Print List Price:	$18.00
Kindle Price:	$10.99 Save $7.01 (39%)
Sold by:	Random House LLC Price set by seller.

Promotions apply when you purchase

Add an

audiobook with Audible narration for $12.99

Audiobook Price: $18.75

Save: $5.76 (31%)

Read with our free app

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Follow the author

Caroline Kepnes

+ Follow

More books from this author

Providence: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Caroline Kepnes (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 1,896 ratings

See all formats and editions

“Part love story, part supernatural thriller and completely engrossing” (People)—from the acclaimed author of You, now a hit Netflix series

IN DEVELOPMENT AS A PEACOCK ORIGINAL SERIES FROM THE EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS OF YOU

“A dark beauty of a book, Providence kept me up at night with characters that made my heart a little bigger.”—Jessica Knoll, New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive

Best friends in small-town New Hampshire, Jon and Chloe share an intense, near-mystical bond. But before Jon can declare his love for his soul mate, he is kidnapped, and his plans for a normal life are permanently dashed. Four years later, Jon reappears. He is different now: bigger, stronger, and with no memory of the time he was gone. Jon wants to pick up where he and Chloe left off—until the horrifying instant he realizes he possesses strange powers that pose a grave threat to everyone he cares for. Afraid of hurting Chloe, Jon runs away, embarking on a journey for answers.

Meanwhile, in Providence, Rhode Island, healthy college students and townies with no connection to one another are inexplicably dropping dead. A troubled detective prone to unexplainable hunches, Charles “Eggs” DeBenedictus suspects there’s a serial killer at work. But when he starts asking questions, Eggs is plunged into a shocking whodunit he never could have predicted.

With an intense, mesmerizing voice, Caroline Kepnes makes keen and powerful observations about human connection and how love and identity can dangerously blur together.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE

“Providence is a novel that doesn’t fit into one box—it’s tender and dark, eerie and cool, heartbreaking but also an affirmation of the power of love. Kepnes perfectly captures each character’s struggle and pain in such a unique, unconventional way that every page—every sentence—is a delightful surprise.”—Sara Shepard, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Little Liars

“Caroline Kepnes is cool right this minute. . . . [Providence is] terrifically conceived and executed. . . . Kepnes has an exhilarating, poppy, unexpected voice.”—The New York Times Book Review

“An addictive horror-tinged romance that’ll keep you guessing.”—Entertainment Weekly

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A dark beauty of a book, Providence kept me up at night with characters that made my heart a little bigger.”—Jessica Knoll, New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive

“Part love story, part supernatural thriller and completely engrossing.”—People

“Providence is a novel that doesn’t fit into one box—it’s tender and dark, eerie and cool, heartbreaking but also an affirmation of the power of love. Kepnes perfectly captures each character’s struggle and pain in such a unique, unconventional way that every page—every sentence—is a delightful surprise.”—Sara Shepard, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Little Liars

“Caroline Kepnes is cool right this minute. . . . [Providence is] terrifically conceived and executed. . . . Kepnes has an exhilarating, poppy, unexpected voice.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A fascinating genre-bending novel you won't be able to put down . . . A beautifully crafted narrative that deftly combines a sweet coming-of-age love story with elements of Lovecraftian horror and supernatural suspense, Providence is Kepnes at her best. A rich novel brimming with as much heartfelt emotion as genuine thrills, it will keep readers flipping the pages at a rapid pace, searching for answers to their own questions about love, truth, connection, and what it means to be human.”—Bustle

“An addictive horror-tinged romance that’ll keep you guessing.”—Entertainment Weekly

“This is a love story, but not your traditional type of love story. . . . Providence is a mysterious supernatural love story that blends genres with ease. What more could you want from a summer read?”—HelloGiggles

“A modern-day retelling of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror tale ‘The Dunwich Horror’ . . . An emo-monster story.”—Time
“[Providence] is equal parts love story, thriller, and horror tale. . . . Kepnes, whose previous novels deftly dealt with obsessive love, changes gears here and injects into this ‘Beauty and the Beast’-like story a deeper allegory about how far we'll go to protect the things we love the most.”—Kirkus Reviews

“[An] engrossing supernatural thriller . . . Kepnes provides readers with a spellbinding examination of what keeps people human.”—Publishers Weekly

