Friendship and Psychopathology

Clare left her grandmother’s home in France to study in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is trying to escape an incident in her past. Gradually, she finds a job and starts taking classes in art history. In her classes she meets Tabitha, Ava, and Samuel. The group of rich, privileged young people, draws her. She wants to be involved. Tabitha is beautiful, but there’s something about her that makes Clare nervous. Still she is drawn to the other girl.

When Clare becomes a member of the group, Tabitha reveals her plan. She needs Clare. Clare is wary but by then the friendship has become a dominant factor in her life, and she can’t pull away. It becomes even more threatening when it appears that Tabitha knows something damaging about Clare.

This is an interesting psychological thriller based on friendship, or more accurately co-dependence. As the girls become more entwined the mood becomes darker and darker. The opening incident sets the dark tone, the novel then becomes slower as Clare adjusts to her new life, then it speeds up at the end in a much darker conclusion.

I found the book interesting. The author writes well. However, she seemed much more interested in creating atmosphere than plot development. The characters are well drawn, but I couldn’t like any of them, including Clare. For me, that made the book less enjoyable.

I received this book from Penguin Random House for this review.

I was really excited for this book but it was soooooooooooooooo slow moving I just couldn't keep going. I had to dnf at about 25% because nothing much seemed to be happening and I didn't really like the protagonist much. Much thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review. (The cover was great at least!)

I really tried to get into this one. But this was just not my cup of tea unfortunately. I could ‘t really connect to any of the characters . 2.5 stars out of 5. Rounding it up to 3!

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I had really hope to like this book based on the description; the thrill of finding a dark academia, which in my opinion, has been missing in the literary world, was shattered half way through.

First - what I love about the book: I love the writing and the twist; the writing style was magnetic and unique. I thought that parts of the book was enjoyable, twisty, and surprising. But that's about it.

In terms of the plot and characters: I find the plot and story to be dragging throughout most of the book and find the characters to be unlikeable, which makes it even harder for me to enjoy reading the book. Claire to me is someone who is desperate and frustrating. I found the characters to be vapid and psychopathic; to me, there was no redeeming quality (though to be fair, from a psychological standpoint, I can sympathize with Claire based on her childhood).

Would I read it again? Probably not, but I still think it was a good debut novel from Darwent - and hopeful that her next novel will be better.

Clare is a university student who lives in Edinburgh with two roommates yet feels detached and alone. Working part time in a bar, she waits on Tabitha and Imogen, two girls from her art history class. Tabitha has a personality that is hard to resist and she draws Clare into her circle of friends. Finn, Clare’s boss and sometime lover, finds Tabitha’s group creepy. Despite his warnings, Clare has a strong need to be accepted. On a school break she travels with the group to France where Tabitha lays out an idea that she has been working on. Her parents had divorced after her father’s affair, devastating her mother. Now Tabitha wants to set up a business to help women who suspect their husbands of infidelity by setting a honey trap and providing evidence. Clare is the perfect partner and is willing to join them but when something goes wrong during an encounter she wants to quit.

Clare had been involved in a man’s death in France as a teenager living under a different name. Someone in the group discovered the incident and is using the information to force her to rejoin the group. While Clare just wanted to fit in her relationship with the group became toxic. While Tabitha started with the idea of helping women, she has escalated from incriminating pictures to acts of violence. She is not willing to let Clare go but she is unaware of how far Clare will go to get out.

Heather Darwent has put together a group of characters that are difficult to like. Clare has a volatile temper. Tabitha must have things her way. Imogen, Ava and Samuel, the remaining group members, cater to her whims but even they have a limit to how far they will follow her. Darwent ends with a number of twists that will not only change all of their lives, but also everything you thought you knew. I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine for providing this book for my review.

At this point I should know better than to trust the mystery arcs that appear in my inbox. They’re usually not my thing at all. (But I got this email 3 times so I checked it out.)

But, oh boy, this was very much not for me. This was pitched as a dark academia and it’s just… not? School is only mentioned a few times, just to say their major is useless or they’re all failing. So not the vibe I expected or wanted???

What this story was actually supposed to be, I’m not sure? Because it was all over the place. It’s technically classified as a thriller but I… don’t agree? There are a couple of horrific scenes (one at the beginning, one at the end) but that’s really it? Not many ~thrilling things happened here.

For the most of this, I was just bored?? It picked up around a third of the way in but then tapered off again? I think it was the narrator that was the biggest problem, for me. Everything was described in such a monotone, I had a hard time really feeling ~involved in the story.

And there wasn’t a single likable character in the bunch. Everyone was very bland and awful. Sadly no one and nothing really stood out to me.

So. I wish I would’ve skipped this one. It was very meh and forgettable. I finished it only a few days ago and struggled to write this review because I’ve already forgotten most of the plot. This was just, sadly, not for me.

And if you’re looking for a good dark academia themed thriller, please look elsewhere. Sadly this just isn’t it.

Anyway, thank you to NetGalley and Random House for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review!

3 Becareful What You Wish For Stars
* * *
This has so much happening... and the author does paint a real picture of desiring something that maybe isn't exactly what you thought.

This debut novel had an interesting start and premise. It was one of those that felt very ominous and whenever I finished reading a chapter, my mind felt a bit hazy. It was an affecting story with some intense commentary and content.

The dark academic setting is one I tend to enjoy, and this one being set in Edinburgh, Scotland was perfectly creepy. I went back and forth on how to rate this because it did keep my attention and had a lot of intense moments. But it’s one that, while entertaining, didn’t leave me feeling particularly glad I read it.

I do think the writing was quite good and I’m looking forward to seeing what Darwent does next!

Thank you Netgalley and Penguin Random House for the #arc in exchange for an honest review.

3.25 stars

I know some might think it's overdone at this point but as someone who grew up obsessed with "Gossip Girl", "The Clique", "Private", "The A-List", etc. I'm always a sucker for the "girl goes to school with mean rich girls and does anything she can to be liked by them including *insert messed up thing here*" trope. That is a trope, right?

This book is like if Jenny Humphrey got her "It Girl" boarding school spinoff + she was a totally unhinged unreliable narrator. I had a good time reading this, but by the end, I felt like the vibes to plot ratio wasn't quite right. There were a lot of mysterious hints to things that just never got explained or resolved, which was disappointing because I got very invested in the intense and obsessive friendships between the characters.

The opening of this book is creepy, dark, and a little gross, but it's not from the main POV, it's from someone who was involved in The Episode TM---the thing that FMC, Clare, did that led to her moving to Scotland from France, changing her name, and reinventing herself. The story then cuts ahead to after The Episode TM, and you don't find out the resolution of it until the very end of the book. The framing of this was interesting and got me hooked right away, but I ended up feeling like the middle part was too long without as much payoff, especially after starting on such a dramatic note. The writing was very atmospheric and did a great job building tension, but with that, I ended up a little disappointed that most of the shocking things that happened were off-screen and not described explicitly.

I will definitely keep an eye out for this author's future work--the execution of this didn't hit quite right for me, but her writing and story were right up my alley.

Thank you to #NetGalley, the publishers, and the author for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review of #TheThingsWeDotoOurFriends

The Things We Do to Our Friends was an interesting read. I liked it but I also wanted more. There were parts of the novel that kept me on the edge of my seat and there were parts that I could barely get through.

The Things We Do to Our Friends is told in first person perspective by Clare a university student looking to escape her previously boring life and experience university and Edinburgh. Clare is a loner but is somehow drawn into the cool kids' group run by the beautiful but strange Tabitha. The group brings Clare into their world of parties and fun but there's something strange about the group lurking just beneath the surface. There's also Clare's mysterious past and secrets she would do anything to keep secret. I don't want to say anymore because it will spoil it and the book doesn't have that many twists.

I enjoyed the writing and the moody atmosphere that kept me nervous throughout the whole book. I felt like that never really paid off though. Everything either happened in Clare's past or was resolved in a vaguely unsatisfying way. Overall I liked this book I just wish there was something more going on. I would definitely check out any future work by this author because I did like their writing style.

I was provided a free copy of this book through NetGalley.

I could not connect with this book. It was disjointed, bizarre, and boring all at the same time. Did not finish.

*I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher and I am required to disclose that in my review in compliance with federal law.

It's a me issue, because I have read other books with many unlikeable characters! I had a hard time connecting to any characters and I take ownership that this just wasn't the right book for me at this time. I apologize! The Scotland setting was great and the cover is beautiful!

