Thank you NetGalley, Vera Kurian, and Park row books for the arc copy of this book. #netgalley #neversawmecoming

This was a thriller about a group of students on scholarships in a study on psychopathy. Dr Wyman wants his students to complete the program and become model citizens.
Chloe wants revenge on someone who raped her when she was 12.
Students in the program start getting murdered.
Just how dangerous are the students in this study.

This was a descriptive, immersive thriller that makes you root for the psychopath! I would have rated it higher but I did see the ending coming, kind of.

Enjoyable thriller from a great author.

As a trigger warning, the plot does deal in part with rape – if that is something you find upsetting/triggering, this is not the book for you.

This was an interesting idea for a story, and definitely not like anything I’ve ever read before.

The story is told from multiple points of view, and the narrators, all being psychopaths, are extremely unreliable.

All in all, it was a wild ride from start to finish. Quite the page turner.

We are used to think of psychopath as serial killer and the villains of stories, this book has a different take on this persons as their role is investigating or being victims.
The blurb was really exciting and couldn't wait to read this story, I was hooked since the first pages and met Chloe, a highly functional psychopath.
There's plenty of dark humor and i laughed a lot but there's also suspense, a lot of twists and an excellent descriptions of the characters.
It's a gripping and highly entertaining read, I liked Chloe and her lists.
The author is a talented storyteller and the character development is excellent.
I think there's going to be other books featuring this characters but it could wishful thinking on my side.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Maybe 3,5

This was a fun ride, for the most part. The murder mystery held my attention until the end, and I liked that we had more than one POV to follow. Some characters were exponentially more interesting than others–namely Charles. And some just didn't fit in the story–namely Chloe, who was somehow very childish while also being ruthless. Also, the fact she was the only first-person POV kind of broke the tone for all the rest.

If you can get over the fact that this isn't realistic at all (I mean, a doctor who can't see one of his patients is faking it?), you're in for a treat!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

This was such a great read! While at first I was unsure about the switching viewpoints and narrators, it didn’t take long for me to realize that it was essential to the storyline. I also enjoyed the psychological facts peppered throughout. Who would have thought you could feel empathy for a group of people who are utterly incapable of such an emotion?

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

A twisty thriller with a unique concept, I loved everything about this page-turner! I was thoroughly impressed with the author's ability to take the trope of the psychopath and make a solid 5 star read about two friends emmeshed by their past. HIGHLY recommend!

Not sure what the prime audience would be for this book, but clearly twenties. The college life aspect of the plot with frats and professors was not at all workable. And a campus psych dept. experiment monitoring psychopaths? The machinations of the main character as she went about her deadly mission were fun to follow at first as was the mission of the group to find out the murderer . But then the book rushed to an utterly unrealistic and cheap conclusion.

Not a very good book. A few main characters, so it jumped around a lot. The characters were pretty much all unlikeable, which may or may not be on purpose. Lots of scheming and double crossing, add in a few red herrings and a rape side plot and you have this book in a nutshell. All in all I hate that I finished it and I'm glad that it's over. Would not recommend.

This one is daaaaaaaaaark (trigger warnings for, I don't know, everything?) and disturbing, taking readers into the minds of admitted, diagnosed psychopaths in a special study at a university. I found this to be a real nailbiter, wanting to keep reading and find out what was going to happen and how this could possibly end, despite how creepy some of the characters really are.

What an intriguing premise: a group of psychopaths are part of a study at a university, someone starts killing them, some of these psychopaths begin to work together to try to figure out who is after them. Of course, since they are psychopaths they can’t trust each other and they do some really horrible things. But, they are the main characters and I found myself cheering them on. This book was clever and quirky and just fun! I would love an update on all these characters every few years.

My copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to the the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review it.

I received a digital advance copy of Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian through NetGalley. Never Saw Me Coming is scheduled for release on September 7, 2021.

Never Saw Me Coming focuses on Chloe, a freshman at a university in D.C. Chloe received a full ride to this school in exchange for participating in a study on psychopathy run by the psychology department. This is convenient for Chloe, as she was following someone that wronged her in the past. As a diagnosed psychopath, Chloe has a mission to punish the boy from her past. What she doesn’t expect is for other students involved in the study to start dying. It’s very possible that one of psychopaths is killing off the study participants.

It has become relatively common to encounter a psychopath in a thriller/ suspense novel. What makes Never Saw Me Coming stand out is that not only are there several psychopaths present in the story, but we know they are psychopaths from the beginning of the novel. The result is Kurian gets to really dig into the nuances and variation present in psychopaths rather than giving us one, sometimes caricatured, version of what psychopathy looks like.

Working with a group of psychopaths also complicates the plot. While the group is supposed to be confidential, with the participants never meeting or knowing who else is in the study, throughout the novel they begin to identify each other. The secrecy, manipulation, and escalating suspicion that results leads to an ever-shifting plot. In some moments, we are able to accurately predict the behavior and responses of the characters, while in other moments we are totally surprised by their choices.

Overall, Never Saw Me Coming was a very engaging read that set out to explore the depths and boundaries of psychopathy and delivers on that goal.

This book had a very promising premise - Dark Academia, a student with psychopathic tendencies. But unfortunately the execution for me fell flat. The flow was a little stunted, almost like it was written in free thought. While the main character, Chloe, was interesting, the other characters I just could not connect or empathize with.

This is a great thriller! Chloe is a freshman at DC area college. From the outside, she seems like any first year student. But what almost no one knows is that Chloe is a diagnosed psychopath and is part of a secret program at her college to study and treat psychopaths.

Chloe has come to her college with the objective of exacting revenge on a fellow student, Will, who deeply wronged her when she was child. But then one of the fellow students in her program is murdered -- and Chloe realizes that while she has been focused on getting her revenge on Will, someone else may be targeting her for reasons that are not clear. This begins a tense series of events where Chloe must determine who to trust -- when she herself is fundamentally untrustworthy.

This book offered a very interesting premise and the author's execution of it was quite strong. Chloe is an intriguing anti-hero and the mysteries at the heart of the story made this a real page turner.

Recommended!

Another book in a university setting. - this was my thought as I began, What I wasn't prepared for was a book narrated by psychopaths. John Adams University provides free tuition for those few students who become part of a study on psychopathic behavior; a study that will help them interact more normally with society. Are they the dangerous ones or are they in danger? When two of the participants are murdered three of the others band together to discover what is happening. I was prepared to be a bit bored with this book but it honestly kept me engrossed to the end.
#NeverSawMeComing#NetGalley.

The premise was intriguing and thought-provoking. The world-building is well-developed. The characters are so engaging that you anticipate what will be their next move is. While narrated from multiple points of view, this book will keep your interest until the end.

The story follows two plots. Meet Chloe Sevre, a freshman psychology student who seeks justice for what was done to her when she was 12. For Chloe to get accepted into the university, she joined a study group focused on students diagnosed as psychopaths like her.

Chloe was so focused on her revenge schemes that a mysterious hunter was killing the other members of her study group.

The story was slow-paced for me that some characters are irrelevant to the story. I find it tedious to read that the big revelations unfold in the latter part of the story.

Overall it was a good and clever read. I recommend it to those who love mystery, psychological thrillers, and crime stories.

I am grateful to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review an eARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Seven psychopathic college students collected as subjects in a study had me immediately hooked in this psychological thriller. When two of those students are murdered, it seems the test subjects themselves are being targeted. The riveting part of the story: who do you believe when psychopaths are not particularly trustworthy and the story is literally full of psychopaths?! As a reader, you are always second guessing what people say, what they really mean, who’s lying, who’s telling the truth... this was the fun part of the book. It’s an excellent premise and takes you on a great ride. I thoroughly enjoyed being sucked into the suspense, from beginning to end, trying to figure out a big twisted reveal. I wasn’t especially satisfied with the ending, though. I was hoping for a final twist with an unexpected interconnection, especially given the title, but that fell short for me. I literally was hoping, as the title suggested, to never see it coming.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

The story of »Never Saw Me Coming« is very compelling I think. It feels special, as I haven't read many books, if any, that combine your typical YA story set at college with something like a clinical study. I know some movies, but books? Nope. Loved that. The setting and the character constellation gave me some HTGAWM or »The Secret History« vibes. Some plot points do feel a little left out though.

You should never trust a psychopath. But what if you had no choice?

This was a super interesting premise and right up my alley! Chloe is your average college student, but also a psychopath. She's part of a study at her college on psychopaths, and when one of the study's participants is murdered, Chloe and her fellow study members have to try and trust each other to find the killer.

What a wild ride! Told from multiple points of view and from the most unreliable narrators ever, this story was full of surprises. I liked the mystery aspect and was constantly kept wondering what would happen next. I was rooting for Chloe to get her revenge, and the issues that the other character were going through were fun as well. Multiple narrators are hard to pull off successfully, in my opinion, and it worked well enough here that I was able to keep following the story, but it was hard at times to remember everything that was going on.

Chloe Sevre had one goal in mind when she went off to college: get revenge on the boy who hurt her six years ago. And Chloe, a diagnosed psychopath, will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. The only problem is, Chloe isn’t the only psychopath on campus. She’s actually part of a groundbreaking study on campus, part of a group of seven psychopathic students undergoing treatment under the careful eye of Dr. Leonard Wyman. It’s all supposed to be anonymous, but it doesn’t take long before others in the study start getting killed. Chloe has to turn to others in her group for help, but trusting her fellow psychopaths might not be her wisest decision if she wants to stay alive.

Never Saw Me Coming was a wild ride of a story. With chapters told from multiple viewpoints, half who are diagnosed psychopaths, this novel is a fantastic thriller full of unreliable narrators and surprises around every turn. The writing is very well done; chapters are not always clearly demarcated by which character point of view we are reading from, but the narrative is distinct for each voice, making it easy to fall into that character’s headspace. I loved that we had so many unreliable narrators - the story wasn’t just one unreliable narrator against everyone else, it was each character against each other while also being against everyone else. These pages dripped with suspicion and distrust in a way that was beyond what I normally get from thrillers. The plot wonderfully weaved truths, lies, and misdirects around each character and development. With so many pathological liars running around, it was easy, as a reader, to begin to suspect everyone. I definitely did not see the ending coming, but it was oh so satisfying when it did. Never Saw Me Coming was a fantastic debut from Vera Kurian, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

Wow!! What did I just read and where can I get more of it?!?!?! Never Saw Me Coming was excellent!
A story about a group of college students who have been diagnosed as psychopaths who enter into a clinical study to learn more about this diagnosis. When one of them is found murdered, three of the students, Chloe, Charles and Andre, form an unusual bond in order to solve the mystery. But each has their own selfish reason to find the killer.
I loved everything about it! The characters were great and I'm not sure if I hate to love them or love to hate them!! Definitely a must read!!!