“The infinite talent of Caroline Kepnes shines through every page of this extraordinary tale. Providence is sure to be one of the best thrillers of the year.”—Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Girl

“An artist, a mutated vigilante, a charming hunter, a sickly detective, and a literary lunatic: Caroline Kepnes brings them together in this propulsive and original story. It kept me up at night, scared and thinking.”—E. Lockhart, New York Times bestselling author of Genuine Fraud and We Were Liars

“There is something for every reader in these pages—thrills, chills, and a complex love story. Kepnes is a writer to add to your must-read pile.”—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author of I Know a Secret

About the Author

Caroline Kepnes is the author of You and Hidden Bodies. She has worked as a pop-culture journalist for Entertainment Weekly and as a TV writer on 7th Heaven and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Originally from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, she now lives in Los Angeles.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Jon

I brung Pedro home for Thanksgiving break and tomorrow I have to bring him back to school. You’re not supposed to say brung. You’re supposed to say brought. But I like the way brung sounds, like you’re cold and ringing a bell. Brrrrunggggg. Nobody can kick your ass for what you think in your mind, not even your mom. Mine is stirring spaghetti sauce on the stove and shaking her head at me.

“Get that rat outta my kitchen,” she says.

“Pedro’s not a rat,” I say. “He’s a hamster.”

My mom doesn’t budge. “Whatever he is, he’s not staying in my kitchen. I’m not gonna keep repeating myself, Jon. Take that thing outside. Now.”

She always calls it my kitchen, same way my dad calls the TV my TV and the puffy chair my chair. My only territory is my bedroom. I guess my shed too, but that’s in the woods and technically it belongs to Mrs. Curry. Everything else, in the house, indoors, belongs to my parents.

I take Pedro outside to the swing set even though I’m too old for it. He shivers.

“Come on, little guy,” I say. “You’re from New Hampshire. You can handle it.”

The truth is, I don’t know if Pedro was born here. Maybe he was born in Bermuda and got shipped here. This is my home, where I started. I was born at Derry Hospital outside of Nashua. Three days before Carrig Birkus. Sometimes, when he’s kicking my ass, I think about how we were in the hospital at the same time. I picture us as newborns in nearby cribs. I see our dads waving at us. We were equals in a way. Back then you probably couldn’t tell us apart. But now we’re opposite. Carrig is a jock. One of those guys with buddies. His life is keg parties and girls. He cracks a joke and everyone laughs, and he knows how to speak to people, how to get to them. Last month his picture was in the window at Rolling Jack’s, the sports store in the mall. He was ATHLETE OF THE MONTH.

I’m not anything of the month. Chloe laughed when I said that to her.

“That’s a good thing,” she said. “The worst thing you can do is peak in middle school.”

She always says the right thing, the nice thing. I can picture her photo and her name up at another store, PERSON OF THE MONTH. I’d never say that though. I know that much.

Tomorrow we go back to school, which means seeing her again, Chloe Smells Like Cookies. That’s what I call her in my head. Every time my mom makes cookies, no matter what they are, oatmeal raisin or chocolate chip or caramel, they smell like Chloe. Chloe Smells Like Cookies doesn’t make fun of me. She sits with me at lunch even though the other girls laugh at her and the other guys tell her she is wasting her time on a faggot.

Chloe hates that word. She says after high school she’s gonna live in New York City where nobody uses that word. She thinks the people in our school have small brains and small hearts. She says New York is like Sesame Street for grown-ups, everyone has big hearts and you can be anything you want to be. She was there for Thanksgiving this week. Her parents took her to see the parade. She saw all the floats when they were shriveled and flat on the ground.

We’ve been texting a lot all week. She says I’d love New York.

It’s so much bigger than New Hampshire even though it’s smaller, you know?

I get it, Chloe. I wish I was there.

Of course you do. You always get it!

My mom yells: “Dinner!”

I write back fast: See you tomorrow.

She sends me a smiley face. That’s code for Me too, Jon.

The house smells like spaghetti and broccoli, and my mom asks if I left Pedro outside and I tell her I did even though he’s in my pocket. My dad picks up the broccoli and puts it in the microwave.

“What are you doing?” my mom asks. “It’s cooked just fine.”

“I can’t stand that smell,” he says.

“It’s good for you, that smell.”

