I have only been able to access the excerpt available via Google Books.
The central work here is not a romance novel and although the showrunner is stated to have characterised it as an exploration of romantic "tropes that we have embraced as a culture" the author frames their discussion solely in terms of romance fiction. Furthermore, the characterisation of the genre is unfortunately based on scholarship from the 1980s (although there are some references to Twilight and Fifty Shades). I feel it would have been more productive to focus specifically on "dark romance," written in the same century as the show:
Romance, perhaps more than any other fictional genre, has an uneasy relationship to the #MeToo movement. The genre's representations of gender relations, gender violence, sex, and consent often display in fiction what the #MeToo movement works to dispel in the non-fictional world. Netflix's You - a romance that works to show romance fans that they have little choice but to fall in love with the hero, no matter how vile he may be - is, however, a show born of #MeToo. As showrunner Sera Gamble explains point-blank in a 2018 interview, "The conversation that we're having right now around the #MeToo movement ... is a primary purpose of the show ... to look at what's really going on underneath the tropes that we have embraced as a culture" (Villarreal). You attempts a #MeToo-esque satire of the romance genre from the inside out and takes aim, in particular, at the romance-revenge formula. As Tania Modleski writes, romances are, at their core, revenge fantasies (1982, 45). The heroes of romance usually begin by belittling, mocking, gaslighting, physically endangering, or harming their beloveds. This dynamic, however, typically goes topsy-turvy once the two fall in love; the heroine eventually learns to use the hero's devotion to her to tame him and bring him "to his knees" (Modleski 1982, 45). The early seasons of You invite the viewer to fall in love with its hero, Joe Goldberg. The first season demonstrates how romance conventions mask and excuse the male brutality that drives the first half of the romance-revenge formula, deploying these conventions to pull at viewers' heartstrings; season two meditates on romantic revenge and frames Joe as a sympathetic, pitiful victim of his lovers' retribution. At the same time, however, these seasons slowly magnify the formula's embedded violence - which usually operates undercover and unremarked upon in romance media - so that it becomes unignorable. (101)
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To rid himself of any rivals for Beck's affection, he murders both her boyfriend and her best friend. Up until this point, Joe is actually not so very different from other canonical romance heroes. He may be a stalker, abuser, and serial killer, but he's hardly unique. After all, Christian Grey of Fifty Shades of Grey stalks [...] And in the Twilight series, Edward Cullen - a serial killer - fantasizes about killing his beloved, Bella Swan. (102)
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The first two seasons play up the romance-revenge formula to demonstrate how easily it can make you love the hero in a way that you shouldn't; in harsh, unforgiving light, it shows how romance conventions can distract from and excuse male brutality and how the revenge narrative can make the once-brutal hero seem pitiable. The idea was to introduce a dissonant feeling into viewers, to make viewers who knew that they shouldn't root for a serial killer - who had just killed his own girlfriend - to get yet another girl feel emotionally compelled to do just that. Ideally, the viewer could then trace this dissonant compulsion back to its roots and find fault with the romance genre. [...] Throughout the show's first two seasons, however, there were apprehensive and vocal critics who suspected that You owed its success more to irresponsible titillation than its bid for social commentary. Their concerns were fueled by evidence across the internet that viewers were, as intended, falling for Joe, but they were not, as intended, growing disgusted with that adoration, and they were certainly not re-evaluating the romance industry. (106)
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Though romance has made many allowances for male brutality, infidelity is largely out of bounds for the genre. In her famous survey of romance readers, Janice Radway asked what should "never be included in a romance"? Respondents selected and ranked three responses; the answer that received the most votes was "bed hopping," beating out both "rape" and a "cruel hero" (1984, 74). And so, while these You fans did eventually grow disgusted with Joe's behavior - as the show had actively encouraged from the beginning - it was infidelity rather than brutality that these viewers found unforgivably revolting. (108)
I have only been able to access the excerpt available via Google Books.
The central work here is not a romance novel and although the showrunner is stated to have characterised it as an exploration of romantic "tropes that we have embraced as a culture" the author frames their discussion solely in terms of romance fiction. Furthermore, the characterisation of the genre is unfortunately based on scholarship from the 1980s (although there are some references to Twilight and Fifty Shades). I feel it would have been more productive to focus specifically on "dark romance," written in the same century as the show:
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