an acclaimed literary author, recognizes Joe's genius and invites him to join a tight-knit writing fellowship at Harvard. Finally, Joe will be in a place where talent matters more than pedigree . . . where intellect is the great equalizer and anything is possible. Even happy endings. Or so he thinks, until he meets his already-published, already-distinguished peers, who all seem to be cut from the same elitist cloth.
Thankfully, Wonder Parish enters the picture. They have so much in common. No college degrees, no pretensions, no stories from prep school or grad school. Just a love for literature. If only Wonder could commit herself to the writing life, they could be those rare literary soulmates who never fall prey to their demons. Wonder has a tendency to love, to covet, but Joe is a believer in the rule of fiction: If you want to write a book, you have to kill your darlings.
With her trademark satirical, biting wit, Caroline Kepnes explores why vulnerable people bring out the worst in others as Joe sets out to make this small, exclusive world a fairer place. And if a little crimson runs in the streets of Cambridge . . . who can blame him? Love doesn't conquer all. Often, it needs a little push.
"Joe Goldberg might be a narcissistic, manipulative, murderous, utterly unreliable narrator, but he's damn entertaining."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Joe Goldberg is ready for a change. Instead of selling books, he's writing them. And he's off to a good start. Glenn Shoddy, an acclaimed literary author, recognizes Joe's genius and invites him to join a tight-knit writing fellowship at Harvard. Finally, Joe will be in a place where talent matters more than pedigree . . . where intellect is the great equalizer and anything is possible. Even happy endings. Or so he thinks, until he meets his already-published, already-distinguished peers, who all seem to be cut from the same elitist cloth.
Thankfully, Wonder Parish enters the picture. They have so much in common. No college degrees, no pretensions, no stories from prep school or grad school. Just a love for literature. If only Wonder could commit herself to the writing life, they could be those rare literary soulmates who never fall prey to their demons. Wonder has a tendency to love, to covet, but Joe is a believer in the rule of fiction: If you want to write a book, you have to kill your darlings.
With her trademark satirical, biting wit, Caroline Kepnes explores why vulnerable people bring out the worst in others as Joe sets out to make this small, exclusive world a fairer place. And if a little crimson runs in the streets of Cambridge . . . who can blame him? Love doesn't conquer all. Often, it needs a little push.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for For You and Only You
"Kepnes gleefully portrays the most back-stabbing seminar yet, dropping literary names with abandon as she twists the plot. Joe Goldberg might be a narcissistic, manipulative, murderous, utterly unreliable narrator, but he's damn entertaining."-Kirkus Review (starred review)
"Puckish . . . Kepnes waggishly satirizes the publishing industry, and her outsized characters' egos and anxieties lay the foundations for delightfully deranged plot twists. . . . Joe's stream-of-consciousness narration engages throughout, rendering readers both confidante and accomplice. Kepnes reliably entertains."-Publishers Weekly
"Within this intensity, [Joe Goldberg's] snark-laden observations about ego, love, and loyalty ring true."-Booklist
Praise for Caroline Kepnes and the Joe Goldberg novels
"[A] storytelling sorcerer . . . Kepnes is brilliant."-The New York Times Book Review
"My new favorite writer."-Colleen Hoover
"Hypnotic and scary . . . totally original."-Stephen King
"Fiendish, fast-paced, and very funny."-Paula Hawkins
"I will read anything she writes. . . . One of the smartest, most insightful writers out there."-Nicola Yoon
"Delicious . . . It's Kepnes' wit and style that keep you coming back."-Lena Dunham
"That peerless author who makes me laugh and glance over my shoulder on the very same page."-Jessica Knoll
"Joe Goldberg has become a cultural mainstay. . . . Kepnes has mastered the likable villain."-Rolling Stone
"Kepnes gleefully portrays the most back-stabbing seminar yet, dropping literary names with abandon as she twists the plot. Joe Goldberg might be a narcissistic, manipulative, murderous, utterly unreliable narrator, but he's damn entertaining."-Kirkus Review (starred review)
"Puckish . . . Kepnes waggishly satirizes the publishing industry, and her outsized characters' egos and anxieties lay the foundations for delightfully deranged plot twists. . . . Joe's stream-of-consciousness narration engages throughout, rendering readers both confidante and accomplice. Kepnes reliably entertains."-Publishers Weekly
"Within this intensity, [Joe Goldberg's] snark-laden observations about ego, love, and loyalty ring true."-Booklist
Praise for Caroline Kepnes and the Joe Goldberg novels
"[A] storytelling sorcerer . . . Kepnes is brilliant."-The New York Times Book Review
"My new favorite writer."-Colleen Hoover
"Hypnotic and scary . . . totally original."-Stephen King
"Fiendish, fast-paced, and very funny."-Paula Hawkins
"I will read anything she writes. . . . One of the smartest, most insightful writers out there."-Nicola Yoon
"Delicious . . . It's Kepnes' wit and style that keep you coming back."-Lena Dunham
"That peerless author who makes me laugh and glance over my shoulder on the very same page."-Jessica Knoll
"Joe Goldberg has become a cultural mainstay. . . . Kepnes has mastered the likable villain."-Rolling Stone
Readers Top Reviews
MaddieJessica B
This was probably my least favorite book out of the series. I really loved the first two and I just liked the last two. Overall this is a wild series. However, I hope there are no more books in this series. After reading four books in this series I feel like that’s enough. I feel like Joe’s story should be done.
