“Wonderful—suspense and surprises, real characters, and a scary, ominous backbeat. This feels like the book Jackson was born to write.” —Lee Child, New York Times bestselling authorNamed a Best Book by USA Today • People • The Wall Street Journal • Time • Entertainment Weekly • Bustle • and many more!From New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson, a twisting novel of domestic suspense … Journal • Time • Entertainment Weekly • Bustle • and many more!
From New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson, a twisting novel of domestic suspense in which a group of women play a harmless drinking game that escalates into a war of dark pasts
In this game, even winning can be deadly…
Amy Whey is proud of her ordinary life and the simple pleasures that come with it—teaching diving lessons, baking cookies for new neighbors, helping her best friend, Charlotte, run their local book club. Her greatest joy is her family: her devoted professor husband, her spirited fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, her adorable infant son. And, of course, the steadfast and supportive Charlotte. But Amy’s sweet, uncomplicated life begins to unravel when the mysterious and alluring Angelica Roux arrives on her doorstep one book club night.
Sultry and magnetic, Roux beguiles the group with her feral charm. She keeps the wine flowing and lures them into a game of spilling secrets. Everyone thinks it’s naughty, harmless fun. Only Amy knows better. Something wicked has come her way—a she-devil in a pricey red sports car who seems to know the terrible truth about who she is and what she once did.
When they’re alone, Roux tells her that if she doesn’t give her what she asks for, what she deserves, she’s going to make Amy pay for her sins. One way or another.
To protect herself and her family and save the life she’s built, Amy must beat the devil at her own clever game, matching wits with Roux in an escalating war of hidden pasts and unearthed secrets. Amy knows the consequences if she can’t beat Roux. What terrifies her is everything she could lose if she wins.
A diabolically entertaining tale of betrayal, deception, temptation, and love filled with dark twists leavened by Joshilyn Jackson’s trademark humor, Never Have I Ever explores what happens when the transgressions of our past come back with a vengeance.
more
Never Have I Ever is a psychological thriller that’s full of twists and turns. This book kept me turning the pages right until the surprise ending!
I had never read a book by Joshilyn Jackson before and I’m really glad I remedied that with Never Have I Ever, I’m just mad at myself that I didn’t finish it sooner. This book is full of twists and turns that I didn’t see coming!
Never Have I Ever is a thriller and suspense novel, but it also touches on eating disorders and many other topics that gave it a very nice amount of depth. I couldn’t help but love Amy and even as her secrets unraveled there was much worse going on and I just couldn’t hate her. I also thought the diving aspect of the book (Amy is a dive instructor) was a nice touch and very interesting.
I really enjoyed the pacing and I had a hard time putting it down once I got into it. I had read some of it and had to set it aside for other commitments, but once I got back I couldn’t stop reading and I had to know what was going to happen. It took me a decent amount of time to read (almost 6 hours), but it was really addictive and that’s definitely not a reflection on the pacing of the book. Never Have I Ever seems to start as a neighborhood drama but quickly escalates to much more than that.
Song/s the book brought to mind: Tell Me When It’s Over by Sheryl Crow & Chris Stapleton
Final Thought: If you love a good thriller about the secrets we keep and what we will do to keep them hidden, Never Have I Ever is going to be up your alley. I was extremely satisfied with the end and if Jackson has more thrillers I am definitely going to be reading them!
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an advance review copy of this book, all opinions and thoughts are my own.
Very interesting. I did not see the twists at the end coming.
I’ve enjoyed this author so was looking forward to her most recent offering. I could not put it down! Loved it.
You know those conversational terrorists who hijack group get-togethers by dominating everything?
Now imagine one shows up to your BFF’s snoozeville book club. You are secretly delighted until you realize that she has charmed everyone else as well and bish knows your deepest, darkest secret.
Amy has created a quiet little life with her hubby, step-daughter, and infant son when Roux tornadoes into her life hellbent on destroying it. Why does Roux want to ruin her life and what lengths will Amy go to in order to protect herself, her family and her secret?
