By Stefanie Lojko – Staff Reporter

Netflix’s newest psychological thriller, “You,” based off the novel by Caroline Kepnes, is making viewers want to get rid of social media and buy curtains for their windows.

The show stars Penn Dayton Badgley as Joe Goldberg and Elizabeth Lail as Guinevere Beck. It also stars Shay Mitchell (Peach Sallinger from Pretty Little Liars) and Luca Padovan, who plays Paco, Joe’s next-door neighbor.

Many may remember Badgley as Dan Humphrey from the hit series “Gossip Girl,” “John Tucker Must Die,” and “Easy A.” He also is the lead singer of the Brooklyn based indie band MOTHXR.

The suspenseful show follows Beck as she is an aspiring author living in New York City and Joe the book store owner, who instantly takes a liking to Beck as she browses his shop.

The show seemingly starts out to be a guy noticing the beautiful blonde that walked into his show and Joe’s inner thoughts talking about how he walks and how she looks. The start of it makes the viewer take a liking to Joe because of how he’s talking about this girl. It seems as though it was love at first, until his comments get a little inappropriate for just meeting this girl.

Beck is first portrayed as a sweet girl trying to become a writer but as viewers learn more from her, she’s not all that she seems.

In the beginning, Joe is sweet and charming. As the story progresses, viewers see more of his obsessive side. He turns into a mysterious man who is concerned with collecting precious copies of books in the basement of his shop.

There are parts where viewers almost feel that Joe has good intentions because of his neighbor, Paco. He’s a troubled boy with a drug addicted mother and her abusive parole officer boyfriend. Joe gives Paco new books to read every day and that’s when you feel that maybe Joe isn’t as bad as he seems.

The writers were very good at portraying Joe as someone with mental health issues before anyone would actually be able to tell. They were also good at the developing these characters into people that would become unrecognizable compared to the beginning. They also did a good job at combining suspense and romance without overloading viewers with one or the other.

It escalates from there rapidly with Joe making very illegal and rash decisions all because he supposedly loves Beck and wants to protect her. The end unravels and viewers learn more of why Joe is the way he is and why this obsession started.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars