You Love Me

In Caroline Kepnes's For You and Only You, obsessive narrator Joe Goldberg wins a spot in a prestigious fiction writing fellowship at Harvard, falls in love with a fellow writer, and kills to protect her career.

Joe, a self-educated former bookstore owner and serial killer, secures the Glenn Shoddy Fiction Writing Fellowship by flattering its leader, Glenn Shoddy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Scabies for Breakfast, with a personal essay and sample pages from his novel, Me. Joe wrote Me during the pandemic in Orlando, where he kept a struggling author named Ethel Rose-Baker captive in his basement to force her to read his manuscript. Ethel died of Covid-related complications, and Joe disposed of her body in a swamp.

On the first day, Joe meets the other fellows: Lou, a debut novelist; O.K. DeLuca, daughter of the acclaimed author Diane Janz; Ani Platt, an Obie-winning playwright; Mats, an MIT graduate and videogame designer; and Sarah Elizabeth Swallows, a bestselling thriller writer. The last to arrive is Wonder Parish, who works at a Dunkin' Donuts in Boston and, like Joe, lacks a college degree. Joe is immediately drawn to her. He obtains her home address from a fellowship email and begins surveilling her neighborhood, learning about her widowed father Jerry, her volatile sister Cherish, her young niece Caridad, and her lifelong entanglement with Bobby Skelly, whose family owns the Dunkin' where Wonder works.

Using Ethel's Goodreads account, Joe sends Wonder a message praising her published short fiction, motivating her to start writing again. They bond over their shared outsider status and begin texting. On a date, Wonder tells Joe about Faithful, her novel-in-progress: a multigenerational Boston family saga whose protagonist, Alice, uses sexual encounters as "raunchy lampposts" on her journey toward authentic faith.

Glenn and his wife, Sly Caron, privately tell Joe he is the fellowship's star, while Sly declares Wonder "a genius." Meanwhile, Joe discovers that Wonder's family has pressured her and Bobby to marry since childhood. Convinced Bobby is a romantic rival, Joe lures him to his late aunt's house and rigs the basement stairs with marbles. Bobby falls and sustains a head injury and a broken leg.

After Joe and Wonder sleep together, Wonder reveals that Bobby is gay and closeted, using her as cover to protect himself from his anti-gay siblings. Joe realizes he nearly killed an innocent man and anonymously calls 911. Paramedics save Bobby, who blames his bookie for the attack, unwittingly giving Joe an alibi.

Wonder's fellowship workshop begins well, with the fellows praising her work. Then Glenn arrives late and systematically dismantles it, calling her protagonist "a caricature" and "a simpleton." The fellows reverse their praise to align with Glenn. Wonder is devastated and pulls away from Joe, blaming him for his closeness with Glenn.

Joe confronts Glenn at his home. Sly answers and reveals a secret: She wrote Scabies for Breakfast, not Glenn. He loved "having written" but could not produce the work, so she wrote the novel for him as an act of love. She makes Joe swear to keep the secret.

Glenn refuses to apologize to Wonder and continues to disparage her talent. Joe rigs a mountain cycling trail with fishing wire at a blind spot. Glenn, following his habit of removing his helmet and raising his arms when he senses victory, hits the wire and flies off a cliff. His death reunites Joe and Wonder, who reaches out in grief.

Sly takes over the fellowship and gives Wonder a redemptive second workshop. However, Sarah Elizabeth introduces the group to The Body on Bainbridge, a true-crime podcast about remains found on Bainbridge Island, where Joe previously lived. She begins texting Joe pointed questions about his past. Joe drives to Sarah Elizabeth's property in Rhode Island and breaks into her locked writing shed, triggering a booby trap that releases knockout gas. He wakes tied to a chair and confesses to every murder he has committed. Sarah Elizabeth records everything on cassette tapes but lets him go, keeping the recordings as research material.

Sarah Elizabeth pressures Joe to murder her college ex-boyfriend, Stephen Kershaw, a literary editor. Joe refuses. He breaks into Sly's house and discovers his manuscript being used as a coaster, untouched, while Mats's work bears enthusiastic annotations. Mats lands a major book deal through Glenn's former agent, Bernie Lapatin.

Joe and Wonder fight over a shared phrase in their manuscripts: "a mouse in the house." The argument exposes deeper tensions, and Wonder asks for space. Through Sly's computer, Joe discovers that Wonder confessed to Sly about stealing the phrase from his manuscript and that Sly counseled Wonder to leave Joe. He also discovers that Sly gutted his novel, leaving only sex scenes, and sent this version to Bernie, who offers to represent Joe as an erotica writer. Sly similarly rewrote Wonder's Faithful, replacing her raw voice with elevated literary prose, and sent the altered version to Bernie without Wonder's knowledge.

Joe tracks Wonder to the Hornblower compound, a wealthy family's property on Cape Cod where Sly arranged for her to write. They reunite passionately. Wonder confesses she stole the phrase as "an Easter egg" honoring their connection. They settle into a productive routine, writing in separate houses connected by underground tunnels.

Sly arrives and confronts them. Wonder attacks Sly for tampering with both manuscripts, but Sly produces Glenn's sunglasses, which Joe left in her kitchen during his break-in, and accuses Joe of knowing about the changes and hiding them from Wonder. Wonder turns on Joe and tells him to leave.

After a fellowship gathering at which the fellows turn against Sly, Joe drives to the compound. He finds Sly passed out on the sofa, sedated on Klonopin, carries her to the hot tub, and drowns her. He leaves a forged suicide note in her handwriting confessing that she wrote Scabies for Breakfast.

Wonder arrives shortly after and finds Joe with wet hair. Joe confesses to killing Glenn, telling Wonder he did it for her. Wonder laughs and refuses to believe him, insisting he does not have it in him to kill anyone. In the basement, they argue bitterly about each other's writing and their incompatibilities. Wonder then finds Sly's body in the hot tub and reads the forged note. She tears it apart and soaks the pieces in the water, calling it "batshit" and refusing to preserve Sly's confession. Joe is devastated that Wonder destroyed his writing without recognizing its quality. He considers killing her but decides against it, concluding she is already trapped in a cage of her own making.

In the epilogue, months have passed. Wonder publishes Faithful to moderate success, having compromised on her vision. Joe accepts he is a reader rather than a writer, recognizing that Glenn selected him not for his talent but for his lack of it. Sarah Elizabeth has become his only companion; she killed Stephen herself, shooting him on a street in Brookline, and is writing a novel inspired by Joe's life called Paul's Boutique. Joe plans to work at Trident Books in Boston and drives north to Sarah Elizabeth's cabin in Maine, still wearing Wonder's sweater and carrying her copy of The Prince of Tides, bracing himself for whoever comes next.