My dad grunts. He’s a burly guy who does drywall and plays pool. A lot of the guys around here think he’s weird because he has a Scottish accent.

I sneak bits of spaghetti into my pocket. I almost get away with it but Pedro nips at my finger and I yelp and my mom slams her fork down.

“These damn schools. What the hell is there to be learned from taking a rat home at your age? Aren’t you a little old for this nonsense?”

“We’re mentoring a class at the elementary school,” I tell her. “None of the kids in third grade could take him so I volunteered.”

My parents look sad, like all this time they thought Pedro was here because he had to be here, not because I wanted him.

“A lot of people have pets,” I say. “Carrig Birkus has a dog.”

I shouldn’t have said his name. They know I’m not friends with Carrig Birkus anymore. The last time he invited me to a birthday party was in fourth grade, when people still had parties with invitations, when your mom made you invite every kid. It was a Batman invitation so I showed up in my Spider-Man outfit but everybody else was in normal clothes. Sometimes I feel bad for my parents, like they’d do better with one of the other babies from that day, the kind who plays sports and wears the right clothes to a stupid party.

I look at my mom, right at her, like you do when you want something. “He’s a clean animal,” I say. “I promise he will stay in my room.”

My mom cuts her spaghetti. She doesn’t roll it around her fork like people in New York do on TV. Her name is Penny and she’s from New Hampshire, so she talks the way people here talk and she grew up on a farm where the animals stay outside.

“It’s your room,” she says. “You want to live in a disgusting pig sty and let animals poop about your things, that’s your business. Just don’t go coming to me to clean up.”

On the way upstairs I sneak a box of Oreos out of the cupboard. My dad is talking to my mom about the Patriots and the Super Bowl and my mom is talking about Giselle and how beautiful she is. They speak the same language only different. What comes out of my mom’s mouth never affects what comes out of my dad’s mouth. I think Chloe and I are better at talking. What Chloe says always affects what I say.

Upstairs, I put Pedro on my bed and bring an Oreo up to my nose and inhale, but Chloe smells like homemade cookies. I take out today’s Nashua Telegraph and reread Pedro the headlines from this morning. Today is Sunday, the biggest paper of the week. I can’t read the whole thing to Pedro, but I do my best. We make it to Section C, Lifestyles, and I think he likes it.

I love news. It reminds you that there’s a whole world out there, a world of people who’ve never even heard of Carrig Birkus. Every day is new, every paper, every story. In a book or a movie you only get one story. But in a newspaper, you get happy stories, sad stories, stories that you can’t understand about mortgages, scary stories about robberies, meth heads, that kid who got kidnapped in Dover.

Last Christmas my parents got me a subscription to the Telegraph. It was all I wanted. I was nervous they weren’t gonna get it for me and I opened my last present, a sweater box. I was bummed. But I tore away the tissue paper and found a receipt for a subscription. I cheered and my mother laughed. I love it when she laughs, and it doesn’t happen a lot. She said she will never understand me.

“I hate newspapers,” she said. “Who wants to know about all the terrible things people are doing?”

“I want to know about everything,” I told her.

“But it has absolutely nothing to do with you whatsoever, Jon,” she said, befuddled. “Nothing in there is your business at all.”

My dad was tearing the tag off his Patriots jersey. “Well,” I said, “those Patriots don’t have anything to do with Dad.”

I never heard my mom laugh so hard. She hit the couch, and my dad flew into a light rage, telling me it’s not those Patriots. It’s The Patriots. We had ham and cake and peppermint ice cream and the only thing wrong about that day was that there was no newspaper. They don’t publish on Christmas. Then again, it only added to the joy of the next day, when I woke up early to get the paper out of the special box my dad had installed next to our mailbox. It was good to see that the world was back on again.

When it’s time to go to bed, I make a special place for Pedro. I use advertising flyers to build him a cozy bed. My mom is crazy. There’s nothing dirty about him. If and when he poops, it won’t even get on my sheets. “Good night, Pedro,” I say. I close my eyes and I like the sound of him breathing, like it’s a hard thing to do.

The next morning my mom hits my door once. “School!”

It’s what she says every morning. Pedro pooped in his advertising bed and I crumple it up and bring it downstairs and throw it in the trash in the kitchen. My mom points at the trash with a spatula. “Is there poop in there?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Then bring it outside.”

