Blog Tour & Review: Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian

Today, I’m so happy to be a tour stop on the blog tour for Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian. Thank you Park Row Books for inviting me to participate.

Publisher: Park Row Books

Published: September 7, 2021

Source: Netgalley via Publisher

Summary:

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.

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.

My thoughts:

It’s no surprise that I love a good psychological thriller. Throw in a serial killer, an academic setting and I’m all in! This book was completely addicting and original and I loved every second of it!

What could possible go wrong when a group of psychopaths are invited to participate in a group study at a college so that their behaviors could be observed? That’s what we find here and I just loved that not only do we meet such an incredible and twisted set of characters, but that they all to their own degree become unreliable to some extent. My favorite, of course, was Chloe – what a trip she was. You just never knew what to expect from her and I could not get enough of her. While most of the book is narrated by her, there are some chapters that are narrated by other characters so that we get inside some of the other psychopath’s heads, too.

This book really kept me on my toes, guessing where things were ultimately heading the entire time. We know that Chloe is intent on exacting revenge for a wrong done to her years ago. But, it turns out someone else is looking to exact some revenge of their own on this group. It’s quite clever on the author’s part that you really aren’t sure where this all fits in…and who is behind things.

I had so many different theories as I raced through this book…and I love that. I thought I had this all worked out so many times, only to be completely blindsided in the end.. This book is cleverly plotted and the writing is sharp and engaging. I am definitely going to be keeping an eye out for this author – I can’t wait to see what she writes next!

About the author:

Vera Kurian is a psychologist and writer and a longtime resident of Washington DC. She has a doctorate in social psychology, specializing in intergroup relations, political ideology, and quantitative methods. She has studied fiction at Breadloaf, Sewanee, VONA, and attended juried workshops at LitCamp, Colgate, Juniper, and the Marlboro Summer Writing Intensive. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was a semifinalist for the Mark Twain Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Contest.

Author links: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

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