What happens when a psychopath starts hunting down other psychopaths? Who can you trust? This story is told from multiple points of view....and all of them are up to something. So, as you are reading, you don´t know if you are dealing with an unreliable narrator, or is everyone telling the truth? I liked this one quite a bit. Definately recommended.

A thank you to Netgalley for sharing the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 rounded up. As soon as I caught a glance of this cover and read a brief synopsis of the book I knew that I just had to read it. A morally questionable study of a diverse group of college student psychopaths, some truly bad, others trying hard not to be (or at least recognize themselves for what they are) and the inevitable road to murder. A fascinating, if over-the-top & bordering on the ridiculous premise that's a compulsive and disturbingly enjoyable read. If done right, would probably make for a fun escapist movie.

I really liked the overall premise of this book. I was super excited to read it. However, I found myself kind of loathing the main character by the end. I think every book has its audience, so I don’t want to rate it poorly. I think I was probably expecting a bit too much, and just found myself underwhelmed. Generally speaking, I think this will be a decent seller. I think most people will enjoy it.

Thank you for providing me a copy for review.

A group of students diagnosed as psychopaths attend college together. Each student has a full ride, participates in a psychology study, and wears a smart watch with a mood log and tracker. The students are unaware of one another, but suddenly one of the students dies, and then another. Who is hunting them and why?

This was told through alternating perspectives between Chloe, Andre, and Charles mainly. It had a super strong start with the countdown for Chloe and her goals at college. I loved how it started so deep and strong with a great suspenseful outlook. Great plot line and path. However I struggled when there got to be too many characters. I started to get confused and lost track of who was who at points and why there were so many moving targets. I think that it had a lot of potential, but overall there were entirely too many branching plot lines going on.

TW: sexual assault, drugging, underage drinking, sexual content, murder, assault mental health

A psychological thriller filled with a cast of characters that have far more to them than meets the eye. College parties, fraternity secrets, beautiful girls, and a program full of students diagnosed as psychopaths. What could go wrong? Nothing if the professor has his way, everything if Chloe Sevre has hers. Chloe is a psycopath with a past, a bad one, one that has her desperate for revenge, a revenge she just may be able to pull off thanks to the program.

Billed as a game of cat and mouse, Never Saw Me Coming turns out to be more of a book about all the various cats...or lab rats? We get more than just Chloe's perspective, finding as we turn the pages that we also get to read the perspective of several more students as the small college setting has the students in the program crossing paths. Things escalate quickly in this book, with murders being plotted and bodies turning up, I enjoyed the feeling of trying to figure out whodunnit, but then there started being just too much.

While Never Saw Me Coming is based off a fantastic premise, I live for this kind of book, the execution is sloppy. Characters seemed to have great meaning, then dropped off the face of the earth, and the plot holes were everywhere. Plus, I really found myself needing more background than we ever received for every character. While Kurian had a great idea with this and I truly could see the plausibility of it happening, I didn't find myself sinking into the story like I was part of it. I struggled with the mess and it made this read seem long.

I've had other friends really enjoy this book, so it may just be a case of it's not you it's me.

Thank you Netgalley, Harlequin Trade Publishing- Park Row and Vera Kurian.
Can you tell who is a psychopath? Is the person sitting near you? Are you living with one?
Chloe is a college student taking part in a clinical study on psychopaths. No one is aware who else is taking part in the study.
One of the first thing we are made aware, Chloe is attending that college to kill another student named Will and be part of the study.
Students are getting murdered on campus, who is killing? Are they part of the study?
Well written mystery, I found the story dragging at times, did not know who was the killer until the end.
Recommend.
3.5 stars

i read the description and initially loved the premise of this book. However, I felt it was a little slow and the pace could've been quicker. I didn't feel invested in the main character, so there were times that I lost interest in the story.

I understand this is a debut novel and I really found it impressive. It has a unique premise…..a college program to try and train diagnosed psychopaths to be “better” people. There are plenty of twists and it kept me guessing. If I have one quibble, it’s that several of the chapter ends set up action sequences but the beginning of the next chapter starts after that action is already over. That aside, this is a really good story and I kind of hope it’s the beginning of a series for at least two of these characters.