This was yummy!
Thank you to Joshilyn Jackson, HarperCollins Publishers, William Morrow and Netgalley for giving me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The exquisitely imagined characters, three-dimensional and believable, will keep you turning the pages as much as the plot twists will!
So good!
I can’t say much because even the slightest description could give up parts of the story. Twists, turns, fantastic characters and great writing make this a must read
Already a fan of Joshilyn Jackson, I was thrilled to see her at a local book signing and get a copy of this book. When Angelica Roux shows up at the neighborhood book club, Amy Whey knows something is not right with their new neighbor. Then Roux introduces a game called Never Have I Ever and Amy knows the past she tried to leave behind has come back to haunt her. Thrilling read!
Recommended by a friend and glad she did! Good mystery with lots of twists.
Author Joshilyn Jackson takes readers on a thrill ride full of surprising plot twists, secrets revealed at deftly-plotted moments, and a shocking conclusion that most readers will not see coming in Never Have I Ever.
Amy Whey is an empathetic protagonist. Her sweet best friend and neighbor, Charlotte, awkwardly struggles to maintain control of her marriage and the local book club she founded. To assist, Amy hosts the meeting at her home. But the meeting is crashed by Angelica Roux, an exotic beauty who quickly hijacks it, much to Charlotte’s consternation. Amy is intrigued by Roux, even as alarm bells sound in her brain. Roux is not just stylish and articulate. She drives a flashy red sports car and claims that she is renting the most run-down home in the neighborhood temporarily while she is in town on business. But Amy immediately knows that there is much more to Roux’s story, especially after she gets the book club members to play a version of “Never Have I Ever, but for grown-ups. We skip the coy denials and go right to confession. You start by telling everyone the worst thing you did today.” From there, participants are expected to reveal the worst thing they did last month, last year, and so on. But Roux’s gaze seems to bore right into Amy when she asks, “Think back. What’s the worst thing you ever did?” As Amy brings the game to its overdue conclusion, Roux tells her, “You would win. Come by my place. Soon. Qe have a lot to talk about.” At that moment, Amy knew she had “cracked open the past.”
Amy was involved in something horrible when she was just fifteen years old. The event changed not just her life, but the lives of her best friend, Tig, and the Shipley family. There were consequences as a result of Amy’s behavior that night, and ever since that fateful night she has endeavored to keep her carefully restructured life on track — and her past a secret. “It was diving that saved me,” she relates in the first-person narrative through which Jackson tells Amy’s story. “It was prayer. It was a meditation. It was a stillness and a silence.” Diving enabled her to quiet her mind and function. She established herself as a local scuba diving instructor, and it was through her stepdaughter Maddie’s desire to learn to dive that Amy met her husband, Davis. And now Amy is the mother of adorable little Oliver. And she’s never before had so much to lose.
So begins a contemporary game of cat and mouse. Roux reveals that she knows a great deal about Amy’s past and plans to expose Amy’s secrets unless Amy pays her. Somehow Roux has also discovered that Amy has a trust account — funds she has earmarked for very specific purposes and plans to use only in the event that certain contingencies require her to access the money. Of course, Roux is impatient and threatens that if Amy does not transfer the money to her within a very short time frame, Roux will ensure that the life Amy loves so much is completely and irrevocably dismantled. Davis has no idea about Amy’s past, and Amy is convinced that if he learns what happened so many years ago, their marriage will be over, along with her relationship with Maddie, who has virtually no contact with her biological mother. And she could lose custody of Oliver.
In the midst of Roux’s machinations, her son, Luka, befriends Maddie and begins spending a great deal of time in Amy’s home. He is purportedly home schooled, so he does not attend classes with Maddie. He seems more sophisticated than Maddie and, despite his polite demeanor, Amy discovers some disturbing behavior that causes her to suspect that Roux’s stories about Luka and his father are not true.
