Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian

 

NEVER SAW ME COMING was an impulse buy and ended up being a checklist of all my favorite thriller tropes. It's got a girl with past trauma who's intent on righting past wrongs. It's got a dark academia setting/aesthetic. It's got a bit of smut. It's a murder mystery. It's even sort of kind of a bit of a heist.

Chloe is a freshman at a liberal arts college in D.C. She's also a psychopath intent on revenge against a boy who hurt her when she was young. She got into the school on scholarship because of a professor who's interested in the study and rehabilitation of young psychopaths. The identity of the others in the study is supposed to be a secret, but we meet some of them as the story goes on, either through Chloe or in their own POVs when they become relevant.

In addition to the revenge plotline, there's another mystery going on. Someone is killing people who are in the psychopath study. And it turns out that the psychopath study-- and the overseeing professor-- also have links to a serial killer who was active about twenty years before. But how does it all really connect? And WHY?!?!?

So this was a lot of fun. I thought Chloe was equal parts interesting and terrifying. Don't cross this girl! The other characters were interesting too. I probably would have liked it more if it weren't multi-POV but Kurian made it work here, so I wasn't mad. The mystery element was really well done and I liked the psychological angle, as a psychology major myself. I could see this being a TV show or a movie really easily, it has that cinematic pacing and memorable characters. It didn't quite hit the five-star mark for me but boy was it close. I'd read more from this author in a heartbeat.

4 to 4.5 out of 5 stars