“But it snowed.”

“And since when are you allergic to snowflakes?”

I take Pedro and his bed outside and look at the trees at the edge of our yard. My mom and dad don’t know that it takes double the time for me to get to school every day because I have to go the back way, through Mrs. Curry’s yard, with the thorns that branch out, then alongside her fence and through the mud clearing near the Dumpsters and then back through the Shawnee family’s yard, by their swing set, and then finally down their driveway and onto Carnaby Street where my school is. It would be so much faster to walk out the front door of our house and turn left and walk down Birch all the way to Carnaby. That’s what everyone on my street does. But I can’t. Carrig and Penguin and those other guys, they come after me if I go the short way, they pound on me. They take my newspaper and smack me with it or they throw snowballs at me, black and brown and icy, the kind that hurt. When it’s hot out, they jump me or knock my bag onto the ground.

Chloe Smells Like Cookies takes the bus. She knows about my back way bramble route to avoid Carrig Birkus. She knows everything, more than my mom or my dad or the teachers. She’s the only person who knows about my shed, our shed.

I go there every single day after school and I bring Fluffernutters. Some days I hear her coming and my heart beats fast and then she comes in, throws her backpack down and starts complaining. Other days she doesn’t come and it starts to get dark and I go online and see that she’s busy with her other friends. But those days she does come, when I hear her in the woods, charging toward me, those are the ones that count.

Chloe always says we get along because we’re both only children. She hates that phrase. “It’s bad any way you cut it,” she said once. “It’s either like, ‘Oh you, what do you matter? You’re only a kid.’ Or it’s like you’re just not enough because there’s only one of you.” And then she licked her lips and looked away. “We’re not only anything,” she said. “We’re great.” See, I have that going for me, being an only child. Carrig Birkus, he has four brothers and a couple sisters. Imagine living with all those kids. I can’t, not really. Me and Chloe, we have more in common.

My mom opens the slider. She yells, “Breakfast!”

Inside, she made burnt eggs and bacon and my dad is reading the paper. He gets to have it first and he gives it to me section by section. I put the pages back together so that it feels new, like nobody has looked through it. The good thing is that most days he only reads the sports section.

“So, at the end of the year somebody gets to keep Pedro,” I say.

My mom looks at my dad and my dad puffs out his cheeks and my mom groans and my dad looks at me. “You keep him out of your mother’s kitchen, yes?”

“Yes!” I say, and I can’t wait to get to school and tell Mrs. McMurphy that I want to keep Pedro. I can’t wait to tell Chloe Smells Like Cookies. I think you can invite a girl over without weirding her out if you have a pet. I think that’s why Carrig Birkus has a dog.

I can’t get to school fast enough. I tear through the brambles and I’m out of breath as if I’m running from bad guys. I run too fast and a thorn snags me. My cheek bleeds. I stop. I take off my glove and put my hand on my face. There is bright red blood. Pedro is in my pocket, shifting. I take him out and now there is blood on him. I apologize.

I hear something in the bushes though there is never anyone else here. I turn around and my whole life doesn’t flash before my eyes, just the past few hours, the headline on the cover of today’s paper—cyber monday: is it worth it?—and the smell of last night’s broccoli against the morning eggs, Pedro’s heavy breathing, the snow, my blood on Pedro’s Ovaltine-colored fur.

But it isn’t one of the kids from school coming at me. It’s a sub we had last year or the year before. Mr. Blair. Nobody liked him. He wore his phone on his belt and he was losing his hair on the top of his head and people laughed at him all the time. But I didn’t. I didn’t.

He’s coming at me fast and it turns out I am not the kind of kid who springs into action when it’s time to fight. I freeze. I choke. Same way I do on the baseball field at recess.

The blow comes from high above and something hits my head. Brrrrungggg. Pedro runs when I hit the ground. He can’t send help. He’s an animal, and like my mom says, he belongs out here. I don’t.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0728G2VWS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lenny (June 19, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 19, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3808 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 359 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #615,752 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #3,411 in Coming of Age Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #4,424 in Kidnapping Thrillers
- #4,604 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
4.2 1,896 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Caroline Kepnes

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

CAROLINE KEPNES is the New York Times bestselling author of YOU, HIDDEN BODIES, PROVIDENCE, YOU LOVE ME and FOR YOU AND ONLY YOU. The Netflix series You is an adaptation of her Joe Goldberg/You novels.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

1,896 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all photos

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Asia Colon

Love, Family, and Friendship

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2020

Verified Purchase

For all the reviews of people saying this is no Joe and Genevieve book. Three words for you. "You're Absolutely Right." It's not a Joe and Genevieve book, that’s the point! If You want another Joe and Chloe book, then you're just going to have to wait for the third installment. An author is allowed to write about other characters in a completely different world then their best sellers. This is a book about, Jon, Chloe, and Eggs and it is fantastic!

