Is it ever justified to kill an abuser? And what happens when misogyny, sexual harassment, and biphobia collide in the same life?
In They Never Learn, openly bi author Layne Fargo follows three bi women whose paths twist around revenge, survival, and the hunger for control. It’s basically a bi, female take on Dexter, full of dark twists and serial-killer payback.
Here’s the setup: Scarlett Clark is a talented English professor, and also a serial killer — but because of her traumatic past, she only targets abusive men. She is bi and doesn’t hide it. She’s also preparing to commit the biggest murder of her life — one directly tied to her personal history.
Carly Schiller is a bi college freshman trying to escape her abusive father. In college, she soon becomes friends with her roommate Allison, an easygoing but traumatized young woman raised in a religious family, who has always shamed her for being bi.
Carly and Allison come out to each other and eventually fall in love. For Allison, the feelings start partly out of pity, while Carly’s love only grows stronger and more intense. Even so, they both keep dating boys and enjoy their university life without much conflict.
Everything changes on Halloween, when a boy attacks Allison at a party and tries to assault her. When Carly finds out, she wants revenge. She first tries to go through the proper channels and reports the assault. The problem? The university doesn’t care. To them, “nothing happened”. Allison is left traumatized and broken, and she can’t turn to her biphobic family for help.
She also doesn’t behave in a way Carly thinks is helpful — she just wants to move on and have fun. The only person who supports Carly’s revenge wish is her young, handsome professor — or at least, that’s what Carly thinks.
And here comes the big spoiler: Carly and Scarlett are actually the same person! The big murder that Scarlett, AKA Carly, is planning is the murder of her old professor, who betrayed her by harassing her.
At first, we don’t realize who Carly is, since Scarlett changed her surname and stopped using the short version of her name. In Carly’s chapters, we see a frightened, traumatized bi teenager who’s terrified of who she is. Poor young Carly is so ashamed of her feelings that she sincerely believes there is something wrong with her for wanting to date her best friend. She’s been criticized and shut down for being bi, and her independent thinking and bold style never fit with her conservative professors or parents. Her anger at Allison’s attacker, and at the system that failed her, is intense, but she’s still figuring out how to channel it.
The novel shows how vital a sense of control is, especially for bi youth who often go without it.
Allison shows another way trauma can shape someone. She turns her frustration inward, struggles to accept her bisexuality, and chooses to “play by the rules” by dating boys rather than facing her real feelings. With a conservative, unsupportive family, she focuses on making university feel like home and keeps her problems to herself.
Carly, on the other hand, refuses to hide. Her anger is obvious, and even writing revenge stories or retreating into daydreams doesn’t help her cope. When a trusted professor betrays her, it pushes her toward a dangerous choice. While violence is never justified, Allison’s habit of staying silent and trying to fit in can also be harmful. Many bi women end up doing the same—trying to pass as straight or judge other queer people to seem “normal,” which only reinforces the pressures they’re under.
There’s also a third path. If Allison and Carly represent two extremes, Mina shows what it looks like to land somewhere in the middle. She’s a bi investigator looking into suspicious deaths on campus, deaths that ultimately link back to Carly’s actions. Mina also survived abuse and spent years feeling powerless, but unlike Carly, she learned to navigate the system rather than fight it head-on. And unlike Allison, she no longer hides who she is. As an adult, Mina can openly express her bisexuality and maintain a sense of control in her life.
But by the end, she becomes Scarlett’s girlfriend and accepts her murdering habit.
They Never Learn offers an amazingly honest look at trauma, bisexuality, and the messy moral questions that come up when personal pain intersects with society’s systems of oppression. Layne Fargo doesn’t shy away from showing the dark ways trauma can shape a life, especially for bi women navigating a world that punishes them for seeking independence, desire, and authenticity. The book goes beyond surface-level bi identity and dives deep into psychological aspects of life, such as the constant struggle between who you are, how the world sees you, and how past abuse echoes in every choice you make.
Reading it forces you to face uncomfortable questions about justice, accountability, and survival. Through Scarlett (Carly), Allison, and Mina, we see different ways bi women respond to oppression: some internalize it, some lash out, some fight quietly, and some turn their pain into academic work, activism, and love. They Never Learn reminds us that trauma shapes people, including bi youth, in different ways — all unique, and that the path towards survival, self-acceptance, and justice is rarely simple or predictable.