Never Have I Ever is a tautly-crafted mystery, related through Amy’s present-day narration which is interspersed with her memories of her childhood and, in particular, the night that changed everything. The pressure on Amy to uncover exactly how much information Roux possesses and how she learned details about Amy’s past mounts as the deadline imposed by Roux looms. Amy frantically scrambles to discover Roux’s true identity and history, and figure out a way to out-smart Roux and keep her from revealing the truth about Amy’s past. Along the way, Amy learns that her memory may not be entirely accurate, and assumptions she made so many years ago might have been misguided, as well.
Never Have I Ever is a fast-paced, compelling exploration of a woman who has worked very hard to be perceived by the world as ordinary when, in reality, she is anything but. And how far she will go to preserve the carefully constructed life she has built for herself, not just because her normalcy is critical to her survival, but because she has learned what it is to truly love. Amy is a fully-formed, multi-dimensional character who is capable of feeling tremendous guilt and shame, loving deeply and completely, but also diabolically meeting the threat Roux poses head-on with strength, resilience, and a surprising willingness to do whatever is necessary to save her family — and herself. Never Have I Ever is compulsively fascinating and will inspire readers to ponder the worst secret they are keeping . . . and how far they would go to keep it from being uncovered.
Thanks to Harper Collins Publishers for a copy of the book.
Thank you to William Morrow for this copy I received at BookCon.
Amy Whey is helping her best friend, Charlotte, host their neighborhood book club. However, tonight, there is an extra guest. Angelica Roux, or Roux as she is known, is renting an Airbnb in the neighborhood known as “the Sprite House” for its yellow and green color. She shows up to book club and it’s soon apparent that she has something on her mind other than the book. Angelica keeps the alcohol flowing for the women and, once a few women have left and everyone remaining is relaxed and free-speaking, she announces that they should all play a game where they say the worst thing they’ve done. They start with today, then in the past week, the past month, etc. Secrets are spilled and Amy grows increasingly more uncomfortable. The game ends and the women file out. Roux confronts Amy and tells her that Amy has the biggest secret of them all.
Somehow, Angelica knows about Amy’s past. Amy loves her life with her reliable professor husband, their son and her teenage stepdaughter and she is not going to lose everything if Roux exposes her secrets. But Amy isn’t the only one with secrets in her past. As Amy tries to stay one step ahead of Roux, she uncovers just as many questions as she does answers. And Amy isn’t the only one Roux is threatening to expose. If Amy can find out what Roux is running from, maybe she can beat Roux at her own game.
Never Have I Ever is a twisting, turning story full of secrets, lies and the stories people create about their past. There are multiple twists that will leave you flipping through the pages to see what happens. I really enjoyed this book and was definitely surprised by some of the plot twists. An excellent, quick read.
I loved this book!
One of the !ost informative scary books I have read on a long long time. Great job.
What a mediocre book. Unlike the few others who weren’t gripped from the start but got hooked, I never did. I continued reading looking for the promised twist or hook but I was left underwhelmed. Ok there were twists but I didn’t really care about the characters.
That said had I not read the rave reviews, I’d have probably felt less disappointment. I’d best describe it as a beach read as there’s not enough to get your teeth into in turns of interesting, evocative writing or characters.
Ms. Jackson keeps you guessing all the way to the end of this story! A wonderful read.
I didn’t think I was going to be able to get into the book. The beginning didn’t interest me, but by chapter five, I was hooked. A slow start turned into a gripping and twisted suspense. Once momentum picked up, the tension brought on by the psychological dynamics had me franticly racing to end. In a good way! I thought there might be another big twist at the end, but I’m glad I was wrong. This was a refreshing and clever book.
Wow, wow and wow. One surprise after another. I thoroughly enjoyed this twisty, unpredictable read about two women, each with secrets worth hiding. Joshilyn Jackson is a new author for me and I’m now looking forward to reading some of her other books.
Beautifully written edge of your seat suspense. Must read!
Great book! Just when I thought I had it all figured out, a new twist would happen!
I loved this book ! It was a page turner for sure ! It was intense & exciting. I highly recommend this book.