Before We Were Innocent

Written by Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent (2023) is a character-driven literary thriller that echoes Berman’s first novel, The Comeback, in focusing on issues of gender and women’s identities in contemporary America. Before We Were Innocent delves into the intricacies of female friendship through the story of a summer vacation in Greece that ends in tragedy. The narrative also explores The Complexities of Adolescent Female Friendships and examines prominent issues of True Crime and Media Distortion and The Inauthenticity of Influencer Culture.

Although The Comeback specifically explores the #MeToo movement and the pitfalls of Hollywood culture, both novels reflect the author’s interest in the relationship between gender, media, and fame in early 21st-century America. Before We Were Innocent employs the complex plotting and suspense of a thriller, but its in-depth engagement with socially relevant themes earn it a place within the world of literary fiction.

This guide refers to the 2023 paperback edition by Berkley.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain descriptions of death and multiple references to suicide.

Plot Summary

Before We Were Innocent is narrated by protagonist Bess Winter in chapters that alternate between the narrative present of 2018 and the summer of 2008 and its aftermath. The novel tells the story of Bess’s friendship with Joni Bonnier and Evangeline Aetos. When the girls take a summer trip to Greece to celebrate the girls’ graduation from high school, the excursion culminates in Evangeline’s tragic fall from a cliff in Mykonos. Joni and Bess are initially blamed for Evangeline’s death and spend six months in a Greek prison awaiting trial before their case is dismissed. When they return to their hometown of Calabasas, California, Joni capitalizes on the tragedy, catapulting herself into media stardom, but Bess withdraws and never fully recovers.

The novel opens when Bess and her family move from Sussex, England to Calabasas so that her mother can take a professorial position at a local college. Feeling out-of-place among the fabulously wealthy high school students in their new, affluent neighborhood, Bess strikes up a friendship with the charismatic Joni and the contemplative Evangeline. When Evangeline invites Joni and Bess to spend the summer after graduation at her family home in Greece, the girls are initially excited. Bess, Joni, and Evangeline are all headed to different colleges, and the girls want to enjoy their remaining time together before their “real lives” begin. Although their first couple of weeks are idyllic, Bess and Joni soon begin to bristle against Evangeline’s controlling nature and her snobbery, and they form an alliance of sorts, staying up late together, composing secret, snarky notes about Evangeline, and fantasizing about exploring other parts of Greece on their own. Meanwhile, Bess develops a crush on Evangeline’s brother, Theo, and Joni works on her tan and tries to drink more wine than Evangeline wants her to.

When Evangeline becomes aware of the growing relationship between Theo and Bess, she gets angry and cruelly tells Bess that Theo is only interested in her because she is his only option on the island. Joni sides with Bess, shifting the trio’s power dynamics. The tension remains even after Theo and his friends leave. Eventually, it boils over, and Joni tearfully requests that the girls do a little more exploring because things have gotten claustrophobic on the tiny island.

Bess, Joni, and Evangeline head for Mykonos. After a long day of drinking and partying, they agree to attend a late-night gathering at the home of a stranger whom they meet in a bar. Tensions erupt between Evangeline and Bess, and the two engage in a loud, heated argument, after which Evangeline runs back down towards their hotel along a treacherous, cliffside path. As Bess turns to look back in Evangeline’s direction, she sees the girl fall to her death and runs down to where the body is lying on the beach. Joni finds her there and explains that the two girls must lie and claim that they were both present when Evangeline fell, otherwise there will be no one to corroborate Bess’s story. Although the police initially believe the girls, Bess and Joni are arrested after a few days of questioning. Beyond the police station, a media circus has erupted, and the story of Evangeline’s death attracts international press coverage. Bess and Joni are presumed guilty of murdering their friend, and as journalists and amateur sleuths alike investigate the girls’ social media profiles, these violations of privacy result in the public posting of a treasure trove of circumstantially damaging evidence against the girls. The girls’ characters are maligned and they are misrepresented as being cold, callous, and cruel.

After spending six months in a Greek prison, the murder charges against the girls are dropped for lack of evidence, and they are set free. Back in the United States, Joni gets an internship at a media company and begins to spin the story of Evangeline’s death into a tale of personal triumph and comeback. She eventually builds a media empire of her own, emerging as a prominent self-improvement influencer in the burgeoning internet culture of the late 2000s. Bess, on the other hand, is traumatized by the extent to which she and Joni have been crucified in the media, and she hides from the public eye. She also decides not to go to college and instead gets a job moderating comments for a dating app.

In 2018, 10 years after Evangeline’s death, Joni’s girlfriend Willa goes missing, and she asks Bess to cover for her and tell the police that Joni had been at her house on the night of the disappearance. When Willa’s body washes up on the Malibu coast near Joni’s home, the investigation is no longer a missing persons case, but a homicide. As the police inquiry unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear to Bess that Joni is more manipulative than she had always seemed. Now, Bess begins to question her role in both Willa’s and Evangeline’s deaths. At the end of the novel, Bess discovers that Joni was present when Evangeline fell off the cliff in Mykonos, and although she does not seem to have killed Willa, there was much about Willa’s last night alive that Joni chose not to share. Joni disappears, and based on Joni’s missing paddleboard and cryptic comments a few weeks prior, Bess is sure that she paddled out into the ocean and ended her own life. Bess, Theo, and his wife mark the 10-year anniversary of Evangeline’s death together, and Bess finally feels as though she has some closure.