Damn. a book written from the perspective of a diagnosed psychopath? SIGN ME TF UP.

This book was beyond intriguing to read, mainly because it’s so interesting being from the perspective of someone who thinks so differently than I do, and processes information in an entirely different way, has attention to detail in literally every aspect. It was a wild ride, to say the least.

First of all- Chloe is a total badass and I 10000% understand holding onto this vendetta against Will. I was absolutely cheering her on all throughout. But then, ugh, Charles? I had such conflicting feelings about the two of them. I shipped them so hard for most of the book, and then had to keep reminding myself that Charles was also holding onto Kristen which was extremely unfair to her. Kristen was a character that I had immense respect for, homegirl definitely deserved better.

Andre’s perspective was an interesting one to read, trying to be a psychopath and adapting tendencies to be diagnosed as such is… whoa. Hardcore. Then to be teamed up with some true psychopaths and still go, for the most part, undetected? How wild. He must have been absolutely terrified.

The book made me think, seriously think, how many psychopaths have I encountered in my life? Interacted with, hung out with, without knowing? Without them knowing, maybe. What about how many undiagnosed psychopaths there are in the world? What a scary thought, and yet, they can be harmless. It was truly interesting to read about the case study and experiments they had to do for the program, and what Dr Wyman’s ultimate goal was for them. I love thrillers that make you think deeper, like this one did. It’s not just heart pounding, figuring out whodunnit, it’s on a whole deeper level.

My only qualm with this one was that a few things felt unresolved at the end. Did Chloe just get away with Will’s murder? That easily? Why didn’t Megan start her attacks sooner, why wait until her junior year? If she was truly as angry as she said she was. I didn’t understand why she waited. But maybe that’s the point, does anybody really understand a true psychopath’s reasoning BESIDES a true psychopath?

This book was HIGH on my TBR list. I was SO looking forward to it. Unfortunately it fell flat for me. I recently read For Your Own Good and The Girls Are All So Nice Here which both focus on College scandals and thrills. I wanted to love this one, but didn't. The characters were not relatable. The language and the way certain words were used were not indicitive to how College aged kids would even speak. The story was just blah and College based thrillers seem to have been a common theme the last while and maybe a bit overdone. I enjoyed parts of the book but didn't love like I had hoped. Thank you for the opportunity. Would definately give Vera Kurian titles another try.

Chloe Sevre, isn't your typical College Freshman. She dresses like them, acts like them, but you see; Chloe is a psychopath and her main goal is to kill Will Bachman. Chloe received a full scholarship into this college, and has to attend a clinic program with 6 other psychopaths. She never meets them, she has no idea who else is a psychopath, she just knows they're there. Either way it's a free ride to college, and now she can fully focus on Killing Will.
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Until slowly one by one, people in the study start to die gruesome deaths. So now Chloe needs to find out who the Murderer is before they find her and kill her off before she can get to Will. Honestly, this book was just a wild ride. I was entertained throughout the entire read. I met so many psychopaths, had no idea who was telling the truth but the twists and turns were a blast. This is definitely a book that you need to suspend your belief because some of the things that occur could never actually happen. I've also heard that a lot of places mentioned in this book aren't actually in DC, however I know nothing about DC so that didn't seem to bother me🤣. So suspend your belief and enjoy the wild ride that is Never Saw Me Coming.

Welp, I never saw the ending coming of Never Saw Me Coming, the debut novel by Vera Kurian. This thriller had me guessing the whole way through. The number of suspects was large, and even the main characters couldn't be fully trusted.

The premise is unique. Chloe is part of a secret psychopathy program at her college. Along with a small group of others (unknown to Chloe), she's being studied by a psychologist in an attempt to change her behaviors and make her a more productive member of society. Unlike other more well-known psychopaths, such as serial killers, Chloe isn't violent. Well, aside from her plan to exact revenge on fellow student Will... by killing him.

But while Chloe is plotting and scheming, someone else is carrying out violent murders on her college campus, and the targets seem to be members of the psychopathy program. Now Chloe thinks she might be next, and it's up to her (along with new friends Charles and Andre) to find the killer before the killer finds her.