The Things We Do To Our Friends by Heather Darwent is a dark picture that just gets darker as the book wears on. It was difficult to get into but when that passed it became a nightmare. It is not my kind of book and I am not sure I can give a fair review for that reason. I didn’t like it at all. It was relatively well-written and the plot was good, if not appealing. If a reader loves physiological thrillers, this might be the book for them. It was not for me.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of The Things We Do To Our Friends by Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #Ballantine #HeatherDarwent #TheThingsWeDoToOurFriends

Clare came to Edinburgh looking for a new life. Now that she’s enrolled at St Andrew’s, surrounded by smart people of every set, she thinks she’s ready to make friends and forge a bright future for herself. But she also knows she has to be careful about whom she lets into her inner circle. She needs the right people, the glamorous people, even as she tolerates her much more down-to-earth roommates and, eventually, colleagues at the bar she works at in order to help make ends meet.

Tabitha and Imogen – and soon the rest of their charmed circle – seem to be exactly whom Clare is looking for. Both art history students like herself, Tabitha is dazzlingly beautiful and self-assured, while Imogen is her clever, crafty shadow. As Clare ingratiates herself with the pair, she is introduced to their other close friends. Samuel is a louche man-about-town, while Ava is aloof and cosmopolitan. Soon, to Clare’s great relief, they’ve included her in their group. A grateful Clare is all too happy to do as they bid her:

QUOTE
[I]t seems odd how easily I went along with it, but you must understand, finding Tabitha and the rest of them hadn’t changed things entirely for me. I still woke up some mornings wanting to claw the skin off my face sometimes when I looked in the mirror. I would sit there and practice a natural-looking grin, or I’d frown and see the furrows in my brow. But being with them made me feel like I was part of something. I craved them when I wasn’t there with them. When I saw them look toward each other and share secret glances, I was desperate to be involved. When I heard someone talking about them, I felt almost drunk on the sense of superiority that came with being who we were.
END QUOTE

The more entangled Clare becomes with the Shiver (as she silently calls them, after a grouping of sharks,) the more she gets swept up into Tabitha’s machinations. For Tabitha has her sights set well past graduation and life in Edinburgh. Her plan for securing the Shiver’s future requires Clare to be their missing piece. Even as besotted as she is with her new friends, Clare hesitates… until it’s made clear that at least some members of the Shiver know about the past she’s spent so much time and effort trying to obscure.

At first, the plan doesn’t ask too much of her. But when things go wrong, and the Shiver’s efforts to right things make everything go from bad to worse, Clare finds herself trying to escape the very people she’d spent so long trying to befriend. Worse, all the impulses she’s worked so hard to tame come roaring back:

QUOTE
It’s the sense of being wronged. When I think that someone has mistreated me, it’s not something I can forget and move on from. It was manageable at that point because I had worked hard not to let things affect me like they used to. I could rein it all back in with my carefully formulated tricks. There was no one to punish anymore.
END QUOTE

Alas for her self-control, she’s now been wronged once more. Caught between her so-called friends and her freedom, what will Clare do in order to forge her own path into the future?

There were a lot of interesting ideas going on in The Things We Do To Our Friends, Heather Darwent’s debut novel. I’m a sucker for books about toxic female friendships, especially with a dark academia setting. Ms Darwent brings an imaginative blend of jet-setting glamor and sheer grotesquery into her tale of college relationships gone awry, with the added bonus of Clare being anything but an ingenue sucked into a dangerously alluring whirlwind. Clare has her own awful, closely held secrets, that may be the only things that allow her to survive the clutches of a sociopath in this unique melange of a novel.

Love academic settings and felt the twists were well timed and quality! I enjoyed the focus on friendship vs love… unique in the thriller field!

~i judged a book by its cover & i didn’t like it~ (Katy Perry voice) 🙃🥲

guyyys. this cover is so beautiful!! I had high hopes for this one, but it sadly missed the mark for me.

