Lifetime Network’s, “You,” Actually Improves Upon the Source Material

My wife is the really big reader in the household. Pause now as I double check with her how many books she has read so far this year; 73 and counting. I try to keep up, but she just inhales them. And every once in a while she demands — yes, “demands” is the proper word — she demands of me that I take her recommendation and take the time to read one or two that have really stuck with her. And one such book was You, by Caroline Kepnes.

I’m a big fan, of experimental literature, especially those that play with the narrator and its conventions. DANGER — THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD

A BRIEF SYNOPSIS

You, aptly named, is, told primarily in the second person, as our protagonist, Joe — definitely more of an antihero I should say -stalks, cons, and murders his way into the affairs of leading lady Guinevere Beck, taking out horrifically (and at times a bit anticlimactically) all those who oppose him in his quest for love, including Beck’s ex-boyfriend and her obsessive (unbeknownst to her) lesbian curious (or Beck curious, any way) best friend, Peach Salinger — and direct descendant of the great J.D.

Along the way we learn the highs and lows of managing a retail bookstore that specializes in rare books and the benefits of having a private, quiet…