Book Review: Never Saw Me Coming, by Vera Kurian
Seven campus psychopaths, what could go wrong?
Park Row, 2021, 400 pages
You should never trust a psychopath. But what if you had no choice?
It would be easy to underestimate Chloe Sevre…. She’s a freshman honor student, a legging-wearing hot girl next door, who also happens to be a psychopath. She spends her time on 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 of 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 for revenge 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 thriller about a psychopathic protagonist, but here the author tries to present a plausible, almost sympathetic version of psychopathy. Chloe Sevre is outwardly a typical college girl: she's pretty, she's fit, she's friendly, she's an honors student, she likes partying and sleeping with hot guys, and she's also planning to murder her childhood friend, Will Bachman.
Getting inside Chloe's head, we see a person who in many ways is the fun, flirty college girl she pretends to be. But we also see how much of an act it is, how calculated Chloe is in every interaction. Her smiles, her charm, her distress, her tears, they are all masks she puts on. Except her anger. That's pretty real.
Chloe is part of a study of seven students who've been diagnosed with psychopathy disorder. In exchange for a free ride scholarship to the fictional John Adams University in Washington, D.C., they have to attend weekly sessions with the doctor conducting the study, and wear wristwatches that periodically quiz them on their emotional states. Of course, none of the psychopathic study subjects are supposed to meet each other, and of course they all do.
The twist is that Chloe's real reason for coming to John Adams University is to stalk a boy who wronged her when they were kids, and exact bloody vengeance. For the first part of the book, of course, the reader is wondering what the hell Will Bachman did to Chloe to make her want to kill him years later. Does she have, like, a good reason, or is it just some petty psychopathic reason?
The answer is actually revealed fairly early, so the reader isn't left hanging until the end of the book to find out why Chloe wants to kill this guy. However, at that point it becomes a minor subplot that's resolved almost too neatly. Meanwhile, two of the other psychopaths in the study have been murdered, forcing Chloe to team up with hot, rich, studmuffin Charles and token black guy Andre to figure out which of their psychopathic peers is stalking them.
While I enjoyed this book, and felt like the twists were pretty good albeit sometimes stretching plausibility, there were a lot of POV shifts. Chloe's is the primary POV, but some chapters are written from Charles and Andre's POVs. Each of them is different, but it reminded me why multiple POV books are unpopular nowadays: the writer needs a lot of discipline to keep the narrative flowing smoothly while jumping from person to person, and here that wasn't always the case.
On the other hand, I did like getting into their heads. There have been plenty of books and TV shows with psychopaths as protagonists, but they are rarely convincing. An "ethical psychopath" is a contradiction in terms. I think in this case, the author did a reasonably good job of capturing the mindset of a psychopath who's not a crazy serial killer, and who is almost likeable. Psychopathy is somewhat vaguely distinguished from sociopathy as an inability to feel fear or remorse. Chloe isn't devoid of feelings - she has a lot of feelings. And she can even feel affection for people, but she's incapable of selflessness. She only likes people who are useful or attractive to her. Her fellow psychopaths are likewise human... they're just very broken humans.
Chloe is very much aware of her physical limitations, especially when confronting men, but approaches threats like tactical puzzles to solve rather than dangerous, physically superior foes. She's shameless about sex, violence, and ruining people's lives, and yet everything she does she has a reason for and you kind of want to root for her. Kind of.
This was a good thriller with characters I wouldn't mind seeing in another book, though "psychopaths getting involved in yet another plot where other psychopaths are trying to kill them" would probably get old.
My complete list of book reviews.
Park Row, 2021, 400 pages
You should never trust a psychopath. But what if you had no choice?
It would be easy to underestimate Chloe Sevre…. She’s a freshman honor student, a legging-wearing hot girl next door, who also happens to be a psychopath. She spends her time on 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 of 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 for revenge 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 thriller about a psychopathic protagonist, but here the author tries to present a plausible, almost sympathetic version of psychopathy. Chloe Sevre is outwardly a typical college girl: she's pretty, she's fit, she's friendly, she's an honors student, she likes partying and sleeping with hot guys, and she's also planning to murder her childhood friend, Will Bachman.
Getting inside Chloe's head, we see a person who in many ways is the fun, flirty college girl she pretends to be. But we also see how much of an act it is, how calculated Chloe is in every interaction. Her smiles, her charm, her distress, her tears, they are all masks she puts on. Except her anger. That's pretty real.
Chloe is part of a study of seven students who've been diagnosed with psychopathy disorder. In exchange for a free ride scholarship to the fictional John Adams University in Washington, D.C., they have to attend weekly sessions with the doctor conducting the study, and wear wristwatches that periodically quiz them on their emotional states. Of course, none of the psychopathic study subjects are supposed to meet each other, and of course they all do.
The twist is that Chloe's real reason for coming to John Adams University is to stalk a boy who wronged her when they were kids, and exact bloody vengeance. For the first part of the book, of course, the reader is wondering what the hell Will Bachman did to Chloe to make her want to kill him years later. Does she have, like, a good reason, or is it just some petty psychopathic reason?
The answer is actually revealed fairly early, so the reader isn't left hanging until the end of the book to find out why Chloe wants to kill this guy. However, at that point it becomes a minor subplot that's resolved almost too neatly. Meanwhile, two of the other psychopaths in the study have been murdered, forcing Chloe to team up with hot, rich, studmuffin Charles and token black guy Andre to figure out which of their psychopathic peers is stalking them.
While I enjoyed this book, and felt like the twists were pretty good albeit sometimes stretching plausibility, there were a lot of POV shifts. Chloe's is the primary POV, but some chapters are written from Charles and Andre's POVs. Each of them is different, but it reminded me why multiple POV books are unpopular nowadays: the writer needs a lot of discipline to keep the narrative flowing smoothly while jumping from person to person, and here that wasn't always the case.
On the other hand, I did like getting into their heads. There have been plenty of books and TV shows with psychopaths as protagonists, but they are rarely convincing. An "ethical psychopath" is a contradiction in terms. I think in this case, the author did a reasonably good job of capturing the mindset of a psychopath who's not a crazy serial killer, and who is almost likeable. Psychopathy is somewhat vaguely distinguished from sociopathy as an inability to feel fear or remorse. Chloe isn't devoid of feelings - she has a lot of feelings. And she can even feel affection for people, but she's incapable of selflessness. She only likes people who are useful or attractive to her. Her fellow psychopaths are likewise human... they're just very broken humans.
Chloe is very much aware of her physical limitations, especially when confronting men, but approaches threats like tactical puzzles to solve rather than dangerous, physically superior foes. She's shameless about sex, violence, and ruining people's lives, and yet everything she does she has a reason for and you kind of want to root for her. Kind of.
This was a good thriller with characters I wouldn't mind seeing in another book, though "psychopaths getting involved in yet another plot where other psychopaths are trying to kill them" would probably get old.
My complete list of book reviews.