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Dr. Scarlett Clark is a professor of English at Gorman University. She’s working hard to be accepted for a fellowship in England to study a lesser-known female writer from the early 20th century. Scarlett also works hard to stay under the radar with her “side job” of sorts: she regularly kills bad men. They aren’t hard to find at or around the college campus; she observes or hears about their bad deeds anywhere she turns. She tracks their habits and comes up with ways to kill them that will come across either as accidents or suicides. It’s very satisfying work.
Her next target is a powerful man who has gotten away with hurting women for years. He’s certainly done all he can to put her down as they’ve worked together. But it’s going to be much harder to do away with him, disguise the murder, and keep herself out of any investigation.
As she’s working on a plan, Scarlett’s life gets complicated by the efforts of an intelligent, capable and observant fellow professor at the college. Dr. Mina Pierce is heading up a committee to look into suicides that have occurred at Gorman over the years. The school aims to better support at-risk students. Scarlett volunteers to help so she can stay close to the situation.
Meanwhile, freshman Carly Schiller is trying to just keep her head down and study. She’s relieved to be away from home, where her controlling father has made life miserable for her and her mom. She’s always been shy and kept to herself, and she’d like to keep things that way. But her outgoing, confident and pretty roommate, Allison, befriends her and insists on bringing her out of her shell. When Allison is drugged and sexually assaulted at a party, Carly feels an intense need to not just protect Allison but to make her attacker pay.
Chapters in They Never Learn alternate between the stories of Scarlett and Carly. It’s not clear for quite a while if or how they are connected, aside from the Gorman connection. The revelation is a great twist, but even then there is much more to come. Just when you think you know how things are going to go, you’re likely wrong.
I read this story all in one sitting; it was hard to put down. It’s a gripping thriller book. It’s also full of righteous rage about all that men can do to hurt women and how often they get away with it. It’s not for the faint of heart, not in that it has a lot of gore, but that the women are intensely focused on their goals.
I’d recommend it if it had less profanity.
Rated: High. Profanity includes 77 uses of strong language, 65 instances of moderate profanity, around 40 uses of mild language, and about 40 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes kissing; sex that is alluded to; several sex scenes that are brief and mildly or moderately detailed, and one or two that are a little longer and moderately to highly detailed. Sex scenes are both between a man and a woman, and a woman and another woman. Women are objects of lust, control and violence, including being dosed with drugs without their knowledge and either raped or groped. These are brief or “off-screen.” The book involves a woman who regularly kills men who do bad things to women, and she does the killing in a variety of ways, so there are a few scenes of murder actively taking place or talk about past ways she has killed.