Before reading Providence, I had taken a hiatus on book reading. It had been over four years since I read a book that I could pick up and not want to put back. I hadn't read a book that had connected to me on an emotional level in such a long time. Originally, I had bought the book as a joke. My boyfriend kept telling me that I need to finish at least one of the many books I had bought over the years. We had recently binged watched season 2 of You and so I was looking up Caroline Kepnes books. I imagined me reading the You series and thinking "I like the show, I should be able to read the series no biggie." BUT I have a type like most readers do, and my type of book is supernatural. I live in and breath a good book about vampires, witches, werewolves, etc. Naturally I was on the fence on reading You, since it is not my preferred genre. But that’s not what drew me to Providence. The title itself caught my eyes.

I grew up in the capital of the smallest state in the United States, Providence, Rhode Island. I went into this book just buying it as a statement piece. I did not read a single review, or even what it was about. All I knew, was the cover felt like home. I wanted it for my collection, memorabilia from my childhood. I didn't think that it would take place in the city I grew up. I didn’t think I would fall in love with the story. I read (or should I say started) so many books over the past years and each one I put down and just couldn’t finish them. I didn't think after turning page by page that I would recognize street names, or my high school or even our greatest attraction for tourist, the Water Fires. I smiled at every reference to home that was brought up in the book. No one knows Providence, or even Rhode Island unless you have lived there. But the book takes place in more then just little old Rhode Island. Any New Englander can find home in this book.
Any who on to the book. . .

THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!

If you enjoy supernatural beings, destiny, love, family, and friendship, then THIS is the book for you! Right off the back you are rooting for Jon. You love him. You want him to have the world, because he deserves it! He is genuine, and real, a lost soul in a world filled of broken people. He wants to love, he wants to live and at a young age that is all taken from him. You want Jon to be victorious at the end. He doesn't deserve the cards he has been dealt. Each section that features Jon, you long for his redemption, and each page you turn you find that Caroline Kepnes is NOT going to give us what we want so easily. Just like Jon, we need to work for it.

Then there is Chloe, a broken girl. A girl that is too ashamed to admit she loves the boy that everyone picks on. A girl that would do anything just to have that boy. She is strong in her own way and you get to see her blossom into a beautiful woman by the end of the book. But my favorite part about Chloe's chapters are you get to feel all her pain. You understand that no matter what, she will always love . . . him. Chloe is not just any girl. She is a girl so in love with something she can't have that she tortures herself for the fantasy of it. A hopeless romantic and she uses her pain to create masterpieces.

Good ol' Eggs. A middle-aged man so determined to solve a mystery that his pride doesn't see what’s happening around him. His world is falling apart, and no one can tell him he is wrong. Eggs is the type of man that will risk even the loss of his family if it means he has proven to everyone that he was right. To him that is worth the sacrifice. He wants to figure out what is happening in Providence. He knows that not everything is what it appears to be. You want to hate Eggs, but by the end of the story if Eggs doesn't make you cry than one question . . . Are you even human?

I give this book a 5-star rating because that’s what it deserves. I couldn't put this book down. I read 200 pages the first. It was so good that I refused to continue reading it because I didn't want it to end. After a two-week break, I put my stubbornness aside and finished the book. If you plan on reading this book after You. Put You out of your mind because this book will pull at your heart strings in ways I couldn't imagine, and I am longing for a sequel.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

E. N. Russikoff

Something different, something gripping, something incredible

Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2018

Verified Purchase

I feel like books are becoming more diversified. They’re not just one or two things anymore. Where the Shadow Lies was a mysterious thriller with a side of romance. Folsom was a political romance with a side of dystopia. And this book—Providence—is a romantic mystery with a side of science fiction. It’s impressive really. People are so complicated; we’re never just one or two things. We’re many things, and we have many sides. So it makes sense that what we like to read is just as complex.

