#36 Hidden Bodies

Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes

The much anticipated sequel to You. I read You last year and it was a breath of fresh air, a psychological thriller about a stalker told from the stalkers point of view. It was hard hitting and action packed, i flew threw it and couldnt wait to pick up this sequel.

Hidden Bodies once again follows Joe Goldberg, who by all definitions is a bit of a psycho. After brutally murdering his ex girlfriend Beck he has moved onto greener pastures and picks up his life in New York to move to LA where he finds new love with Amy Adam who appears to be care free and also off the grid which is very important to Joe as he cannot stalk her constantly online, the way he did with Beck. She is the polar opposite of Beck and their relationship is going well until she disappears....

With You and carried on within Hidden Bodies the main common theme is how much of an ass the protagonist is but he is intentionally written this way. He has no redeeming qualities what so ever, so much so that it makes you feel sorry for him almost.

The new characters were very mismatched, firstly you have Amy, whos quite likeable but quirky for the sake of quirky, she actually gets super annoying after a while. Then theres Love (stupid character name) and her twin brother Forty (another stupid name) they are much of a muchness, quite bland, superficial characters. Love being slightly better than Forty. There was several other characters essential to sub plots but none overly relevant to mention. The introduction of so many new characters made the overall story very disjointed. I didnt find any of them interesting, at all.

There was too much change in this book, it was too full on. He read as a different character, in LA he is written as a sex magnet whereas he was written as creepy when in New York. He was still witty and charismatic but i wasnt sure if the new side of him was written as character development. It was very different from the first book but much more light hearted but unfortunately i didnt enjoy it as much.

This was a slow read for me, it took me over a week to plough through it. it wasnt as captivating as the first book and it felt about 100 pages too long, a lot of chapters read as fillers and were unnecessary to the overall plot. The ending was wonderfully done, the last 50 pages kept me guessing constantly and it really pulled its rating up for me and lessened the disappointment. I really hope this will be a trilogy as the ending didnt feel like a conclusion and i really want to see what happens.