By Vera Kurian
Park Row Books, 2021. 389 pages. Mystery
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 college who are part of an unusual clinical study of psychopaths. 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 her fellow psychopaths -- and everybody knows you should never trust a psychopath.
Kurian has done the unthinkable and had me rooting for a psychopath which is truly a feat since Chloe, at times, is highly unlikeable. For a rather dark thriller, I was surprised by how much fun I had following Chloe’s hijinks in her plot to kill her childhood friend while also trying to avoid being killed herself. The book excelled at depicting the unlikely friendship among psychopathic students as they work together to figure out who is killing them. Their dynamic was both difficult to wrap my brain around and highly entertaining which goes to show Kurian’s skill in writing rich, dimensional characters. I also appreciate a mystery that I can’t solve and when I say I didn’t see the end coming, I truly mean it. If you enjoy the television show Dexter or love a thriller with a dark academia vibe, then Never Saw Me Coming is for you!
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By Heather Gudenkauf
Park Row Books, 2024. 297 pages. Fiction
The Best Friend. The Confidant. The Senator. The Boyfriend. The Executive. Five contestants have been chosen to compete for ten million dollars on the game show One Lucky Winner. The catch? None of them knows what (or who) to expect and it will be live streamed all over the world. Completely secluded in an estate in Northern California, with strict instructions not to leave the property and zero contact with the outside world, the competitors start to feel a little too isolated. When long-kept secrets begin to rise to the surface, the contestants realize this is no longer just a reality show--someone is out for blood. And the game can't end until the world knows who the contestants really are.
By Layne Fargo
Scout Press, 2020. 342 pages. Fiction
Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor, but she's even better at getting away with murder. Every year, Dr. Clark searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she's avoided drawing attention to herself, but as she's preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Dr. Clark insinuates herself into the investigation. Everything's going according to her master plan until she loses control with her latest victim. Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her emotionally abusive father, all Carly wants is to focus on her studies. Her new roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident, and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. So when Allison is assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay and turning her fantasies about revenge into a reality.
BW
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