Caroline Kepnes must be some kind of storytelling sorcerer. How else can Joe Goldberg . . . besuch an entertaining narrator?This high-wire narrative act continues to work because Kepnes is brilliant.” — The New York Times Book Review This was the saddest and most heartbreaking book of the series. Joe is always a “fire starter”: he involved in people’s lives, lighting a match, illuminating their hypocrisy because most of them flawed, emotionally disturbed and acting like honorable people but actually they are not so different from Joe. In fact they are worst and sometimes you think you nearly deserved what happened to them! And as soon as he throws away the match, naturally some of them gets burned or deeply hurt. You Love Me (You #3) by Caroline Kepnes is the third book in the series (and Season 3 of the Netflix show “You” will be adapting this book), and it’s scheduled to be released on April 6th 2021. What you will see coming is book #4 which I will be on the hunt for. I am torn between 3 and 3.5 stars. This book although slow in parts, is brilliant in other parts.

This third installment of the series just didn’t hold my attention. I needed Joe to do something! Anything! They started going for walks, gradually increasing the distance, and Reuben saw a therapist, who joined their Covid bubble. “She came to the house once a week and started helping Reuben on the physical recovery as well, because he had muscle wastage and was really weak as he hadn’t gone anywhere for months,” says Manni. “And she started working on his expression.” You need to suspend disbelief a lot in the book because of course, no way any of that would happen in real life but again, we're not reading for accuracy. All it takes it's for the story to be plausible.He was a broken man, shut down; he didn’t want to communicate and couldn’t look me in the eye. We weren’t allowed to touch and we had to wear masks. Mary Kay ends up in a coma. Joe moves to Florida and opens a bar + bookstore called “Empathy Bordello Bar & Bookstore”. Nomi texts him to let him know that they’re pulling the plug on Mary Kay. He gets a job at the local library–he does know a thing or two about books–and that’s where he meets her: Mary Kay DiMarco. Librarian. Joe won’t meddle, he will not obsess. He’ll win her the old fashioned way . . . by providing a shoulder to cry on, a helping hand. Over time, they’ll both heal their wounds and begin their happily ever after in this sleepy town.

Did Love change Joe? The third book in the You series seeks to answer this question. (It's worth noting that I actually shrieked "Oh My God!" when I learned I had gotten an early copy of this novel to review. Thanks so much to Random House for this treat! The book releases on April 6, 2021.) The book, published this month by Little Toller Books, tells the story of their journey together during Covid and how they wrote and drew their way through one of their biggest ever challenges. Their pictures and words communicate with one another but also express the voices of two interweaving individual lives. It also describes their lives growing up in the Yorkshire Dales, then Berkshire, with their parents in a family of four brothers – a life that “orbited the church”, writes Manni. At one point they lived in the care home that their father ran.After that, Mary Kay pulls away from Joe. She feels as though she pushed Phil over the edge. She blames herself for not being there, for Nomi finding him dead and for running around with another guy. Manni and Reuben often re-enact a scene from The Col or Purple, one of their favourite films, where two sisters who have been separated are reunited in a field of purple flowers. Having come together again to embark on their tour, Reuben gave Manni a picture of a lavender field. “It was the reunion of two siblings.” But when Manni went to collect him from the care home, Reuben was not in a good way. “When I got him out of the home he was totally nonverbal. And that’s how the drawing happened. He was communicating by drawing.” One of Reuben Coe’s drawings, based on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which feature in his new book. Photograph: Manni Coe