I read 70% of the ebook and the last part in audiobook.  The audiobook was really good, I enjoyed the narrator's voice.  Even though most of the story was told from Chloe's perspective, you still get some chapters where you also experience Charles and Andre's thoughts. Even though the premise seemed really far-fetched that a university would have a program for psychopaths, this thriller girl was totally in.  The idea of an unknown psychopath targeting other psychopaths was super intriguing.  I am always fascinated by the why.  I would have never guessed this why in a million years. I never guessed who the killer was until right before the reveal.  All of the characters had flaws but I found the three main characters  Chloe, Charles, and Andre charming, smart, cunning, and the detective work they did to try to uncover who the killer was fascinating, even though none of them truly trusted the other ones.  With more and more plot twists the ending was really nerve-wracking and suspenseful.   I thought the writing was clever, fast-paced and I was eager to pick back up between reading times.  Even though the characters were characterized as psychopaths you really did not know if any of them had really killed in the past. I found myself empathizing with them as they were being stalked by this unknown killer.

Thank you to @Harlequintradepublishing and @Netgalley  for the digital ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

Never Saw Me Coming stood out to me with it's cast of characters.
It's rare to read (Joe Goldberg novels excluded) about a psycho main character and even more difficult to find a book with this many psychopaths represented, all in one story, all together hanging around, making jokes and just simply being themselves. Chloe, the main character, is a freshman honor student, who is also a psychopath. She is one of seven students offered scholarship money to participate in a psychology study at John Adams University. All she has to do is wear a Smart Watch which will track her moods and movements and participate in a few activities, at the Psychology building. We soon find out that Chloe has a mission of her own to kill. Her focus is on an upperclassmen, Will, who raped her when she was twelve years old and videoed it. She becomes friends with his frat brothers to get closer to him. Andre and Charles, also study participants, battle opinions of Chloe's quest. The game quickly takes a turn and that's all I can say without spoiling. I really enjoyed this one and highly recommend.

I really enjoyed this book! The concept was completely unique and very compelling. My main critique is that it should be marketed as YA rather than an adult thriller. I love YA and don't mean that as a critique, but I think the characters' ages and the way the act, along with the setting and pacing, would fit better as an upper YA novel.

Things went a little off the rails the last 25% or so, but I still enjoyed the story. I definitely look forward to this author's next book!

Chloe Sevre is obsessed with getting revenge on a childhood acquaintance that seriously wronged her in the past, so much so that she has followed him to college. Chloe is also a diagnosed psychopath; enrolled in a psychopathy study at this university.
Chloe’s plan for revenge is put on hold when a series of murders start taking place at this school. Someone is murdering the students in the study, and Chloe and company investigate before they become the next target.
The concept of this book grabbed me from the start. But sadly, the execution was not my favorite. There were too many characters and situations being introduced that did not go anywhere, and I found the reveal to be a bit out of left field. In summary, I was not able to get invested in this story and the characters, and did not enjoy it as I thought I would.

Never saw me coming was definitely different. A serial murderer on a college campus with a study taking place with psychopaths what could possibly go wrong. A fun suspenseful thriller.

This has a gorgeous cover and an interesting plot. This group of college adults pulled together in a study for psychopaths. I liked the MC and her unique voice and POV. I found the jumping POV not quite as fun, but I did like the additional perspectives rounding out the story. The twits were good and kept me wondering where it was going. Good conclusion. This one was good.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

I really struggled to connect with this one. The characters didn't click for me, and I had a hard time following along with the story. I can see why so many love this one but for it just wasn't a hit for me!

So entertaining, so pulse pounding, so unputdownable!

Chloe Sevre, a freshman honor student, is one of seven students at her Washington, D.C. college is part of a furtive clinical study of psychopaths, which is to help the participants become a productive citizen in society. While Chloe is delighted for the scholarship, she is covertly intending to execute her own plan against a childhood friend. But, as Chloe lays her traps, it seems someone has other plans for the study participants, which could interfere with Chloe’s plan. Now Chloe and the other participants have to decide can they trust each other and becoming victims. What can go wrong (or right) when a group of psychopaths set their minds on a plan.

This is an expertly plotted storyline and the tensions builds to an almost unbearable point. I so enjoyed the clues and figuring out the puzzle that is cleverly laid before the conclusion to see how right (or wrong) was in solving the mystery.

