Review: Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Meet Chloe Sevre. She’s a freshman honor student, a legging-wearing hot girl next door, who also happens to be a psychopath. Her hobbies include yogalates, frat parties and plotting to kill Will Bachman, a childhood friend who grievously wronged her.

Chloe is one of seven students at her DC-based college who are part of an unusual clinical study for psychopaths—students like herself who lack empathy and can’t comprehend emotions like fear or guilt. The study, led by a renowned psychologist, requires them to wear smart watches that track their moods and movements.

When one of the students in the study is found murdered in the psychology building, a dangerous game of cat and mouse begins, and Chloe goes from hunter to prey. As she races to identify the killer and put her own plan into action, she’ll be forced to decide if she can trust any of her fellow psychopaths—and everybody knows you should never trust a psychopath.

Never Saw Me Coming is a compulsive, voice-driven thriller by an exciting new voice in fiction, that will keep you pinned to the page and rooting for a would-be killer.

I received a copy of this title via NetGalley. It does not impact my review.

Never Saw Me Coming publishes September 7, 2021. 

I will admit that I wasn’t expecting much from this one. There’s no shortage of stories of anti-heroes and vigilante women and I thought this would end up being more of the same. However, Never Saw Me Coming surpassed all of my expectations. I enjoyed this book so much!

I think part of what sets the book apart from similar stories is that it’s not just about one psychopathic woman. Chloe is one of several students getting a free ride to college to be part of a study on psychopathy. While the subjects aren’t supposed to know who each other are, Chloe discovers a few of them and we also get POVs from some of them, as well – Charles and Andre. Charles is exactly the kind of character you would think of when you hear about a Washington DC-based psychopath. Andre has faked his way into the program for the free tuition and is a much needed dose of empathy to help level out the other perspectives. Even though there’s definite anti-hero vibes from Chloe and Charles, I did find myself liking them. I thought they were well-written and it showed how easy it is to be taken in by such manipulative behavior.

I thought the mystery was well done, as well. I suspected numerous characters at different times and while I did ultimately guess who the killer was, it wasn’t until close to the actual reveal.

Overall, I really enjoyed Never Saw Me Coming. While so many books with similar themes have let me down, this one actually lived up to it’s potential and surpassed my expectations. The characterization was very well done and the writing was addictive. My only nitpicky complaints are that there were times – especially in the beginning – where there was some info-dumping about psychopathy that I thought could have been incorporated into the narrative a little more seamlessly and I thought things were wrapped up a little too easily at the end. Those things definitely didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the over all story, though, and I am definitely going to be on the look out for Kurian’s next book.

Overall Rating (out of 5): 4 Stars