Book Review: Before We Were Innocent | Ella Berman

Ella Berman delivers another raw and complex commentary on the dark side of being in the public spotlight. Her previous book, The Comeback was gripping and gut-wrenching. Her follow up book, Before We Were Innocent has a similar stark portrayal of the public’s obsession with young women at the center of a scandal.

While her first book centered around an actress who spiraled out of control and struggled to take her power back, Before We Were Innocent focuses on the media frenzy around a salacious crime. Echoes of popular true crime cases that have dominated the news cycle lend a haunting realism to this fictional story.

Ten years earlier, three friends spend a dream summer vacation in Greece, soaking up the sun and enjoying their youth and freedom before starting university in the fall. But the death of one of the young women, Evangeline, sends their bliss to a screeching halt. Joni and Bess are left to return home, unable to escape the public eye in the wake of Evangeline’s murder.

Over the next ten years, Joni and Bess take different paths. Bess wants nothing more than to escape the scrutiny of the media and public, while Joni takes advantage of the spotlight focused on the worst moment of her life and becomes a motivational speaker. They remain on these paths until Joni becomes involved in another similar situation and goes to Bess, forcing her to confront things she has long kept buried.

The book is told exclusively from Bess’s point of view and I appreciated that she was a complex character with both positive and negative characteristics. Bess has retreated in the wake of the tragedy they experienced, and has made efforts to make her presence and life as small and contained as she is able to. Joni is the opposite, making social media her life and as a result, she was a character who was hard to parse out what was done for the sake of appearance and who she really is.

The contrast of the two women was effective and kept the story interesting, as the reader (like Bess) can never be sure when Joni is lying to protect herself and when she is telling the truth. I wondered often if she was a friend to Bess or not? At the same time, there was something I admired about Joni. She is a person who refuses to be defined by what the public thinks of her and her past.

Through flashbacks the reader also gets glimpses of Evangeline the person, rather than the public image of a victim that she became following her murder. One element that interested me in regards to Evangeline was the discrepancy between the perfect image of her that formed after losing her life tragically at such a young age compared to who she really was as a person. This speaks to what happens to victims of real life crimes—they tend to become an idealized form of themselves and lose their depth and flaws they had in life. Evangeline the victim is innocent, sweet, and impressionable. Evangeline the person was at times self-absorbed and manipulative, imperfect but human.

As Joni says at one point, this is a story of “three perfectly imperfect women” and Berman contrasts the media and public perception of them versus the people who actually lived the tragedy. Compelling and suspenseful—this is a character-driven mystery that puts the spotlight back on the public who consumes and obsessed over true crime as though it is fiction, forgetting the real people behind the headlines.

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About the Book | Before We Were Innocent

A summer in Greece for three best friends ends in the unthinkable when only two return home in this new novel from Ella Berman. . . .

Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer spent in Greece, best friends Bess and Joni were cleared of having any involvement in their friend Evangeline’s death. But that didn’t stop the media from ripping apart their teenage lives like vultures.

While the girls were never convicted, Joni, ever the opportunist, capitalized on her newfound infamy to become a motivational speaker. Bess, on the other hand, resolved to make her life as small and controlled as possible so she wouldn’t risk losing everything all over again. And it almost worked. . . .

Except now Joni is tangled up in a crime eerily similar to that one fateful night in Greece. And when she asks Bess to come back to LA to support her, Bess has a decision to make.

Is it finally time to face up to what happened that night, exposing herself as the young woman she once was and maybe still is? And what happens if she doesn’t like what she finds?

About the Author | Ella Berman

Ella Berman grew up in both London and Los Angeles and worked at Sony Music before starting the clothing brand London Loves LA. She lives in London with her husband, James, and their dog, Rocky. The Comeback was her first novel, published August 11, 2020.