Clare heads off to college, hoping to find a new group of friends. it doesn’t take long before she becomes engrossed in a small clique with a charming, eccentric girl named Tabitha leading the pack.

taken under Tabitha’s wing alongside the rest of the group, Clare feels as though she can finally move forward & forget about her mysteriously ominous past. that is, until Tabitha & the group lure Claire into their “special project”, one that brings back haunting memories of Clare’s former life & threatens to reignite parts of Clare that she’d prefer to keep under wraps.

so where to begin…I guess we’ll start with the beginning 🙃 I think the first chapter of this book added to my general dislike bc it SUCKED ME INNNNN. the scene depicted was vivid & suspenseful without giving too much away, but enough to think that the rest of the book would follow suit in its eeriness.

for me, that was not the case. it felt like 80% of the book was spent going through the making of this quirky friend group & how they would spend their time together, leaving the last little bit of the book for an explosion of suspense & action; but that really never came. I’m all for slow burns & developing characters, but at some point we need a little oomph to keep us intrigued!

we definitely get some psychopathic tendencies in this book among a few other dark scenes & harrowing plot developments, but the overall general consensus was that I felt bored reading most of this. even the suspenseful parts were uneventful. perhaps if there wasn’t so much leading up to it, the climactic parts of the story would have been more worthwhile, but I feel like whatever was being foreshadowed for so long should have been INSANE. & it just wasn’t.

as with any book, there are some good reviews for this one that I recommend you read to see if it’s for you (I just personally don’t recommend it lolll) 🙈

thanks to @netgalley for my #arc! this book hits the shelves today!!

I loved the concept and the creativity of the plot of this book. The beginning started off with a bang and I just knew it was going to be dark. In theory, it seemed like it would be a book for me, but unfortunately, I struggled with the writing style. I can’t place where the issue was, but I had trouble keeping up and I got a little lost at times. It was a little hard to follow and I had to read over a few parts more than once. I also, couldn’t connect with any of the characters. I couldn’t find a single redeeming quality to latch onto. I’ll definitely read more from this author, I just don’t think this one was for me.

I loved this one! Dark academia and toxicity? Yes, please. Friend groups are always captivating to me and this was no different. This book is moody and disturbing but the writing flows so well, it was easy to read in one day.

✨this was more like a 3.5/5 for me, but there were more things that i liked about than things that were just okay for me so i am rounding up to a 4!

✨this book is for the dark academia girlies, the psychological thriller girlies, etc. i don't want to compare this book to others too much, but i am sure if you enjoyed the secret history or if we were villains or in my dreams i hold a knife, then you will find something to enjoy in this book.

✨what initially drew me to this book was synopsis and the sense that this book was going to be about the most messed up, obsessive, toxic friendships one can have. and this book delivered! toxic friendships are hard to create with originality (in my opinion) because they tend to be based in jealousy and insecurity, and that plot can only go so far most of the time. i think the things we do to our friends had a great mix of insecurity in our protagonist Clare, who always desperately needed friends but tended to be a bit selective in her choices, and how once she was able to find Tabitha the need quickly turned into a bit of an obsession.

✨without spoilers, some things that i felt like this book lacked were mainly in the way that the chapters were formatted that affected the way that i read the book. there are chapters that are inserted from the present, as our main story takes place in the past, that threw me off and also spoiled the ending for me a bit. i think i would have rather not known what was going to happen in the end until i got to the end. i also wish that those chapters into the future were labeled as such because at times it was just jarring.

✨again, with no spoilers, i am also not a huge fan of the ending of this book. i think the idea surrounding the ending it one of my favorites in the dark academia/psych thriller sphere but the execution fell a bit flat. some bits felt underdeveloped, some felt disjointed, but there were pieces of the puzzle that were wrapped in a tiny bow that i did like.

✨i think the fact that i do have so much to say about it is an indicator for the fact that it made me think and feel something, which is why this is more of 3.5 than a solid 3. I liked the book, I'm interested to read more from this author, and I would definitely recommend this to any dark academia stan because this was really a great new spin on some of the more conventional story plots in those types of books.

✨thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group / Ballantine for allowing me to read this eARC to review in exchange for my honest opinion.

The Things We Do To Our Friends was a dark and twisty thriller. None of the characters were particulary likeable, but I enjoyed the novelty of the story.

The novel starts in France with three girls torturing and killng a man. We then jump to Edinburgh Scotland and Clare who has come to the city to escape a dark past and go to University. She gets a job at a local bar and meets a group of wealthy fellow students led by glamorous mean girl Tabitha. Clare longs to be a part of their rarified world. She befriends Tabitha, Imogen, Ava and Samuel and they all start a not quite legit business together, then the cracks appear and then tragedy strikes.

Even though none of the characers were very likeable, the story held my interest and kept me guessing. I would recommend this book to someone who is interested in an escapist thriller to while away and evening.

Thanks to Netgalley, Random House Ballantine and the author for the chance to read and review this book.