My first Erin Hahn book is You'd Be Mine, and I fell in love with it. I knew right then Erin Hahn would be an instant-buy on whatever book she came out with next. However, I did not read More Than Maybe. I am still interested but I definitely didn't know this book would be a companion or continuation of it. So I got a little spoiled by the outcome of the previous MCs. But you don't really need to read the other book to understand what's happening here.

I really liked the cute romance, the book is very wholesome and religious. I do like how Hahn touches on the good and the bad of the church and doesn't shy away from the dark side of how people can act.

I do have to say I wasn't expecting it to be as religious as the story is but it didn't affect my reading or try to "force" the faith on me.

I'll definitely be checking out the previous book and reading future books from this author.

4 stars.

I don’t think I can adequately put into the words how this books deeply touched my soul. At 36 years old I knew this book would take me back to my youth group days, but I didn’t expect it still make such an impact. This is the book I wish I could have read when I was a teen struggling to fit in. I wish my dad could read it and glimpse at what his talk of “modesty and setting an example” really did to me. I’ve moved in since then. I found the truth and now I try to approach these topics in a much healthier way for my own children, but man, this book took me back in time and made me wish that I had these truths back then.


Highly recommend this book for teens, parents of teens, youth pastors, and workers because let’s face it, sometimes adults have the best intentions, but approach it in the wrong way.

Never Saw You Coming is a coming-of-age story that focuses on finding yourself and speaking up for your beliefs; and is deeply rooted in love, family, and faith.

Meg’s life comes crashing down when she finds out everything she knew was a lie. She escapes to a small northern town, where she unexpectedly meets a boy with a haunted past and struggles similar to her own.

Meg and Micah (and Cash) stole my heart! Watching their quirky friendship grow into a sweet relationship was amazing and adorable. I felt for them as they embraced their misfortunes, struggles, and beliefs; and rooted them on.

Overall, the book instantly hooked me from the beginning. It was a fast-paced read that heavily focused on the characters' deep introspective moments about their internal struggles with their emotions, families, and religious beliefs. The characters were written SO well and grew so beautifully together and individually. I also loved the number of relationships we saw in this book, from friendships to family dynamics, to a beautiful found family that melted my heart.

3.5/5

*Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.*

I....did not like this book. I'm not particularly religious, but I respect those who are. I don't, however, like being preached to through a work of fiction. I liked the "sex positive" aspect of the novel, especially since it required both of the main characters to think for themselves for the first time ever, but I just didn't connect with anyone or anything in this book.

I've DNF'd for preachy books before and I won't stop now!

2 stars

I really enjoyed Hahn's last novel, and that's why I jumped right on the request train for this one without looking at the subject matter (beyond YA and the cover). This was a mistake.

This novel is well written and the characters are intriguing. Both main characters have complicated relationships with religion and especially with their fathers, and while I found the latter part interesting, I wish there had been more focus on this and less on the religious aspects of their lives and identities. That part? Wow. I felt totally alienated and uncomfortable the whole time I was reading.

To be fair, because I think this information is necessary for this review, I'll admit that I might be a one-star reader for this content. Hahn dedicates the book to church kids, and I was in no way a church kid. Since I mostly love books that give me windows instead of mirrors, I was still so down. I was wrong.

For me, the religious and "moral" aspects of this novel are distracting and over-the-top. One character repeatedly says, "Holy bananas!" (she's 18, not 4, in case you're wondering), and the attitudes about modesty (ex: the same character always keeps her shoulders covered so as not to give men any impure thoughts) and SEX!!!!!! (I can't even) are very very VERY far from any other character I've read (or wanted to read) in YA.

Again, I realize in hindsight (and really got this early on) that I am not the ideal reader of this book, but I was not expecting to feel so concerned about and disturbed by the content. I just really see this as promoting some dangerous ideas, and that saddens me for both the obvious reasons and because I know - based on the author's note - that this is not the intention. So I get one star as a terrible reader of this book, the content gets one star, and the style gets 2.5 stars.

If any of my concerns/experiences resonate with you, I encourage you to keep this in mind as a potential reader. If this sounds right up your alley, you are almost guaranteed to enjoy it more than I did.

This book was not what I expected at all, but I really enoyed it! Meg finds out her family was not what she thought it was and moves off to a different town to find herself That's where she meets Micah and he changes her life and view of the world. I will recommend this book to friends and other readers!

