Hidden Bodies
by Caroline Kepnes
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Joe Goldberg is no stranger to hiding bodies. In the past ten years, this thirty-something has buried four of them, collateral damage in his quest for love. Now he’s heading west to Los Angeles, the city of second chances, determined to put his past behind him. In Hollywood, Joe blends in effortlessly with the other young upstarts. He eats guac, works in a bookstore, and flirts with a journalist neighbor. But while others seem fixated on their own reflections, Joe can’t stop looking over his shoulder. The problem with hidden bodies is that they don’t always stay that way. They re-emerge, like dark thoughts, multiplying and threatening to destroy what Joe wants most: true love. And when he finds it in a darkened room in Soho House, he’s more desperate than ever to keep his secrets buried. He doesn’t want to hurt his new girlfriend—he wants to be with her forever. But if she ever finds out what he’s done, he may not have a choice…
Hidden Bodies is the sequel to the psychological thriller You by Caroline Kepnes. I read that novel a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It was unique and unexpected and being in Joe Goldberg’s mind was a strange, twisted experience. I didn’t see how the sequel would disappoint when so much of the impact of the book comes from the narrative style, being first person from Joe’s perspective. It seemed like as long as the author could stay true to Joe’s voice, the story would be compelling.
I was wrong.
Hidden Bodies was not what I’d thought it would be. I didn’t read the synopsis before reading this book because I was already intrigued enough to read it and figured going in blind was best. I’m not sure it was. I think I would’ve had more of a sense of how different this sequel would be to the first book and would’ve been better prepared for where this story went.
The premise of You is fairly simple—a man becomes obsessed with a woman, stalks her and does whatever it takes to become the most important, all consuming thing in her life. I wondered what Hidden Bodies could do that would maintain that level of intrigue and dread without being too similar to You and becoming boring. Hidden Bodies had an interesting, unexpected start that went from feeling like catching up with Joe being his ordinary, crazy, obsessive self to having the rug pulled out from under us. It seemed promising, but overall, this novel lacked a real sense of direction and the urgency that made You so compelling.
An argument could be made that the overwhelming aimlessness of this plot is just an extension or expression of Joe’s mind, that it’s less sharp and focused without a true “victim” in mind (like Beck) and that it makes sense for the course of the plot to reflect this as he changes. Except that while Joe does change a bit, he’s still himself—obsessive and strange, brutal and willing to take out people who get in his way—and the plot needed to really revolve around those aspects of him instead of including them in ways that felt tacked on for drama and ultimately of no importance. The plot felt lost and meandering, the delivery of events somewhat interesting but leading me to question what the point of any of it was. The plot sucked most of the interest and intrigue from Joe’s narration and any potential for a compelling story along with it. The focus of the plot was made known early in the book, then seemed to shift completely, leaving that original focus forgotten and making it seem like a cheap segue that was only necessary for getting him to LA. From there, I couldn’t tell you what the point of the plot was. I asked myself that question many times while reading Hidden Bodies. What is the point of any of this? Honestly, it was somewhat boring and droning, even with Joe’s unique voice coloring it all.
You felt like it almost existed in a vacuum with the focus solely on Beck. Other characters came into it, but mostly only in relation to Beck. Joe only considered them in respect to how they became an obstacle to him and Beck. The characters weren’t likable, but they played their part in the plot and in Joe’s obsessive development. The problem with Hidden Bodies is that every single character was unlikable but there was nothing worthwhile happening plot-wise to feel that reading about them made sense or was worth it. I didn’t understand why Joe was bothering with them and hated spending time reading about them. Every character was awful, the lives they lived were irritating to read about and felt like a waste of my time. Where was the plot? What was developing that gave these scenes a purpose? There was just so much going on that I didn’t care about in the slightest. The plot veered so far off course from where it started and I couldn’t see the way back.
You was absolutely compelling and had such a sense of urgency and dread. Readers knew it was going somewhere and cared. It didn’t matter that characters were unlikable, readers cared because we knew Joe was a psycho and we feared for them as we watched his obsession intensify. Hidden Bodies proves it’s very difficult to read about unlikable characters for over 400 pages when there’s no real reason to care for them. This plot lacked any edge or urgency. In fact, whenever Joe did something that could be considered typical Joe, it felt gratuitous. Drama for the sake of drama, because the plot had nothing else going for it and readers needed a bit of excitement. Even when these things made sense in a technical way in relation to the plot, they often felt pointless.
