Thanks to Park Row for providing an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!

Goodreads: Never Saw Me Coming
Publisher: Park Row
Published: 08 October 2021
Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Panda Rating:

_{(3.5 pandas)}

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.

TL;DR: Never Saw Me Coming was an entertaining, thrilling and fast-paced murder mystery! I enjoyed following the three main character perspectives and thought that they were unique as they’ve all been diagnosed as psychopaths. While I’m sure we’re not meant to find these characters likeable, I still found myself rooting for them to survive and solve the mystery? 😂 From a ‘social’ perspective it was also really interesting to see their interactions, how they viewed each other and the people around them as well!

It took me until about the 15% mark to really get absorbed into the book but once I was hooked, I couldn’t put it down and finished it in less than one day! This was definitely a wild ride but I had a lot of fun with it!

I’ve only read two other stories from a psychopath’s perspective but I hated one of them and the other was an older serial killer who lived in isolation, so this book gets points for the unique protagonists. I’m pretty sure these characters aren’t meant to be likeable but I couldn’t help rooting for them to survive. The story is told through multiple perspectives and while I’m not entirely sure that it really added that much to the solving of the actual mystery (because only one of the characters really did much of the crime-solving despite them “working” together), I liked how it showed the different ways psychopathy manifests in people. I found this quite interesting from a social perspective!

Charles‘ character was surprisingly my favourite, in as much as a psychopath can be a favourite. He was a compelling character and I couldn’t help but feel for him and his efforts to not let this diagnosis affect his life; he seemed to be the only one who was trying to be better through this study/program and who took it seriously. There were definitely moments when he’d “slip up”, especially when he was around Chloe, but he was never really that manipulative and sadistic person that psychopaths are made out to be.

While I did like the multiple perspectives I have to admit that it was sometimes confusing because their voices weren’t all that different, so sometimes it took a while for me to work out whose POV I was reading from. I felt that so many POVs also kind of took away from parts of the story because each character had their own unique story and motive for being in this program, and I felt some parts of that faded off as more perspectives were added and the focus turned towards the murder.

The murder mystery kept me on my toes the whole way through though and there were plenty of times when I was dead certain I knew what was going on and whodunit but, I couldn’t have been further from the truth 😂 Needless to say, I never figured it out until the very end when the characters themselves did; that said, the last 30% of the story seemed to drag a bit and then the ending itself felt a little bit abrupt and almost… unfinished? It was a satisfying conclusion overall because the main plot was finished and the culprit caught but it was a little open-ended when it came to the characters and what happens after! I guess this is more a personal preference as I’m not the biggest fan of open endings.

Have you read Never Saw Me Coming or is it on your TBR?