This was the first book I read by Erin Hahn and I now see why people are clamoring for their books. It was easy to read, and it felt like I was picking up in the middle of something I had already enjoyed. The writing flowed and the characters felt full formed.

I am definitely a fan of young adult fiction and this title was fabulous as it tackled a topic many don't: the push of conservative Christian households to make their daughters feel like anything they do could lead to sin.

Meg is one of the protagonists of the story. She's 18, freshly graduated from high school, and about to embark on a gap year as a counselor at a Christian camp. But, while doing the paperwork a bombshell hits: the man she's known as dad all of her life isn't her biological father. Rather, her ultra-conservative Christian mother conceived her from what can only be called a one-night stand.

After receiving letters from her biological great-grandmother, she decides to head north to meet the family she didn't know existed.

It is there that she meets our other protagonist: Micah. He's 19 and still living with the emotional turmoil left by his father, a pastor who was imprisoned for criminal activity.

Shortly after her arrival in town, Meg and Micah meet. And, in short order, they grow closer together.

Plenty of twists and turns along with the need for both characters to forgive the adults in their lives that wronged them.

What I really appreciated was the way the author handled Meg's growth away from the super-conservative Christian home. Rather than painting conservative Christians as all bad, she has Meg start to question some of the things she was told (e.g. how you dress could evoke sinful behavior from a guy.) Yet, Meg does not lose her faith in God. She just has to reframe how she lives her life as a Christian.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a young adult book (re: years), and I’m happy this book was my first intro back to the genre.

It’s a well-crafted coming of age drama about two 18/19 year olds struggling to accept the truth when they realize both their childhoods were a lie. It’s a quick, engrossing read that tackles big issues (the evangelical Christian church, sexual abuse in the church, premarital sex, LGBTQ+ community and homophobia, etc) and two people navigating their faith.

It’s a really sweet love story with a satisfying redemption arc for both leads. The tone shifted fairly dramatically halfway through and walked us from a meet-cute into a very dark place, but is still well executed.

This was an uncomfortable read for me, solely because of my own experiences with religion, subsequent anger with the Church and heavily strict upbringing. (Still can’t wear v-neck tees or just a tank top and no cardigan without feeling like a heathen!) It felt a bit preachy at times (but, again, personal bias here) though overall it had a critical view on the conservative evangelical Christian faith and how its strict members are damaging teenage morale.

Cute read I would recommend to anyone struggling with their faith or want a tender love story. If you also hold strong views on religion, I’d maybe steer clear of this one.

4 / 5

🌿 Quick hits: coming of age drama, friends to lovers; cheerful, gentle, innocent heroine and a standoffish anger and guilt ridden hero; no steam, PG-13; conservative Christian issues (too many to list); Absorbing fast read, somewhat escapism but toes the line. 🌿

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.75/5 stars

I don't know where to start. This book is one I was highly anticipating for so long, not just because I loved MORE THAN MAYBE and getting to know Meg, but also because I knew it was going to deal with faith. With church culture. With shame in sexuality. With finding the strength to love through it all.

And boy, did this book rip into me. It was so much more forgiving and faith-filled than I've managed to be lately, and it did a number on me.

Meg is a consummate church girl whose life is upended after she finds out the truth about her birth. Micah is a recovering pastor's son whose father pretty much destroyed his faith in the church, though not in God. The two meet almost my happenstance and their romance is fast and glorious and so heartwarming. The way they push each other to be better, to search harder, to find the truth. It's amazing. It makes me want what they have.

The side characters in this book truly bring it to sparkling life — Duke and James and Dani, Vada and even Meg's parents and other family members.

I love this book a lot.

I am an absolute sucker for a good romcom and when I read the description of this one, I knew it would probably be a bit hard for me to read given its basis with characters have issues with their Church experience. It gave it a bit more impact for me, I think, but overall it didn't lessen my enjoyment of the story. If anything, it made me cheer for the characters more because I understood their feelings and experiences so clearly. While I don't think this is something I'd teach in my classroom, it's definitely one I want on my shelves and would encourage my students to read--I have a lot of conversations with seniors who are trying to figure out how they feel about life, how they've been raised, and everything in between. I think this book would give them a jumping point for those hard conversations. The writing style wasn't necessarily my favorite, and at times I felt like we were repeating things, but overall really really great.