Believability was an issue throughout Hidden Bodies. Everything in You felt realistic, believable and developed organically. When Joe killed people, it was done in a way that made sense given the knowledge and tools at his disposal. Joe was smart. He knew what to consider, although his crimes and murders weren’t the most sophisticated imaginable. However, in Hidden Bodies, while the sophistication of the crimes certainly doesn’t increase, the believability of what Joe could accomplish without getting caught is stretched very, very thin. Some of the more gratuitous happenings really stretched this. They had little impact on me as a reader and only increased the sense that everything was working out for Joe. Sure, things got in his way but overall, the ease with which some things happened and the way certain plot points came together was unbelievable. There are so many examples of everything being too easy and working out just so for Joe and it was completely unrealistic.
*Warning* The example I am going to give is technically a spoiler, but doesn’t ruin anything important. I mention it in the next two paragraphs.
At one point in the book, Joe breaks into the apartment of a woman he doesn’t know. She ends up taking him down and tying him up…but doesn’t call the cops. She gives him a chance to talk his way out of it, which of course he does. This is infuriating. The woman gives her reasons as to why she didn’t want to involve the police, but I found it unrealistic. If you wake up to a strange man standing over your bed after he let himself into your house, you call the cops. The fact that she didn’t is an example of things just working out for Joe. What are the chances the one woman he walks in on is also the one woman who wouldn’t call the cops immediately? Pretty slim, I’d think.
This also ties into another issue I had with Hidden Bodies. In You, I really appreciated that Beck was written as a real, flawed woman instead of the “good girl” archetype that is often everyone’s idea of a victim you can sympathize with. It felt intentional, making Beck messy and giving her a slew of her own negative traits instead of perpetuating the idea that the victims worth sympathizing with are the ones that match everyone’s ideas of a “good girl.” In Hidden Bodies, I am not a fan of how some of the female characters are written. Joe thinks about women in controlling, often grotesque and negative ways, how they benefit him and how he “owns” them. That is his character and is a staple of the narration. However, the fact that the women in Hidden Bodies are written in ways that seem to match how he already thinks of women—as if they’re always looking for attention, always presenting themselves for men and him specifically, among other unflattering stereotypes—is not believable and is not enjoyable to read. It was frustrating. I do not buy that every woman Joe comes into contact with in LA is like this, desperate, predictable, and wanting to sleep with him right away or at all. The woman in the example I gave above was also mentioned to be a women’s self-defense instructor. This feels like a thin, eye roll-worthy justification for her as a character, as if readers are supposed to hear that and forgive the sheer stupidity and unbelievability of the situation unfolding before us. And then—to top this awful scene off—she puts on cute clothes and lipgloss for Joe and tries to get his number. So incredibly, infuriatingly (!!!!!) unbelievable and frustrating. It panders to Joe’s already twisted ideas of women and was disappointing. Delilah’s immediate and intense neediness also fit that description. Love was a strange character, one that I didn’t enjoy reading about and who ultimately disappointed me a lot. I won’t go into detail, but certain events were upsetting and (I hate to use this word again) unbelievable. People like these female characters exist in the world, yes, but I don’t like that it seemed every woman Joe interacted with was some version of who he already expected women to be. Of course Joe was going to think of them in such terms, but the fact that their actions lined up with his ideas was the problem.
Throughout reading Hidden Bodies, I had my own ideas of twists that could’ve been developing behind the scenes, things that could potentially increase my interest in the overall story and bring some sense of intrigue to the plot. Sadly, none of them came to pass. I even had a moment of hope as I closed in on the ending that maybe something big was about to happen, that maybe characters were about to surprise me and salvage a little part of the story. Unfortunately, I was wrong and the plot wrapped up in the same way it had spent the last 400 pages: by angering me. So much of this novel was unbelievable and the end was no exception.
What a disappointing novel. Hidden Bodies is a perfect example of an unnecessary sequel. You was a fantastic, compelling, and tense novel. Hidden Bodies is what happens when publishers want another bestselling hit to piggyback off the success of the first book. The only sense of urgency I felt while reading this was my own urgency to be done with it. I don’t think I’ll be reading the third book in this series.
2/5
Have you read Hidden Bodies? Were you as disappointed as I was? Let me know what you think in the comments!
Thanks for reading,
Madison