5 Things Never Saw Me Coming Did Right & Wrong
A Tale of Pick-Me Girls and Good-Boy Chads
Tags: #femalecharacters #bookreview #neversawmecoming #VeraKurian #pickmegirl #imagebasedabuse #spoilers #eugenics #Literature
*SPOILERS AHEAD* This review contains spoilers so read the book and then come back and leave a comment with your thoughts. Or don’t read it first, it’s your life.
Never Saw Me Coming is the debut novel by Vera Kurian. The narrative follows a few students participating in their university’s study on psychopaths. Each has their own motivations for attending: free tuition, self-improvement, revenge. However, when a student in the study is mysteriously murdered, three psychopaths, Chloe, Andre, and Charles, must band together to prevent themselves from becoming the next victim and the hunt for the killer is afoot.
While intrigued by the premise, a femme fatale as a promising anti-heroine, the execution was lacking in depth of character, certain aspects of plot development, and backwards views on crime. Unlike our usual articles, we have isolated some good and some bad things – things we loved and things that drove us to pull out our hair, totally removing ourselves from the immersive experience of reading. As a first crack at writing long-form, Kurian has created a good offering to the young adult/new adult genre. But as you will soon come to find, here at Daughter and Dead Press, we have high expectations and many, many thoughts.
So, here are 5 not-so-great things and 5 really great things from Never Saw Me Coming.
The Poorly Executed and Straight Up Awful Things
The Pick-Me Girl Trope
Chloe, at the end of the day, is a pick-me-girl. She is almost a less well developed version of Gone Girl’s Amy. This is particularly apparent with Chloe’s version of the ‘cool girl’ monologue: ‘You have to be the kind of girl who “doesn’t put an effort in” but naturally rolls out of bed looking like a horny but somehow demure starlet. If you meet some standard of objective attractiveness, people think you’re better than you actually are – smarter, more interesting, more worthy of existing’ (NSMC, Chapter 1). Similarly, at a different point she says ‘[b]e attractive, don’t disagree, and mostly just listen – you could not say a word and a guy would still compliment you on what a great conversationalist you were’ (NSMC, Chapter 5). As a result, evidently, she recognises gender inequality and misogynistic attitudes towards women in society, at least to some degree.
However, She is incredibly vocal in letting the reader know that she is not like other girls. At the same time, she simultaneously puts other girls down for her own ego boost. When she is first introduced, she reduces every woman to her appearance. She comments on a girl she saw outside campus with the ‘unfortunate haircut’ who should have ‘put in more of an effort for move-in day’(NSMC, Chapter 1). Then, she objectifies her roommate Yessica who gets ‘points for good skin and the flat elf-style boots’ (NSMC, Chapter 1). Later, she describes Elena, the Research Assistant, as ‘pretty in a grad student sort of way’ who would probably marry ‘some reedy nerd; and try ‘to have children too late’ (NSMC, Chapter 1).
Chloe’s ‘pick-me girl’ persona becomes particularly prevalent in relation to Kristen, Charles’ non-psychopathic girlfriend, and the ways she positions herself as better and more suited for Charles. Kristen, according to Chloe, was ‘so basic it was painful to see [Kristen and Charles] together’ (NSMC, Chapter 8) because yes, ‘she was pretty, but not that pretty’ (NSMC, Chapter 8). At the same time, Chloe claims to be superior while making Kristen her undisclosed nemesis. Her own internalised misogyny becomes her key personality trait. Perhaps Chloe should really take a second and remember that tearing down other women is really only benefiting the patriarchy (Mahan 2021; More 2021).
Serial Cheater Charles
While Chloe spends large portions of her point of view thinking about Charles and how much better off he would be with her instead of Kristen, Charles equally compares the two women when we get a look inside his head. He belabours the point that Kristen makes ‘his darkness [feel] stark in contrast to everything about [her] that was airy and carefree, but something about their relationship made him feel like he could be just like her … but with her absence it was almost like he could hear something click: the slight easing in his mind that occurred when Kristen wasn’t around, like a tiny, subtle muscle that had been almost involuntarily flexed finally getting to relax’ (NSMC, Chapter 13). His whole spiel around being unable to relax into his ‘dark side’ has disturbingly similar characteristics to that of arguments about uncontrollable, biology-determined male urges perpetuated within toxic masculinity.