When 18-year-old Meg Hennessey finds out that the man she always believed was her father is actually not and that she’s been lied to her entire life, she decides to run away to her deceased father’s long lost relatives. While trying to reconcile her very Christian-focused past to the life she’s living now, she meets Micah, who is equally lost in his faith. Micah and Meg soon grow very close and help each other find their way back to happiness.

For me, this book was just a bit too much all over the place. It felt like there were so many ideas that the author just couldn’t pick what to go with and ended up putting everything in the book. There was the fake father turning out to be gay, the religious mother with a naughty past, the kid who’s father ended up in jail, the kid who wasn’t accepted by his family for being too over the top, small town romance, a rescue mission, a near death, and a lovely great-grandmother. Too much…

I did, however, love the supporting relationship between Micah and Meg. They just felt right, and I think they would make an amazing example for people trying to figure out what a healthy relationship should look like. I was rooting for them from the beginning, and I’m happy to see that they made it as well.

Overall, I think this is a nice YA novel, but it’s certainly not my favourite. I would especially recommend reading it if you’re struggling with your faith and trying to fit religion into your life. It offers some great insights into that topic.

Wow.
I was intrigued when I heard about the topics the book grappled with, and it didn't disappoint. This covered everything I feel as a 41 year old woman who was raised in the church and a super conservative family. As I've lived and made choices and my faith has become more personal and less legalistic, I've seen a chasm between what I know to be true, and how I was raised.
This book breaks all of that down, without mincing words. It's everything I feel, but couldn't have put into words.
Thank you for writing it. It beautifully blends faith and humanity and grace, and I'm going to be thinking about it for a good long time.

As someone with a particular fascination with religious fundamentalism i found this Book surprisingly compelling. While I do think that a better job could have been done of letting the audience know the heavy nature of the topics that would be tackled, I do appreciate the authors note letting us know what a risk she was taking in addressing these topics.

I enjoyed reading about the characters inner struggle with the standards of her community and feeling as though she didn't fit in. Watching Meg and maker discover different parts of their identity that they didn't know they had Felt very special. It felt as though we were being LED in to a truly personal journey that not everybody will experience. I enjoyed watching their maturity develop and their relationships with one another, their community and the world at large take shape.

I found the twists and turns in this story extremely interesting and well thought out and I really enjoyed the author's creativity in creating them.

Thank you to Erin Hahn, St. Martin Press, and Netgalley for the ARC.

This is a great story of love, family, and self-discovery. Meg leaves her religious community and goes in search of her recently discovered extended family. There she meets Micah, who is struggling with family issues of his own. The two form a bond that grows as Meg finds a home in her new town.

I loved all of the relationships in this story and themes of finding out more about your authentic self. The love story is also so sweet (Hahn writes about first loves so well). I also really appreciated the view of religion and societal pressure on self-discovery. This is a great YA read and will appeal to adults as much as younger readers. I can’t wait to see what Erin Hahn creates next.

Thanks to Erin Hahn, St. Martin Press, and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What might look like a cute YA romance novel packs a punch while tackling a lot of heavy topics that you don’t often see in the genre. I’ve been excited for Meg’s story since reading MORE THAN MAYBE and, as expected, she and Micah were adorable, complex characters. That being said, I didn’t realize going in that this was a Christian fiction book, which I probably wouldn’t have picked up for myself.

Having been mostly removed from religion and church for the better part of a decade made a lot of the issues and feelings discussed somewhat unrelatable. However, with the current dialogue surrounding Christianity and conservatism, it was eye opening to read a very personal story from Hahn that reflected her feelings about the church and her upbringing. I especially appreciated her author’s note and completely recognize the “risk” she had to take, writing a book that questioned faith and the church.

This book challenged me; I could definitely recognize moments where my personal beliefs got in the way of me empathizing and understanding some of the characters’ struggles. But it allowed me to examine my own past with the church. I grew up going to Sunday school and getting confirmed but was never under the kind of (misogynistic) pressure that Meg dealt with. The standards she was held to and had to work on unlearning were unfair and heartbreaking. Her character was completely flushed out and you were able to understand her struggles, religious or not.

Personal feelings aside (because I don’t feel like it’s fair to rate a religious fiction book lower just because my views don’t align) there were some fundamental literary choices that didn’t work for me. The pacing throughout, but especially at the end, was odd. There was a huge jump in tone during the final conflict that really threw me off and felt unnecessarily dramatic.

I've been a fan of the author's previous YA works (especially More Than Maybe) and so I was instantly intrigued by this book -- and that we'd see Vada+Luke post-HEA once again. Told in dual perspectives, we follow Meg and Micah figuring out how to navigate their own identities in regards to their changing relationships to faith, oh, and falling in the love for the first time too. It's definitely more faith-based than More Than Maybe. Overall, both book leads are vulnerable and authentically written and portrayed, which made it easy to keep reading.

"I shut out the world only to take in the universe."

*3.5 Stars

First off, this book deals with several things and holds a lot that hits you hard. This book was a tough one to review and rate for me, and I might bump up my rating to four stars in the future after I dwell more on the story. I think how one takes it depends on where they are in their lives. Also, Erin Hahn continues to have the best song recs in her stories. (I cry now when I listen to Rescue by Lauren Daigle).

Never Saw You Coming by Erin Hahn follows Meg as she deals with the aftermath of secrets hidden from her for years. We also follow Micah, who is struggling to find his place after a person he looked up to turned out to be someone else entirely. While both face several challenges on the path to truly understanding themselves, faith is always their guidance.

I enjoyed reading about the characters and their journeys. I also enjoyed the side characters and how much of their story we got to read. Our main characters, Meg and Micah, are strong, and maybe that's due to their situation, but they also build each other up throughout the story. I don't want to call them "mature" because it makes it seem like, "oh they are mature for their age". While they might be, they are humans, and we can be mature and then childish the next regardless if we are a teen or an adult. I also enjoyed the romance. The only thing that kind of stood out to me was how quick their love/relationship seemed at first and progressed at times.

I loved that we got to see more of Vada and several other characters from More Than Maybe (one of my faves)! I think one of my favorite parts of this story was the tattoo scene. The tattoos represented a huge turning point in both character's lives because they were ready to embrace their faith the way they wanted with no judgment. (Not a spoiler, but I secretly have always wanted a tattoo similar to Micah's but on a smaller scale, so it was really special to read.) Also, figure skating and hockey love!

Having love and compassion; is what being a Christian is and always should be. As Christians, we should embrace with open arms, offer a hand, not cause them heartache when they were looking for a shoulder to cry/lean on when faced with uncertainty in their lives. Regardless of whether you are a Christian or not, you can relate to the struggles of faith when it comes to what you listen to in the end. This also means allowing God and Jesus to be the voices of reasons when you struggle or are in your darkest of moments. Also, Meg's mom's point to Mrs. Sanderson deserved a standing ovation.

"That said, it's not that I have a death wish, no matter what my mom thinks. I swear, it's nothing like that. It's sort of the opposite? It's like this intense need to have God as close as possible. To wear him like a second skin, directly over my pulse, like he could contain all the messed-up pieces of me."

Thank you to St. Martins Press (Wednesday Books) and NetGalley for providing me with an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance reader copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Review Posted to Goodreads on 7-12-21

Never Saw You Coming was my first book from author Erin Hahn. I thought this book sounded super cute and was excited when NetGalley offered me the chance to read and review it.

In this story, Meg Hennessey finds out at age eighteen that the man she knows as Dad is not her biological father. Mom confesses that her biological father Andrew died in a car accident before her mother could tell him she was pregnant. She never told her husband that he wasn’t Meg real dad.

Meg sets out to find her grandmother and as well as any members of that side of her life she never knew. While on her search, she meets nineteen year old Micah Allen

Yes Meg and Micah are meant for each other. There is no doubt you will enjoy reading their story.

I thought this story was cute and sweet. At times the author did come across a little preachy, this coming from someone who is not religious. But, I don't think it would keep readers from wanting to read and share this book with others.

NetGalley advanced copy

4.5 rounded down. I really enjoyed this story! I feel like so many people are going to relate to Meg and Micah, and therefore it is so important that the author stuck with this book and never gave up on it. So many people like myself have strained relationships with The Church ™️ which can lead to complete rejection, but this book shows that while the church might reject you and turn you away, that doesn’t mean God does.

I have already told 2 friends they need to buy this book when it comes out.