I would love to re-read this once it's published because my advance review Kindle copy wasn't formatted very well, so I had a hard time following certain parts. There was nothing to specify when something was being texted as opposed to part of one of the character's monologues, for example.

Never Saw Me Coming is published by Park Row and will be available to purchase on September 7, 2021. I received a free review copy through NetGalley.

What an interesting premise!

A clinical study run by a psychologist...seven students who are diagnosed as psychopaths. What could go wrong. And each student gets a free scholarship for participating. Their every move is monitored right down to their moods and emotions, as well as there location. .

This has an ending that I never saw coming which is something that I always enjoy. Well written and a fun read.

Shelf Awareness GLOW: Vera Kurian draws on her expertise as a social psychologist to create the many nuanced characters in her thrilling debut novel, Never Saw Me Coming, which has garnered comparisons to Gone Girl and the TV show Killing Eve. These characters seem like typical college kids--but they're also diagnosed psychopaths, enrolled in a university study on the disease. When some in the cohort start to turn up gruesomely murdered, those remaining must work together--albeit reluctantly--to figure out who is targeting them, and why. "The premise and writing felt fresh," notes Park Row Books editor Laura Brown, who calls the novel a "compulsive and wickedly smart campus thriller." Never Saw Me Coming is addictive from the first page, with remarkably unreliable characters, psychological insights and multiple "whodunit" threads to keep readers--and campus psychopaths--guessing to the very end. --Kerry McHugh

I am a psych lecturer and teaching research methods this semester and I actually used some of the general plot points about studying psychopathy in this way to discuss ethics and study design so this was a fun read for me in many ways. Some of my students are intrigued and now want to read this book!

Thank you to NetGalley, HarperCollins, and also Silent Book Club for the chance to read and comment on this book, it was a perfect thriller with fun twists. I didn't know I would cheer on a psychopath but also isn't that the point of the study, at least at the start of the book, .... a psychopath doesn't have to be criminal and can be something else so why not a detective/hero, not villain, in a thriller? I really appreciated an attention grabbing, fast paced, and fun thriller, I enjoyed that the plot was true to the general premise of bringing together atypical protagonists/heroes/antiheroes and gave the reader a chance to have a wild adventure with psychopath sleuths. I am definitely recommending this to my friends who love thrillers, have managed to make it a recommendation in my undergrad lecture already, and will be sharing a four star review on instagram later this week.

4.5 rounded to 5.
"Murder is Like Potato Chips; you can't stop with just one." -Stephen King

Well... this book was an interesting one !! Like many people, I am fascinated with true crime, the psychopaths behind the crimes, and how their brains work. I find it so interesting that the anatomy and chemistry of someones brain can shape them into a certain type or person, whether they like it or not.

Dr. Leonard Wyman understands the need to help diagnosed psychopaths control their urges and behaviors. So he opened a special program to do so. Chloe Sevre happens to be one of those people, along with 6 other students- participating in a study to help understand the psychopathic brain, and to help them understand how to act and behave with society. But Chloe joined this study for only one reason--Revenge. while in the midst of her plan, murders start taking place. Not just any victims- students involved in the study. Joining together with Charles and Andres, two fellow psychopathic students, they try and figure out who the killer is and stop them before the become the next target. Do they trust each other? Definitely not, but they don't really have a choice but to work together.

This book was GREAT!! Told from different POV, you get to take a look inside the minds of the psychopathic students, friends, doctors, etc. It was so fun to see and understand how each person analyzes situations differently. I loved the references to real life serial killers... made it feel more real. The twists in the book are amazing and ending fits the title perfectly. I never saw it coming!! Great story, great execution, great characters!!

Chloe is one of seven psychopaths participating in a college study. While she originally goes to the study for another reason, she ends up caught in trying to solve the murders of two of the other participants. Chloe, Charles, and Andre are on a mission to find the murderer before they become the next victims. Despite being a psychopath, I enjoyed reading the story from Chloe's perspective. I also enjoyed the "Will they or won't they?" dynamic she had with Charles. This is definitely a fun (yes!) and intriguing read, especially for YA readers.