Readers will zip through this book with delight.

And I am interested to know will there be another Chloe book?

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: Never Saw Me Coming

Author: Vera Kurian

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 2/5

Recommended For...: thriller, mystery, suspense

Publication Date: September 7, 2021

Genre: Thriler Mystery

Recommended Age: can’t recommend, DNFed

Explanation of CWs: can’t recommend, DNFed

Publisher: Park Row

Pages: 400

Synopsis: Meet Chloe Sevre. She’s a freshman honor student, a leggings-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.

Review: Had to DNF at 32%. The book was confusing and clunky. I also wasn’t connecting with any of the characters and it was just not worth getting through the text for me.

Verdict: It’s ok, just wasn’t for me.

Dude.... I feel like this is going to be such a polarizing book. There were quite a few aspects of it that I literally didn't care about at all but even so I was obsessed with the book? Like I couldn't wait to get back to the audiobook every time I stepped away from it. I think that has a lot to do with the audiobook narrator, too. She did a really amazing job and gave the story an extra layer of life.

But a lot of that has to do with the actual book's voice, too. The story is about psychopaths, literal diagnosed psychopaths, not the kind you call someone who you just don't agree with. And you would think that would make you immediately dislike them. But part of what some psychopaths do (as far as I, the non-psychopath expert, know) is manipulate their actions or the way they're perceived into something that's super likable. So throughout the course of the book, I found myself rooting for people to die, for people to get broken up with or even cheated on, for people to lie or steal or basically just do anything you'd never want your typical book characters to do.

Our story starts with Chloe. She joined this scientific program that's studying psychopaths at a DC college. She even gets her tuition free because she's agreed to be a part of it. She's one of seven students in the study, and the rest of them are anonymous to her. She gets a smart watch that will send her random mood tracker alerts to see if there's any links between anything she feels and anything she does. But she doesn't care about any of that. She only had interest in the school for one reason: finding Will. The rest of it was just a catalyst to get her there. She wants to find Will for a simple reason - she wants to kill him. Will is someone she knew as a child, who did something awful to her, and someone she's been planning getting revenge on for a LONG time. And what's interesting about the way she feels about him is that while what happened to her was really horrifying, she's so detached from it in comparison to getting her revenge. She wants him to pay so badly that it feels like she doesn't even fully remember the why. I think it's an interesting way to show the focus and sheer rage that can lie inside a person, especially someone with a personality disorder like that.

So Chloe starts befriending people in Will's frat to get closer to him. One of them is Charles, called "Terrible Charles" by his friends, but who doesn't seem that terrible to Chloe. In fact, he doesn't really seem like anything but just another frat bro. Until one night he witnesses Chloe enacting one of her stages of revenge on Will, and she finds out he's a psychopath, too. They bond a little over that, but soon get a lot closer when they realize people in their program are being killed off, and have to find out who's doing it, who's even in the program, and who's next to die.

Enter Andre. Andre is also in the program, but he's special. He's special because he filled out the application as a sort of joke, and somehow faked his way into the study. He got approved and got a full ride and couldn't find a way to turn it down without crushing his parents. So now he's doing maybe one of the most psychopathic things a non-psychopath can do: faking being a psychopath. It is totally not a good time. He feels the guilt, the fear, the insecurity, all the bad feelings that the truly psychopaths don't really have the capacity to process fully. But, regardless of his true status, he's now part of the group being hunted by someone.

The three of them make an unlikely trio. Charles doesn't trust Chloe, Chloe doesn't trust Charles, and Andre is terrified of both of them. Despite that, they all have a great dynamic together, and even form a really fucked up little found family. Chloe can't believe how GOOD Andre is at faking emotions (hint: he isn't faking them at all). They dive into their research on who the killer could be and who their fellow program students could be, and they do it quickly, before any of them are next.

There are some definite near misses, where some of them are attacked or have their houses broken into or just are violated in some way. Times like these are when I'm in love with the voice of the novel; Chloe gets caught in all this drama and physical violence and only ever gets mad that she's caught off guard, or even impressed by the wile of the other people involved. She takes literally nothing seriously except for her rage, and I think that's what makes her so relatable. She makes jokes in any situation and it's fun to see the flippant way she maneuvers such stressful moments.