I must admit, I was a little reluctant to read this book. I’m not a sci-fi fan. I like books I can relate to, and supernatural qualities are often unrelatable. Unless I’m smack dab in the middle of watching a Marvel movie, I shrug off the idea of super powers. A web can’t stop a train from crashing, a root can’t defuse a bomb, and a hammer can’t crush a building with one swing. It’s unrealistic to the point of being ridiculous. (Sorry, Marvel fans! I know, I know…you’re booing me right about now.)

But that’s what’s so great about this book. Caroline creates an environment that is unlikely and makes it completely believable. Once you’re immersed in the story, you find that you’re less focused on the supernatural element and more focused on the brokenness of the characters and their unjust circumstances. It becomes a matter of who instead of a matter of how.

Let’s talk about the main character, Jon Bronson. On the surface, he is a villain or—as he refers to himself many times—a “monster.” He harms people and, at times, he feels no regret. You should dislike him because of what he does, but you find yourself sympathizing with him because of who he is. Sound familiar?

If you’ve read Caroline’s first book, You, then you’re very familiar with its main character, Joe Goldberg. Like Jon, Joe is also a villain. He harms people too, and he seldom regrets his actions. And yet, villain or not, you find the guy endearing. Some would even say they’d want to be BFFs with him (ahem, ME).

Reading about Jon made me think about Joe. But aside from their three-letter, three-syllable names and “monsterlike” qualities, the comparison pretty much stops there. While there is a similar cadence in the books—story-wise, Providence is a very different book.

One of the ways Providence is different is its manipulation of time. The novel spans many years. In that time, settings change and most characters evolve. There’s a real sense of “growing up”…or not. You see that some people mature while others remain stagnant. Some people deteriorate while others flourish.

Now, I know you’re all wondering about the ending, and without giving much away, I will say, I had some questions at the end of this book. My thoughts went like this: “Wouldn’t they have [something spoilerish]?” “Why didn’t they [something equally spoilerish]?” “Do they end up [MAJORLY SPOILERISH]?” Some readers have docked the book a star or two because of these questions, but I honestly love novels that leave you guessing. I don’t want everything tied up in a perfect little bow. The fact that Caroline left a few things up to interpretation says (to me) that she trusts her readers. She thinks we’re intelligent, that we can handle the mystery. This just makes me respect her more.

My advice to you, should you decide to read this book (and you really, really should) is to go into it with an open mind. Don’t think, “This won’t be my cup of tea.” Don’t think, “I loved You, so I know I’ll love this book.” Don’t think, “All villains deserve to die” (okay, maybe that one’s a bit harsh). DO think, “I want to escape,” “I want to be entertained,” “I want to read something different,” “I want to use my imagination.” If you can do these things, then you’ll love this book as much as I do.

51 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Lucas Alvim

Não li o livro ainda,mas espero muito dele.

Reviewed in Brazil on September 23, 2023

Verified Purchase

Translate review to English

lulu

Good author

Reviewed in Canada on April 22, 2019

Verified Purchase

I have read both previous novels by Ms. Kepnes and really enjoy her writing style. Bought this item from wordery and am pleased with the speed and the quality of the book and would recommend this seller. I would buy from them again.

Jaqueline Herrera Simpson

Buen libro.

Reviewed in Mexico on December 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

Buen libro. Me gusta mucho el estilo de escritura de Caroline Kepnes.

Translate review to English

Andrea

Pieni voti

Reviewed in Italy on April 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

Bellissimo.
Mi piace sia la scrittrice che il genere.
Lo consiglio vivamente.

Translate review to English

Cassy

Hauntingly Beautiful

Reviewed in Germany on August 17, 2019

Verified Purchase

This was hands down; the must exhilaratingly beautiful novel that I have ever read. It broke my heart yet left me completely satisfied. I loved 'You' and thought that there was no way the author could possibly top that story but... she killed it! Simply put, I'm consumed. I read this book in 5 days the first time and in 2 days immediately after. Buy this book! You will want to read it over and over again.

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Follow the author

Image Unavailable

Providence: A Novel Kindle Edition

Customers who bought this item also bought

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

Videos

About the author

Caroline Kepnes

Customer reviews

Reviews with images

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries