Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian

When at its strongest, Never Saw Me Coming is dark, complex, gripping and difficult to step back from

Book Review by Heather McDaid | 09 Sep 2021
  • Never Saw Me Coming
Book title: Never Saw Me Coming
Author: Vera Kurian

Chloe Sevre’s hobbies include yogalates and frat parties; she’s an honour student, looks the typical girl next door, and she’s going to kill Will Bachman, the childhood friend who wronged her. She’s part of a seven-strong clinical study of psychopaths – who, like her, can’t comprehend emotions like fear and guilt, and lack empathy – but when one of the students is found murdered in the psychology building, everything shifts.

What began as the perfect waiting game to strike her own revenge becomes a chase in which she is both a hunter and the hunted, as everyone seeks the answer while being under the strongest suspicion.

Welcoming readers with the intent and timescale for murder, this is a compulsive read – as unreliable narrators and plot twists aplenty build up, the hooks aren’t lacking. Chloe and fellow students Charles and Andre deftly build up the full picture while ripping it to pieces simultaneously. Truth never feels certain. The term ‘psychological thriller’ is thrown around often, but Never Saw Me Coming takes it literally; it goes beyond the tropes of psychopathy, showing the reality of living a normal, average life too.

Unsure who to trust from page one, readers fall deeply down the wormhole of seeking answers. However, the book does lose its momentum amid its many threads. But when at its strongest, Never Saw Me Coming is difficult to step back from – dark, complex, and gripping.


Harvill Secker, 9 Sep, £14.99