kathleen g
Joe goes to Harvard and meets Wonder. What a wonderful sly way to bring him back, While I've only read one of the books and watched two seasons of the show, this felt both completely familiar and yet fresh. Joe's voice, his snarky propulsive, distinctive voice is what carries this. Yes he's a horrible human being and yes he does amazingly horrible things but you'll find yourself turning the pages. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC, A good read.
Tori H.
Poor Joe. He constantly finds and attracts people more estranged from reality than himself. This was another wild ride. Another love found. Lots of bodies. I am constantly amazed at Caroline Kepnes’s ability to place me, the reader, right into Joe’s head. You know he’s a sociopath. You know he’s dangerous. And yet, his stream of consciousness is so relatable and easy to empathize with. Readers will love seeing Joe among Harvard’s elite, now finally with a book of his very own! I can’t see where life takes Joe next. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the e-arc.
Book Beast
Have you ever enjoyed stepping onto a carnival ride that brought you speeding through rooms and shadows on a wild and frantic journey? That is my best description of what it’s like visiting the busy, impulsive mind of Joe Goldberg. If you are at all invested in any of Joe’s shenanigans, this latest installment is essential reading. As an author and an avid reader, I found the central premise of an eclectic group of various young talents coming together to form a writer’s workshop at Harvard, so intriguing. Surely, any academic gathering that would have our dear Joe as a member is bound to be stimulating and have quite an edge . . . and as expected, delicious drama ensues. I received an advanced copy of For You and Only You for my unbiased evaluation. 3.5 stars
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
You think you're special and you are, to a degree. You go to Harvard. A grad student if I had to guess. You wear a vintage T-shirt that probably belonged to your father, who no doubt went here as well, carried you on his shoulders at his reunions when you were too young to wonder if you were good enough to get here. There was no need to worry. You were always going to wind up perched on the steps of the Barker Center in your flowery midi skirt. Little Miss Muffet with your Faulkner in your hands, open and your phone facedown, as if to prove that you prefer novels over nuisance. The world is your tuffet, the steps too, and you arch your back and aah. You're not really lost in that book. You're a little outside of yourself, yearning for someone new in September. I'm on the move. You tap your toes and lift your eyes-blue and horny-and you go there.
"Hi."
"Hey."
I know it hurts. You took a leap of faith, and I said thanks, but no thanks with a hey and walked into the Barker Center. I had to leave you. You women disappoint or disappear-or sometimes both-and none of you can bear to look at me once I know who you really are. You run, you try so hard to kill your feelings for me that you wind up dead in real life, dead inside. I'm not built like you. I never get over you, any of you. Something had to change, so I put all my feelings about my tragic, no-good love stories into a blender and wrote a novel. That's the reason I'm here. Not you. Me. I walk up to Barker 222 ready to join the ranks of the good and the terrible-Harvard monsters are a special breed-but a piece of paper is taped to the door: Too nice to be inside. See you fellows on the south side of the lawn! Yours, G.S.
I don't want to go outside and sit in a room that isn't a room-I want the Algonquin f***ing round table-and I expect better from Glenn "G.S." Shoddy. He's running this fiction writing fellowship because he's the author of Scabies for Breakfast. He knows what makes people tick-Scabies earned him a Pulitzer-and he's the anti-Franzen-over two million copies sold, almost no one ticked off about his success. He's my teacher, my mentor, the kind of guy who assured me that he too comes from a "humble" background . . . as in he grew up in the Mid-f***ing-west with married teacher parents who raised him to be a writer. I liked him for trying, and I (mostly) meant what I said when I sent him twenty pages of my soul.
Whether or not you offer me a spot, I want to thank you, Mr. Shoddy. I wouldn't have started writing if I had never read your book. You're exceptionally gifted, Glenn. Yours, Joe
Glenn did the right thing. He offered me a spot in the fellowship via a warm, chummy email, and Harvard is paying me to be here, so I follow the orders and hustle back outside like I'm late for a job interview-No, Joe, you got the job-I didn't leave Florida to prowl around in the sun like a dirty old man playing Duck, Duck, F***ing Goose, but off I go.
I can do this. All I f***ing do is survive. I made it through the first few decades of my life and back in Orlando, when the world shut down, the first real snow days of my life, I took the break as a gift from my beloved, my would-have-been wife, Mary Kay DiMarco. She was gone, dead, and I had been wasting my time, slinging drinks and sulking, hooking up with girls who came into the bar, licked their lips, asked me about the last great book I read.
Predators, all of them, and that's what I look like now, like I'm on the hunt for girls and no. No! "Sorry," I say to a group of f***ing teenagers. "I'm just trying to find my people."
