Never Saw You Coming

A Novel

By: Erin Hahn

Narrated by: Jessica Almasy, Michael Crouch, Erin Hahn

"BOLD. IMPORTANT. BEAUTIFUL.” - Laura Taylor Namey, New York Times bestselling author of A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow

In Erin Hahn’s Never Saw You Coming, sometimes it takes a leap of faith to find yourself.

Raised by conservative parents, 18-year-old Meg Hennessey just found out her entire childhood was a lie. Instead of taking a gap year before college to find herself, she ends up traveling north to meet what’s left of the family she never knew existed.

While there, she meets Micah Allen, a former pastor’s kid whose dad ended up in prison, leaving Micah with his own complicated relationship about the church. The clock is ticking on Pastor Allen’s probation hearing and Micah, now 19, feels the pressure to forgive - even when he can’t possibly forget.

As Meg and Micah grow closer, they are confronted with the heavy flutterings of first love and all the complications it brings. Together, they must navigate the sometimes-painful process of cutting ties with childhood beliefs as they build toward something truer and straight from the heart.

A rollercoaster of emotions

At its heart, Never Saw You Coming is a young-adult romance novel about an isolated Christian girl named Meg who runs away from home after finding out her real father died before she was born and she was conceived during a brief fling. The truth about her conception goes against everything Meg’s mother and the Church raised her to believe. So Meg leaves home to meet her biological father’s family, and to explore who she is without her mother and the Church. When she meets a boy and falls in love, Meg struggles with her convictions that girls should be modest, pure, reserved, and practice abstinence. Deep-seated shame haunts her, but she’s never felt so alive and free.

Never Saw You Coming won’t be for everyone. The author knew that. She tackles big issues like religion, abstinence, shame, family secrets, and growing up. This book is about love and acceptance, finding balance between your history and your future, and that big step between childhood and adulthood where you decide who you are and what you believe, what to hold on to, and what to let go of. It’s an important book, and I think it maintains a perfect balance between telling reading it’s okay to grow up and make your own choices without encouraging them to cross any lines. It’s masterfully done.

There’s a lot to love about this book. There are songs sprinkled throughout the book – not lyrics, but artist names and song titles – and I looked up each song and played them when they came up so I could feel them in that moment. It brought depth to the reading experience. There’s humor and love. There’s excellent description and realistic teenage angst. There’s also emotion – so much heart-pulling, tear-streaming emotion. Hahn had me crying again and again. I laughed and cried, I felt outrage and pain.

Never Saw You Coming is a rollercoaster of emotions and I loved every minute of it.