He doubles down with unhealthy masculinity by never outright telling Chloe to stop her romantic advances: flirting on campus, dancing in clubs, hooking up in bathrooms at parties and in Chloe’s dorm room. He keeps himself from making a choice either way, explaining his actions with Chloe because ‘[h]e found her interesting. Possibly more interesting than anything that had happened to him for a while’ (NSMC, Chapter 34). But still he persists in saying, “[d]o you know why I like being with Kristen?...I like how normal we are together” (NSMC, Chapter 57) shortly before making out in Chloe’s dorm room. He acts like a horny teenager who is experiencing his sexual awakening and getting a boner every time a girl enters the same room.
In fact, shortly after this, we find out that he has cheated on Kristen in the past with ‘a really pretty’ (NSMC, Chapter 41) friend-from-class, Daisy. ‘Charles had made the drunken mistake of hooking up with her’ (NSMC, Chapter 34), which is all of the backstory the tragic Daisy gets - but more on her later. Charles and Kristen 'survived [his affair]’ (NSMC, Chapter 41), but we are never outright told that Kristen even knows of it, ‘because she didn’t have all the information’ (NSMC, Chapter 34). Charles wants the stability and safety of his relationship with Kristen, but the thrill and temptation of Chloe. The book ends with Kristen escorting Chloe to visit Charles in his hospital room. As soon as Kristen leaves, Chloe and Charles are snuggling in his bed – and the man has still not made a choice!
The Deterministic View on Crime
A major critique on Never Saw Me Coming is its deterministic view on crime and violence. The book attempted to engage in a conversation around the forgotten victims of crime and the neglect of family members of criminals who also suffer harm. The reader is invited to think about society’s, and perhaps their own, obsession with violent crimes, psychopaths, serial killers, and the merges of these. In Megan’s villain monologue (she’s the killer), she emphasises how people obsess over serial killers, particularly psychopathic ones, to the point of collecting them like baseball cards, how the stories of the vicious crimes they have committed are being re-told over and over again; stories that are dissected in every little detail where people’s obsession almost becomes a perversion in itself. Yet, she continues, at the end of the day, this fanatic interest in serial killers neglects that these criminals were still people who had families. Their actions did not just impact direct victims and the victim’s family but their own family as well. This was indeed a refreshing input and perhaps readers did pause and think about their personal obsessions with true crime stories.
However, despite all of this, in the end, the serial killer’s daughter was 2/3rd of the way to becoming a serial killer herself… what a disappointing, deterministic plot perpetuating the highly contested idea that criminal behaviour is hereditary; criminal behaviour as a consequence of biological and psychological factors that people are predisposed of. What a bunch of crap. The idea of crime being a result of biology or mentally ill-health comes from the field of Eugenics and its beliefs in selective breeding, mental and personality traits (and by extension, for example, criminal behaviour) being hereditary, the superiority of some races over others, and solving problems such as crime and violence through science (Allen 2005). Eugenics has consistently been debunked by biologists, medical doctors, social workers, critical scholars and so on (Allen 2005; Genome 2021). Rather than providing a critique on Eugenics, Never Saw Me Coming perpetuates its discriminatory, racist, and ableist beliefs. The perpetuation of Eugenics as legitimate and real through popular culture is particularly problematic as it feeds into the public’s misconception that criminal behaviour is inherited and not the result of, for example, wider inequalities.
Poor Daisy: the poor ball in the fridge
Remember the girl Charles cheated with, Daisy? In addition to only being known as the “other woman” in his relationship, she also has met a terrible end before the book even begins. Distraught over Charles’ poor handling of their mutual blackmail situation, aka he did nothing to help her, she jumps off the Math Sciences Tower. The author has created this female character to give Charles a relationship with the red herring, Trevor, in his backstory. They could have know each other from class, from the race for student body president, from the study (Charles is the only one who originally knows any of the others in the study), from a disagreement freshman year in the campus coffee house; basically they could have known of one another for any reason we could think of, but no. The author has decided that red herring Trevor was blackmailing Charles with his affair and harassing Daisy for the same reason, all because he had an unconfirmed crush on her? Daisy is the ultimate gender plot trope.
