Before We Were Innocent

LoveReading Says

‘I know what those friendships can be like… the intensity is… it’s unlike anything else.’

Like all good thrillers, this book keeps you guessing about who to believe, who to trust, and what the real mystery might even be – going between what happened to Evangeline in 2008, what’s happening to Joni’s girlfriend in 2018, and meanwhile trying to understand our narrator, Bess, and just why she’ll go to such lengths to lie for her estranged friend. Is seeming innocence hiding guilt – or might innocence actually be an equally contemptible thing to be?

Berman creates the incredible edgy intensity of teenage friendship with the intriguing characters of Bess, Joni, and Evangeline: ‘Evangeline had this thing about her like she was better than everyone, but it was never because she thought she was. It was, like, almost exactly because she didn’t think it. But we all still knew’; ‘I loved Joni almost from the moment I met her, but in the way you might love an adopted feral cat that more often than not makes your life hell’. 

In an early chapter Bess talks about the Halloween where the three of them dressed up as the Heathers, rather than Evangeline and Joni’s longstanding costume tradition of the Virgin Suicides – if you’re looking for a thriller version of those stories of privileged teenagers finding themselves by doing twisted deeds, this might be the next book for you. 

Reviewed by Billy Lindon
Lily Lindon (Billy) is a writer, editor, and bookseller living in London.
More reviews by Billy Lindon

About Before We Were Innocent

'This compulsive thriller reads like true crime and had me guessing until the very end.' Reese Witherspoon Three friends went on holiday. Only two came back. Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer in Greece, best friends Bess and Joni were cleared of any involvement in their friend Evangeline’s death.

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