The storytelling style is interesting because only Chloe gets a first-person view, and the rest of the story is told in third-person, like the parts about Charles or Andre. I don't quite understand why this is, but I don't really mind it, because being in Chloe's mind is fun but I think being in 2 (and a half) psychopaths' minds might be a little overwhelming. You still get a description of how the boys feel but it's nowhere near as personal as it is with Chloe.

Charles is in a long-term relationship and that's another part of his characterization that's cool. She knows about his diagnosis and you get to see the way he sometimes puts on a front with his girlfriend and performs like he would for anyone else, but there's also times when he's a little more vulnerable. He even sometimes feels little bits of emotions the way he feels is "normal" when he's with her. But there's things he does that makes it obvious that his relationship isn't always enough.

And Andre is Black, so there's also things that he experiences differently. He is the sole witness to one of the program student's murders, and he has such a fear that he's going to become the sole suspect because he was alone with the victim. He only even found out about the program because he was diagnosed with a personality disorder as a kid, not even a year after his sister died unexpectedly. It's not blatant on-page, but I feel like he, as a Black male teen, would have been a lot quicker to have been diagnosed with something that he didn't have instead of just brushing it off as "oh, he's just acting out because he's upset." Ya know? He believes he's being followed at one point, and runs home, and people he encounters treat him as if he's the scary one. There's just quite a few moments where you see how his experience would differ even if he was a psychopath, and especially because he isn't.

The ending of the mystery didn't really do anything for me. I didn't like it, but I just didn't care much. There were basically no twists in this novel, which I feel is a pretty rare choice for a thriller these days, and honestly it was refreshing. It was tough to imagine all the twists that could have been, and I cared about the characters so much that I was glad that none of them turned out any other way than how I expected.

The actual ending of the book is probably going to piss folks off. It's sort of frustrating, but it's sort of symbolic. Genuinely it just made me want a sequel with the same characters, which for me is so funny to feel after a thriller. I was actually sad that it ended. I just was addicted to the way the characters were written.

With ALL that being said, I don't actively recommend this to anyone. It's just one of those ones where I don't know peoples' minds well enough to know how they'd react to it, and I don't like to recommend books people end up hating lol. If morally grey characters laughing off literal murder attempts sound fun to you, and if you're a character-based reader rather than a plot-based one, you might want to give it a try. But even then I don't know if you'll like it lmao. Just pretend I didn't say anything and do what you want. :-)

3 STARS

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.

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Ok, I really wanted to love this one...but I just couldn't. Maybe it was the formatting of my #arc, maybe it was just the authors voice. Maybe I just hated the characters. Either way, this didn't work for me. However, I did finish it...so there is that.

Interesting premise, slightly drawn out execution (no pun intended.) Thank you to Netgalley for my review copy.

A Murder mystery with psychopathic main characters? I love it! Seven college students join a clinical study for psychopaths. But when the participants start turning up dead, three students decide to take matters into their own hands and find the murderer. Especially since one of the participants can use these murders for their own gain…
This book was so innovative and refreshing. It hooked me from the first page because I’ve never read anything like this before and I’m so happy that I have now! The characters were so interesting. Who would’ve thought that an author could make me like psychopaths? Well, Vera Kurian did! And the writing was so engrossing, it was so hard to put this book down!
I only had a couple of complaints about this book. The first one is that the description of the book was a little misleading. This is a multiple point of view book, but I had no idea from the description. I think having multiple points of view definitely added to the story, and I think each one was important. However, you should be able to tell from the description that the book isn’t just told from Chloe’s narration. The other points of view are just as important as hers. And my only other complaint, which is what kept the book from being a five-star read for me, was that the big reveal didn’t excite me. The story kept me guessing and I had several theories on what would be revealed. But I feel like the least interesting thing happened. The final reveal left a lot to be desired for me.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book! The narration and characters were amazing! The pacing, the writing style, the suspense, all of it was great. I will definitively be reading more from Vera Kurian in the future!

Thank you to Harlequin-Trade Publishing/Park Row and NetGalley for this arc. All opinions are my own.

TW: Murder; rape mentioned; suicide; adult/minor relationship; stalking