A few of the most popular tropes that poor Daisy embodies are “the woman in the refrigerator”, “the ball of the patriarchy”, and “the virgin-whore”. If you haven’t heard of any of these, here is a quick run-down. The “woman in the refrigerator” is a term used originally by Gail Simone (1999) in reference to a comic book plot point where the villain literally stuffs the hero's dead girlfriend into his refrigerator. Basically, any woman that has been “killed, maimed or depowered” to fuel the male character’s story arc fits this trope. It happens a lot. The “ball of the patriarchy” comes from Anita Sarkeesain (2013); “In the game of patriarchy women are not the opposing team, they are the ball”. Charles and Trevor are playing a game of Old Maid and Daisy is the odd card out. Finally, the “virgin-whore” dichotomy is fairly straight-forward: if you’re not a virgin, guess what? You’re a whore. It gets even more fun when you are a virgin, but refusing sexual advances, guess what again? You’re also a whore. Daisy slept with Charles and not Trevor, so she’s a whore, too.
At the end of the day, it is questionable why there was a need for using Daisy as the epitome of gender tropes. Her story did not add value to the narrative. Instead, Kurian could have connected Trevor to Charles in literally any way that did not perpetuate harmful stereotypes against women.
Always Saw Everything Coming
It is commonly acknowledged that the “reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery” (Mumford, 2015). Sure, Andre is obsessed with Megan’s father, the CRD killer, and his point of view is filled with his ramblings about this fictional true crime case. However, it is not until chapter 54, that we have mention of CRD’s family. The carefully laid out breadcrumbs for the reader just don’t exist without this basic fact. Until we learn that Andre’s quirky-personality-trait-obsession has a family, the numerous mentions of the serial killer and a possible copycat is less credible than Trevor as the killer. Trevor, at least, is a psychopath. And as the reader we have learned that he has a tendency to be sadistic.
Megan, the actual killer, is not mentioned until chapter 33 and doesn’t show up on the page until chapter 42. There are 63 chapters in the book, which means any clues specifically leading us to Megan were stuffed into 30 chapters, at most. There were other plotlines that needed page time as well. Reading the book, it became very obvious, very quickly who we were headed towards being the murderer. While it can be argued that the book is primarily a revenge story for Chloe rather than a mystery, the marketing around it was targeted at solving a murder by a group of psychopaths. The mystery plot, thus, felt secondary and slapped together as a mere afterthought to telling Chloe’s story. This is, of course, a more subjective aspect of being a reader. However, here at Daughters and Dead Press, we were disappointed and unimpressed with the blatant unfolding of the plot nonetheless.
The Really Great and Well Executed Things
The Recognition of Sexual Abuse and Its Harms
One thing we found Never Saw Me Coming has done well is the way sexual violence was acknowldge and portrayed. Early on we learn that Chloe is a child sexual abuse survivor. Not only did her former upper classman Will rape her when she was 12 and he was around 14 to 15, he also had the assault filmed. When other characters, such as Charles, find out about this, they do not dismiss her experiences or question her behaviour. Instead, attention is drawn to Will as the assailant. For example, when Charles first contemplates if he overhead Chloe correctly, he asks ‘[d]id Will rape her?’ (NSMC, Chapter 13) and not ‘was she raped by him?’. This is an important distinction in making the assailant the active subject rather than a mere afterthought.
But, the way Never Saw Me Coming talks about abuse is not the only good thing here. It is also noteworthy to highlight that Kurian did a good job conveying the impacts of abuse. Let’s look at what happened to Daisy as a result of experiencing image-based abuse: Trevor hacked into her devices and social media to download and distribute her intimate images. Along with this, her personal information such as her phone number were doxed. As a result, people including her friends started slut-shaming and victim-blaming her. The cyber-attacks on her continued and Daisy eventually died by suicide.
