I promise this isn't a review. You can find my reviews on Goodreads from now on. I recently read a book that I feel the need to open up a dialog on.



A question that I see asked a lot (in writing groups) is whether or not the reader can tell if the author is male or female by reading the book. In You by Caroline Kepnes I knew the author was a female, but if you had covered up the book cover and asked me what gender the author was I would have told you that the author was a male. She did such a good job finding that character's voice that I couldn't tell the book was written by a female. It could have been because Joe isn't the typical male. He reads instead of playing video games (both are fun, he could have done either and it wouldn't have bothered me). I recently read Final Girls, and I knew without a doubt that the book had been written by a man. The name Riley is unisex and we were meant to think it was a woman writing the books, but I already knew it was a male long before. Knowing the book was written by a man using a pen name didn't make the book any less enjoyable, but I could tell it wasn't a woman writing the book. He glossed over things that women might have spent more time on, and some of his interactions between the female characters were a bit odd. He did do his best to give the characters their own personalities (the MC steals, Sam/Tina calls everyone babe). He gave them each their own voice, it just didn't sound like a female voice (or at least what I think of as female). I don't remember ever reading a book and feeling like that.