Chloe Sevre is a new honors freshman just arriving at John Adams University (fictional) in Washington DC. She orchestrated getting into the school for the express purpose of being near Will Bachman, a young man from her junior high school days who she plans to kill. You see, Chloe is one of seven students participating in a psychology department program, the Multimethod Psychopathy Panel Study. The participants are all considered psychopaths and the program is led by Dr. Leonard Wyman who believes they can be readjusted to fit in and behave normally within society. (Yeah, right.) As Chloe begins laying the groundwork for her own scheme, two participants in the program are found murdered and her plans get sidetracked.

Chloe’s point of view isn’t the only voice we get in the story. Andre Jensen is another new freshman and a participant in the program. He’s got a big secret, too…that he cheated his way in by pretending to be a psychopath and adeptly answering the questions to confirm it. He’s black, from a good family who figured he didn’t have a chance at college because of mistakes made in his youth. Andre was motivated to cheat because the program guaranteed 100% financial support. Lastly, there’s Charles Portman, a member of the same fraternity as Will and from an affluent political family in the District. Both he and Andre cross paths and purposes with Chloe but align as they try to figure out who’s trying to kill them.

I figured the story would be a little bit crazy and a lot clever and got both. Chloe’s psychopathy is so outrageous it’s highly entertaining and all you can do is try to keep up with her plotting and scheming. When she connects with Charles and Andre, I got lost in all the duplicity as they struggle with their distrust of each other while they have to partner for protection. I didn’t like Chloe but I also didn’t dislike her…she’s quite the enigma. I really liked Andre whose only agenda is to get a free education but also had to work with these two people he knew were dangerous. I’m still unsure of how I feel about Charles as even to the end, I wasn’t sure if he was being real or continuing the veneer he learned to wear through therapy.

I really enjoyed the story, a lot, even when it started to drag out near the end. I was starting to get bogged down by the theories and machinations and just wanted to speed things up. I listened to the book and thought Brittany Pressley was outstanding in her depiction of Chloe! I conjured up the image of Piper Perabo as a result and if you remember her duplicity in the TV show Covert Affairs, you’ll get Chloe. Pressley did a great job with the other characters and the storytelling, too, but her voice for Chloe elevated the story. The ending wasn’t a huge surprise but it was consistent with the clues. What was a surprise is what happened with these three. You’ll need to read or listen to it yourself for that, which I highly recommend. This is quite the debut with its unique premise and I’ll sign up for whatever’s next from Kurian.

I really enjoyed this one! Such a unique and cool premise and really well-executed. The characters were so interesting and I was hooked on the voice and narration, especially as it's mostly from Chloe's perspective. There were some pretty good twists and I definitely think it's been one of the better mysteries/thrillers I've read in a while. Will definitely be recommending it to mystery readers.

Heart-stopping and surprising, this book had me from the beginning. Well-paced, I couldn't put it down. I didn't know I could root for a psychopath! You have to read this book.

Each one of them is used to being on top. They are diagnosed psychopaths—narcissists who are unburdened by useless emotions like empathy or fear and full of contempt for everyone around them.

But now, the tables have turned. It's their turn. To be outsmarted. Manipulated. Hunted.

In exchange for free tuition, a group of college students participates in a study on diagnosed psychopaths, monitoring their moods and tracking their movements. This particular group of students holds itself high above the rest but is soon taken down a peg when it becomes clear that members of the group are being hunted and killed. Now it's up to them to learn to trust each other just enough to find out who is after them. There's just one problem: can you ever really trust a psychopath?

Never Saw Me Coming was such an interesting read. It's not often I find myself rooting for a psychopath with homicidal tendencies, but it was impossible not to. This one had me hooked from beginning to end, and was equal parts amusing and frightening. It was a story of unlikely friends and odd alliances, and while the characters may not have feared for their lives, I certainly wasn't immune to the thrill of it all.

Never Saw Me Coming is the perfect novel to kickstart your autumn and ease you into the spookiest season.

Thanks so much to Harlequin Trade Publishing for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

3.5/ 5 stars

Never Saw Me Coming is a psychological thriller.

