Oh dear, this was not the book I was looking forward to reading. I struggled with the pace of the book, and the characters. Sorry but not my cup of tea.

Toxic friendship, no character development , too much going on, slow paced & didn’t catch my attention enough for me to stay interested. Can’t say I’d recommend this one

In fairness, I am neither the gender nor the age group of its target audience; ‘Before We Were Innocent’ is basically Mills and Boon for millennials. The three main characters are over privileged and self-absorbed teenagers. Ten years later, the two surviving women seem no more mature. I struggled to sympathise and care about their struggles and found the conclusion unsatisfactory. Too many questions were left unanswered including how on Earth did this dross get published?

It took me a little while to get into this but once I did, I couldn't put it down. The intensity and cruelty of the friendships of teenage girls was captured perfectly. I did wish for a more conclusive ending re: Joni though.

This is my first book by Ella Berman, and I'm intrigued to go back and read her previous novel! I loved this story of a crime that happened within a complex group of friends - the dual timeline worked especially well for me, and I'll always be drawn to a Greek island setting. The perfect holiday read!

Oh dear I had such high hopes for this book with its intriguing premise and the unusual cover which I loved by the way! Unfortunately I found my attention wandering. I think I was expecting a psychological thriller, or at least suspense, but instead the book is a slow-moving study of the toxic friendship between a group of rich, entitled girls. I was underwhelmed by the book itself as there was too much moving between the two timelines rather than propelling the story onwards it felt repetitive and certainly slowed the pace. The story is actually a relevant one and there’s loads of positive reviews for this book, so in this case it maybe just me over thinking things!

Being a 34 year old woman I’d almost forgotten about the terrifying, visceral nature of teenage friendships until I read this.

Read it if: you simultaneously yearn for the messiness of adolescence whilst wondering how you actually got out of it with your mental health fairly intact.

Don’t read it if: you need a neat and entirely resolved ending.

This book details the lives of a trio of wealthy teenage girls, with the narrative moving between present day and ten years previous. The focus is on the circumstances and reasons behind one of the trio’s death, and the repercussions of those events still affect the surviving two.

The author’s depiction of the dynamics of relationships at that age were spot on for me. You love your friends so intensely at that age, it’s almost aggressive and any fallout feels like the end of your universe. Especially when it comes to that big first girls trip away where you feel like adults for the first time.

I read this book over a couple of days and I’m still left wondering how the characters might get on over the next decade…

this was the perfect holiday book and i finished it in just over a day. juicy and suspenseful, but with enough solidity to the characters and story to stop it from feeling like ‘holiday chick-lit’, i found the story of Evangeline, Jodi and Bess to unravel at the perfect pace. Before We Were Innocent captures the intoxicating dangers of female friendships within your teenage years, and how quickly mistakes can come to fruition - it’s shocking yet eerily relatable. Both an engaging, slowly exposed crime story and a deep psychological dive, this provides the perfect quick yet attentive read.

I heard about this book and from the description, I thought it sounded like a good read.

This was an enjoyable story about friendship, love and loss. I was able to relate to the characters and their bonds of friendship, and I found it quite heartwarming to read, but emotional at the same time. I'd say it was light enough to read in one sitting, and a good choice to read if you're in the mood for a tearjerker.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a free copy to review.

Wow I loved this book. I didn't realise how quickly I got through it, I could not put it down. It definitely shows how female friendships can truly be.

This story was both a suspenseful thriller and nostalgic coming-of-age story about female friendships and losing your innocence as you may onto adulthood. I loved all the different themes that were dealt with in this book and how they were weaved into the story and the characters. This is definitely more of of a contemporary fiction but the mystery is still incredibly interesting too and this is worth a read for something a bit different.

Before We Were Innocent was exactly what I was looking for in my next read given that my past 2-3 reads have been quite character driven and lacking any real plot to keep me hooked but thankfully I couldn’t put this one down!

I’m usually not a huge fan of a non-linear narrative that alternates between present day and flashbacks every chapter because I often favour one storyline over the other but this was not the case with Before We Were Innocent.

Berman’s pacing was one of my favourite parts of the novel and I felt that although I had some idea as to what was going on, there was enough uncertainty to keep the mystery going.

The only thing stopping me giving this novel five stars is that I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the ending but for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

I loved this book. I found it very nostalgic and relatable in terms of teenage, female friendships. I really enjoyed how it was written and actually enjoyed how reflective Bess was throughout. Thank you to Netgalley for the preview. I will definitely be recommending this book. I would give it 4.5 stars if I could.

Wow! What an amazing book!!
Would love to read more from the author.
Thankyou netgalley for the Arc!
Full review will be uploaded soon

This book is less of a thriller than a coming-of-age story about three teenagers on the cusp of adulthood, teetering between the profound vulnerability and a sense of being invincible that is so often juxtaposed at that age.

Elizabeth (Bess), Joni and Evangeline come from privileged families in Calabasas - in the latter's case, with stratospherically well-off parents. They go off together to spend their first independent summer in Greece, but only two of them will return from that trip.