To add to this, we later also find out that Daisy did report this to the police, who merely responded with unhelpful advice such as why she didn’t just get offline or why she took nude images of herself in the first place (NSMC, Chapter 41). This very much reflects responses survivors may hear in real life. Police often lack awareness, provide inadequate advice, or straight up need the technology involved explained (Henry et al., 2020; McGlynn et al., 2019). This may leave survivors feeling powerless, disbelieved, or dismissed; a thought that could very well be applied to what further led to Daisy’s death.
In contrast, Chloe, experiencing image-based abuse a second time at the hands of Trevor, is less impacted by it now. Instead, she is angry about the leaked images, she defends herself openly on social media, and her friends do not abandon her. The consequences suffered as a result of image-based abuse are very much in tone with real survivors. Research has highlighted how image-based abuse can have negative effects on a person’s psychological health and social field and how these effects are often exacerbated through continuous online threats and harassment (e.g. Bates 2017; Daigle 2018; Dodge 2016; Kelly 1988; Koss 2006; WHO 2012). Therefore, the book correctly highlights that certain impacts may be experienced as a result of abuse and that such abuse may be life shattering.
The Research Assistant Was an Actual Intelligent Woman
Elena, one of the research assistants on the Psychopath Study, was actually an intelligent woman. She is diligently going about her work and flags problematic behaviour. We also see Elena skillfully navigating life as a woman while contemplating the requirement of ‘safety work’; the everyday behaviours women engage in to avoid intrusions and abuse (Vera-Gray 2018). As she reflects, as a woman ‘you had to be polite sometimes when what you really wanted to be was curt. Because if you existed as a woman in the world and were anything but polite you were rude, uppity, a bitch, stuck-up, a cunt, the list went on’ (NSMC, Chapter 50).
To add to her skillset, she is the voice of reason pointing out that maybe students should be informed when a serial killer is hunting a group of psychopaths but was dismissed by Wyman, the lead researcher. This was, of course, not the first time her concerns were dismissed. While Wyman initially took enough account to give Elena a head’s up when Trevor would come into the office, since he made her uncomfortable with his stares and inappropriate questions, Whyman eventually just forgot her concerns ‘because he just can’t see it’ and does not understand what life is like for women (NSMC, Chapter 50).
Chad
Chad is set up to be the most bro-est bro out there. He is the president of his fraternity and “[h]is arms [are] so ropey with muscle that there wasn’t a shirt on earth that didn’t look tight on him” (NSMC, Chapter 13). However, not only does he organise volunteer programs for women’s shelters but also collects donations for them. He doesn’t like the mean nicknames the other frat guys give the pledges. He takes care of Chloe while she is pretending to be drunk at a party, but also assists other drunk women around the fraternity parties. He is a gentleman on his date with Chloe, despite her less than stellar personality and even cooks her breakfast. We love Chad. He’s a loveable himbo. We would have loved more Chad, and even could’ve gotten behind the plot-twist of the century – having Chad be the murderer. Chad is possibly the best character, next to Andre. We need an Andre and Chad buddy movie.
Andre Survived
Andre didn’t die. We appreciate that. There were certainly moments where we thought the Young Black Man would die violently for the sake of the plot. That didn’t happen. He was also not accused of murder outright when he found the first body – though one of the detectives was giving off racist vibes. If anything, thanks to him, the gang survived and barely suffered any injuries. Andre was the only one who thought to call the police before creeping around an abandoned sand filtration site. He also had a loving and supportive family – they might not have escaped trauma completely (the oldest sibling died due to an asthma attack) but his parents were caring and involved in their children's lives. Thanks. Appreciated.
Kristen Seems Nice and Normal
Kristen was a genuine, nice, supporting character. She wasn’t jealous of Charles, she trusted him, and she wasn’t a pushover. She was also sympathetic towards his mental health condition and truly horrible family.
Conclusion
There are some things that Kurian did well. Despite some well developed aspects, such as the handling of sexual abuse, the overall plot felt rushed and not as well thought through as we had hoped. This may come as no surprise as it was developed during lockdown. It missed the mark on some vital developments in becoming a mystery novel, but as a revenge story, we enjoyed Chloe’s determination. Seeing an anti-heroine as a leading lady was refreshing – Chloe’s character truly put a spin on the femme fatale trope. 5/10
Check out the author Vera Kurian by visiting her website https://www.verakurian.com/
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