The main narrator is college student Chloe (1st person POV). The book is set in DC at a college.

There are also a few other 3rd person POVs (including Andre and Charles).

Chloe is a psychopath. And I loved this so much. I was completely riveted from the first page. She is part of a study of psychopaths being conducted at her school.

The beginning of this book was spectacular. The premise was fantastic. Chloe is a phenomenal narrator. The study was amazing. However the middle felt a bit slow to me. And I don't know that I loved all the extra 3rd person POVs.

The story and characters were definitely super interesting. And I was completely captivated by both Chloe, the haunting cover and the beginning of the book. The book just felt a bit too long to me. But the ending was pretty good.

Never Saw Me Coming is a book filled with characters you never know whether or not to trust. I loved the setting of a post-secondary school and the intricate relationships between the characters. The plot keeps you guessing until the end. I did feel that a few circumstances were left unresolved (I won't say more so that I don't give anything away), which always sort of bothers me in books. Overall, I would rate this book 3 stars.

The story introduces Chloe Sevre, one of seven psychopath students who received a full scholarship at John Adams University. These seven students formed part of a special program created especially for psychopaths. The program aims to determine if psychopathy can be managed like all other mental illnesses. If so, then patients could live a normal life and control their psychopathic with the proper support.

Before Chloe can fully immerse herself into her studies, she needs to carry out a plan. A plan that’s been in the making for six years. It involved killing the guy who assaulted at the age of twelve. While Chloe is formulating her plan, someone murdered two the students on the program. Besides putting her plan into action, she now has to find and stop the murderer before she herself becomes a victim.

📚Never Saw Me Coming took me on a suspenseful ride. It took a while to figure out the identity of the killer. However, as the clues came together, the killer’s identity became clear, which was a shocker.

As strange as it sounds, I enjoyed getting to know these unreliable characters, especially Chloe. The story provided a fascinating look into how these students who lack conscience and empathy function and embrace college life. Chloe, in her bid to find the murderer, teams up with two other students from the program, one of whom is there under false pretenses. The interesting thing about this collaboration lay in their diverse natures, the manipulator, the charmer and the faker. None trusted the other, but circumstances forced them to rely on each other to avoid becoming victims.

The story began on a strong note and kept that pace until the middle, where the pacing suffered. It eventually got back on track and it had me on the edge of my seat, making me eager to see how it would end. Unfortunately, unlike the start, the story ended on a weak note. I thought it strange that the characters, given how they were portrayed as smart and intelligent, didn’t figure out the identity of the villain. Secondly, the ease with which they fell into the trap set by the villain belied their intelligence.

Despite the issues mentioned, 📚Never Saw Me Coming proved to be a unique and fascinating story. Fans of psychological thrillers featuring unreliable characters will enjoy this unique tale.

🏫I was drawn to this book because psychology is my second love AND I have a child interested in forensic psychology.

🏫What better way to learn more about psychopathology than give a full ride to seven psychopaths in college.

🏫Then, you sprinkle in a killer who is offing the psychopaths one by one.

🏫And a smooth operator (Andre) who is able to convince the researchers that he is a psychopath when he is not.

4.5 stars

🏫What's not to love about this book!

🏫I don't know if I truly believe Andre isn't a psychopath...or misdiagnosed.

🏫This was a great read from the first page. I was able to follow the plot all the way through and it kept me guessing until the end.

🏫There were a few villians and Trevor
was the worst for me.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read an ARC of Never Saw Me Coming!

I absolutely loved the premise of this book - a university program for psychopaths that studies them and gives them the opportunity to learn how to integrate well into society. I also thought the basic outline of the plot was solid: someone is murdering the students in the program, and they need to find out who it is before more of them get killed.