The subsequent media frenzy around the case of "rich kids gone bad" means that neither of the remaining two girls has much of a chance at having a normal life thereafter. One becomes an online influencer and lifestyle guru of sorts, and by contrast, the other retreats completely from the public eye.

But Joni and Bess (respectively) are now leading very different lives from each other, and they are also very different people from who they were 10 years ago, during that tragic summer in Greece.

Or are they? Because in an eerily similar set of circumstances, Joni contacts Bess on the eve of the launch of her highly-anticipated book - at a time when her girlfriend has inexplicably disappeared - to beg her to provide an alibi.

And for reasons that she doesn't entirely understand, Bess agrees to do it. But can they really expect to get through the situation unscathed this time around? And do they deserve to?

Before We Were Innocent essentially reads like a literary fiction novel about toxic friendships, and the decisions that people make in their youth that they sometimes pay dearly for afterwards, with some mystery/thriller elements thrown in.

It's well-written and absorbing, but would have benefited from being edited more tightly. The book is well worth a read though. And it's likely to evoke nostalgia even among those who may not have had the good fortune (?) to travel to the Greek islands as teenagers, but will recognise some aspect of themselves in this very diverse trio of friends...

Great summer book to just get lost in! Super easy read and you honestly get sucked into this book and lost track of time!

So glad this was my first ARC! For someone who never reads on a screen, I managed to finish this in about two days on the train on my daily commute to work! Which is a big achievement for me because usually I can only read from a physical copy.

But my oh my this was a page turner. I loved the fact that the story shifted between the past and the present and at each turn there was a new development that caught my attention.

It dealt with so many different themes. Friendship, trust, manipulation and love. But what I found most interesting was the portrayal of the media and the way they are able to manipulate people’s feelings and thoughts. Not only are they able to manipulate the public opinion but they are also able to manipulate police investigations. The media manages to ruin the reputation of two teenage girls based on photos, texts and lifestyle choices. To have your every move scrutinised and published out to the whole world to such an extent means to leave life long scars on those under the microscope. The book follows the life of both teenagers and how they each handle the situation. With Joni using the media for her own gain and turning it into a positive and Bess turning into a recluse trying to disappear from the limelight entirely.

Would definitely recommend!

I could not stop reading this book. I had to know what happened. Highly recommend.
This would be a great ride for the summer.

I went into this, expecting a thriller novel, full of murder and mystery and the past coming to bite you. I definitely got that, but at the same time, I got a beautiful study of the relationships between girls in that revolutionary, instrumental teenage age. The story follows Bess, a survivor of a terrible accident that left her best friend, Evangeline, dead as a teenager while they were on a sun-soaked trip in Greece. Blamed for Evangeline's murder, along with her other best friend, Joni, the story is told in two timelines, one from the infamous trip to Greece, and one from the present, where Joni's personal life leaves Bess like she'd never Greece years ago.

Bess was a great protagonist. She had so much internalised guilt and so much desperation to keep Joni, the last remnant of a previous life, in her orbit, to the dirty work of defending her no matter what. And Joni was a fantastic character too. Right up until the end, I was left guessing about her. The juxtaposition of the two timelines kept things interesting and mysterious. The supporting cast, especially Bess' brother and their changing relationship as they overcame the trauma of the past, was excellent too!

This was a great book, and can't wait to see what comes out of Berman next!

This was great, looking forward to recommending it to friends as a thoughtful and suspenseful beach read!

This book is written in dual timelines, 2008 when Bess, Joni and Ev(angeline) have just finished high school and are off to a tiny Greek island for the summer, and 2018 back in California, a decade after the events that took place the summer of 2008 when Joni appears on Bess’ doorstep asking for a favour. I found I was initially more invested in the 2008 timeline to find out what actually happened but towards the end both timelines were equally engaging.

I was initially expecting this to be more of a thriller/mystery but a lot of what kept me engaged was the stuff about toxic friendships, how young women are portrayed in the media and how differently people can react to the same circumstances. It made me think about the holidays I went on with friends in my late teens/early 20s and also how, at 19 years old, I’d have coped with every detail of my personal life being dissected in newspapers and discussed in online forums. I’m not sure I’d have even coped as well as Bess who mainly hides away from the world with a WFH job and no social life, never mind as well as Joni who has reinvented herself as a successful motivational speaker and influencer!

I also couldn’t help but think about Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher when reading about Bess, Joni and Ev. A different and more extreme situation but the because of the way Knox was vilified and scrutinised by the press at a similar age and in slightly similar circumstances it was hard not to think of that incident.

If you’re looking for a page-turning thriller a with a shock reveal this is probably not it, there was an element of that at the beginning but it’s a lot more thoughtful, slow and introspective. I’d say the books I read the most are contemporary/literary/women’s fiction with the occasional foray into murder/mystery/thriller so this was right in the sweet spot for me.

Thanks to NetGalley, Head of Zeus and Ella Berman for my very first ARC!