They look right through me-the truth is always a bad share-and I need to Taylor Swift it, I need to calm down. I will find my fellows. I made RIP Mary Kay's dream come true-I opened the Empathy Bordello Bar & Books-and I killed myself writing my book, finding a reader since it's not really a book unless someone else consumes it. I killed myself again kissing up to the gatekeeper-You're exceptionally gifted, Glenn-and when I sold the bar and hightailed it up I-95 with the jukebox of RIP Mary Kay's dreams in the back of a U-Haul, well, that's when multiple incompetent motorists almost killed me. No one knows how to drive anymore, or how to run a f***ing fellowship, but I made it. The skeletons in my closet aren't so menacing anymore-the best writers all take risks-and I live here now, in a one-bedroom two-bath right by campus and I "go" here, but where the f***ing f*** are my fellows?
A guy in an MIT T-shirt shouts, "Hey! Are you looking for the Shoddies?"
So that's what we...
You think you're special and you are, to a degree. You go to Harvard. A grad student if I had to guess. You wear a vintage T-shirt that probably belonged to your father, who no doubt went here as well, carried you on his shoulders at his reunions when you were too young to wonder if you were good enough to get here. There was no need to worry. You were always going to wind up perched on the steps of the Barker Center in your flowery midi skirt. Little Miss Muffet with your Faulkner in your hands, open and your phone facedown, as if to prove that you prefer novels over nuisance. The world is your tuffet, the steps too, and you arch your back and aah. You're not really lost in that book. You're a little outside of yourself, yearning for someone new in September. I'm on the move. You tap your toes and lift your eyes-blue and horny-and you go there.
"Hi."
"Hey."
I know it hurts. You took a leap of faith, and I said thanks, but no thanks with a hey and walked into the Barker Center. I had to leave you. You women disappoint or disappear-or sometimes both-and none of you can bear to look at me once I know who you really are. You run, you try so hard to kill your feelings for me that you wind up dead in real life, dead inside. I'm not built like you. I never get over you, any of you. Something had to change, so I put all my feelings about my tragic, no-good love stories into a blender and wrote a novel. That's the reason I'm here. Not you. Me. I walk up to Barker 222 ready to join the ranks of the good and the terrible-Harvard monsters are a special breed-but a piece of paper is taped to the door: Too nice to be inside. See you fellows on the south side of the lawn! Yours, G.S.
I don't want to go outside and sit in a room that isn't a room-I want the Algonquin f***ing round table-and I expect better from Glenn "G.S." Shoddy. He's running this fiction writing fellowship because he's the author of Scabies for Breakfast. He knows what makes people tick-Scabies earned him a Pulitzer-and he's the anti-Franzen-over two million copies sold, almost no one ticked off about his success. He's my teacher, my mentor, the kind of guy who assured me that he too comes from a "humble" background . . . as in he grew up in the Mid-f***ing-west with married teacher parents who raised him to be a writer. I liked him for trying, and I (mostly) meant what I said when I sent him twenty pages of my soul.
Whether or not you offer me a spot, I want to thank you, Mr. Shoddy. I wouldn't have started writing if I had never read your book. You're exceptionally gifted, Glenn. Yours, Joe
Glenn did the right thing. He offered me a spot in the fellowship via a warm, chummy email, and Harvard is paying me to be here, so I follow the orders and hustle back outside like I'm late for a job interview-No, Joe, you got the job-I didn't leave Florida to prowl around in the sun like a dirty old man playing Duck, Duck, F***ing Goose, but off I go.
I can do this. All I f***ing do is survive. I made it through the first few decades of my life and back in Orlando, when the world shut down, the first real snow days of my life, I took the break as a gift from my beloved, my would-have-been wife, Mary Kay DiMarco. She was gone, dead, and I had been wasting my time, slinging drinks and sulking, hooking up with girls who came into the bar, licked their lips, asked me about the last great book I read.
Predators, all of them, and that's what I look like now, like I'm on the hunt for girls and no. No! "Sorry," I say to a group of f***ing teenagers. "I'm just trying to find my people."
They look right through me-the truth is always a bad share-and I need to Taylor Swift it, I need to calm down. I will find my fellows. I made RIP Mary Kay's dream come true-I opened the Empathy Bordello Bar & Books-and I killed myself writing my book, finding a reader since it's not really a book unless someone else consumes it. I killed myself again kissing up to the gatekeeper-You're exceptionally gifted, Glenn-and when I sold the bar and hightailed it up I-95 with the jukebox of RIP Mary Kay's dreams in the back of a U-Haul, well, that's when multiple incompetent motorists almost killed me. No one knows how to drive anymore, or how to run a f***ing fellowship, but I made it. The skeletons in my closet aren't so menacing anymore-the best writers all take risks-and I live here now, in a one-bedroom two-bath right by campus and I "go" here, but where the f***ing f*** are my fellows?
A guy in an MIT T-shirt shouts, "Hey! Are you looking for the Shoddies?"
So that's what we...