However, the execution was not as fantastic as it could have been. The book suffered from trying to tell the story from too many perspectives, and while I liked Chloe, Andre, and Charles, I felt that I never got to know any of them as well as I could have. The writing style was also a bit jarring, since there is some first=person storytelling mixed in with some third-person storytelling. I think the book would have been better if it had been told in alternating first-person chapters between Chloe, Andre, and Charles, rather than only first-person from Chloe's perspective. I found Chloe to be the least compelling and interesting of the three, and so I found her perspective to be just a bit dull. I also found Chloe's obsession with killing Will to be totally incidental to the main story, and I think the book might have been better without that part at all. It felt a bit like the author wanted to tell two completely different stories: one about Chloe and her obsession with Will, and one about the students in the program being killed off. Either of those could have been a good story, but they just didn't totally work mixed together.

There are definitely some flashes of brilliance here, and overall, I enjoyed reading it!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book! It was fun, refreshing, different, and engrossing. That might be hard to believe if you've just read the synopsis, but it is true.
Chloe is a freshmen ready to tackle her first year of college and all it brings: new roommate, new friends, challenging classes, and...killing Will Bachman. It turns out Chloe is one of seven students participating in a study of psychopaths and their behavior. Chloe doesn't mind participating in the study--hey, her tuition is paid for!--and has learned to live quite well with her diagnosis. But she is not going to let anything get in the way of her most important goal: ridding the world of Will. When another student in the study is murdered, Chloe wonders if she now needs to watch out for another murderer on campus. Could it be another psychopath? Can she trust any of the other study participants?
When I began reading this book I thought it would be more angsty, very dark, full of unreliable narrators, and disturbing. But I was wrong. While it definitely has its dark moments and Chloe and her fellow psychopaths do often engage in questionable behavior, the more lighter "normal" moments really serve as a wonderful contrast. Told mainly from Chloe's perspective, the matter-of-fact way in which she describes and relates things that are completely normal to a psychopath and yet completely strange and shocking to someone without that diagnosis can be jarring, but in a good way. Chloe has definite rooting value, even as the reader questions if Chloe's actions should be worth rooting for. Charles and Andre and great counterpoints to Chloe, and make an amazing trio that I wanted to read more and more about.
The plot moved along well, and I had really no idea what was going to happen next. I was completely drawn in and did not want to put the book down. I wanted to keep reading because I could not wait to see what would happen next, but at the same time I did not want the book to be over, because I enjoyed Chloe, Charles, and Andre so much.
The book--while it feels a bit bizarre to call this a fun read, and to me this absolutely was--also does raise some questions that will really make the reader think. Are all psychopaths destined to be criminally "bad?" Is it alright to make assumptions about people, even if it is based on "science?" How safe is our digital and social network infused world? Does the public's obsession with true crime dehumanize the people involved in those crimes? I don't want to give away any spoilers if you haven't read the book yet, but towards the end, Dr. Wyman's attitudes and beliefs about whether or not criminals deserve the chance to be rehabilitated was very interesting, considering Chloe's attitudes. It created a fascinating dichotomy.
This was a great book. It had all the fun, soapy young adult things you'd expect in a book about college students, the suspense-filled elements of a thriller about a murder, and some very thought provoking elements you'd expect in a book about people with different psychological issues trying to function in "normal" society. I will say that there was one climactic moment that wasn't quite as climatic as I'd wanted, but it definitely did not ruin the book for me. I would absolutely recommend it, and I would love to read more books about these characters!

"The day it happened, I didn't go to police, or my clueless mom. I stayed at home and decided that, one day, I would kill Will Bachman."

Oh yes I love this book. A fun YA psychological thriller read for me. Fun thriller? Yup you read that right. It was a fun read for me. Seven psychopaths students joined for a clinical study at Adam's University and then one of them murdered and since then it's a classic whodunit psychopath's style.
It has captivating and intriguing story with that clinical study for psychopaths. A page-turner read that got me on the edge of my seat most of the time. The suspense was superb, all the feelings that walk alone in the night with that feeling of someone is following you, the minute you realize that you're not alone anymore, or that sense that telling you something bad will happen.
It has great characters, never thought that I will rooting for psychopaths, but that is exactly what had happened to me, love the story behind each character that got me very fond of them.
Although it's a bit dragging in the middle and a bit predictable for me, I really enjoyed it and loving it nonetheless and I get to learn a lot about psychopath.

Highly recommended for anyone who's looking for a fun page-turner psychological thriller read.