Before We Were Innocent

Bess is the novel’s protagonist and the narrator. When the novel begins, she is 28 years old and is now living alone in a cabin near the Salton Sea in California. She is solitary and reclusive and has a remote job working as a comment moderator for a dating app called 5oulm8s. Initially, she is presented through the lens of trauma, and it is clear that she has never recovered from the death of her teenage friend Evangeline and the resulting media storm that occurred when she and Joni were accused of Evangeline’s murder.

Bess is also cast as an outsider in multiple ways. For example, she first meets Joni and Evangeline after her family moves from Sussex to the affluent Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas, and she feels uneasy amongst her wealthy classmates until she meets Joni and Evangeline. However, even as the three-way friendship quickly forms, Bess is never sure of her position within the group and believes that the other two girls have a closer bond with each other than they do with her. This internalized “outsider” status will shift in Greece when she and Joni bristle against Evangeline’s need for control, but it will return after Bess kindles a romantic relationship with Theo.