Buy You
Special: $12.73 (Regular price: $16.99)
Publisher: Harper Teen
Format: Hardcover
Reviewer: Melissa on April 12, 2011
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
It wasn’t supposed to go this way. You’re Kyle Chase, an average 15-year-old high school sophomore, but if everything in your life was just average, then you wouldn’t be here in the first place. And you wouldn’t need an explanation for all this blood because it wouldn’t be here. Did you miss the clues or did you simply ignore them? Can you still make everything right if you think fast or have you past the point of no return? Nominated for the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults award in 2011, You is the captivating story of Kyle Chase and the small choices that he both makes and allows to happen, which ultimately lead to his own destruction.
With You, Charles Benoit illustrates a brilliant usage for the second person narrator, and simultaneously, makes one nostalgic for the Choose Own Adventure books of your youth. Of course, unlike those books which gave readers the chance to make decisions about how the story would play out, Benoit casts the reader in the role of apathetic Kyle, who find him or herself unable to stop the novel’s events no matter how hard they might try. By contrast, Choose Your Own Adventure novels always permitted the reader the chance to cheat by reversing their decisions and selecting a new path, whether that was the author’s intention or not.
By limiting the decisions that readers can make in his novel, Benoit makes it easier for readers to get drawn into the character and story. But of course, that’s not all he does. He also utilizes a structure for You, which is certain to gain him additional fans in the YA reading public. In my opinion, one of the most intriguing plot devices is to present readers with elements of the novel’s conclusion from the very first page. This narrative decision is played out in picture perfect form by the author of You by which I mean that it offers enough information that teen and adult readers alike will assume they know where the novel will lead them. Of course, we all know what happens when we assume something – our expectations will likely be flouted later. Readers might think they know where the novel will lead them – I know I did – but when the end is at hand, I didn’t know the what, where, and when of the events. After reading this novel, I’d say that the word “predictability” isn’t in Benoit’s vocabulary.
Beyond the suspenseful nature of this novel, You appeals on the level of large questions, questions that don’t only affect teens. The biggest question that Benoit raises is one about taking responsibility for our lives. Do we need to accept more responsibility for how our lives turn out, whether because of the actions we take or the one’s we merely permit? If we’re unhappy or not; where we want to be; are we the only ones who can accept the ultimate blame? While Kyle Chase is the main character to whom these questions apply, as a reader of this novel, you’ll definitely feel the weight of them in a personal way. As one might expect, however, these questions can’t be answered easily. In fact, the more you know about Kyle’s world, the more likely you’ll want to place, at least some of the blame, elsewhere. Why? Because in addition to asking these colossal questions, Benoit demonstrates, through Kyle’s experience, that individuals can and do manipulate their situation for their own benefit or amusement, which adds another important level of complication.
As I said, these questions are huge, and they apply equally to readers of any age from twelve or fourteen all the way up into adulthood; they’ll be equally disturbing and unsettling no matter what your age. Will your world be shattered by the time you reach You‘s end? The only way to know for sure is to pick this novel up – but first, prepare yourself – it’s going to be a ride you won’t soon forget.
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Melissa has always been a voracious reader of fiction and has an M.A. in English Literature to prove it. Like many other adults, she got caught up in the young adult crossover fiction phenomenon. Now, one of her great joys comes from sharing her love of YA lit on this popular review site. Come with expectations of intellect, magic, and honest reviews, and you won’t be disappointed.
