This was a creepy, chaotic little read. Clare is recreating herself at college in Edinburg after an incident in France. After settling in, she quickly transitions from outsider to part of of a strange, tight-knit group of friends with a golden girl, Tabitha, at the center. They start a business together, helping wives prove that their husbands are cheating and things quickly begin to go off the rails in a series of twists and turns. Overall, I thought this was an okay read -- the story was compelling enough, it took a long time to come together and wasn't as satisfying of an ending as I had hoped for.

This was an unexpected read for me but I ended up enjoying it for the most part. It had just the right amount of suspense to keep my interest and keep the story entertaining. I enjoyed the characters and enjoyed the writing by this author. I'm excited to see what the author comes out with next as I will most likely pick it up.

This one was so unexpected in all of the best ways. Likee truly go into this blind and also this cover is already a top cover of 2023.

The Things We Do to Our Friends by Heather Darwent is a so-so debut psychological thriller.

Clare is attending the university in Edinburgh, Scotland while reinventing herself. She has changed her name and hopes to distance herself from her past while studying art history. After she finds a job at a bar, she notices Tabitha, a rich privileged young woman, and her group of friends. Soon enough Clare is drawn into their group and Tabitha reveals a project she and her friends have been planning.

The characters are all unbelievable, unreliable, and unlikable, which I could go with but they are also undeveloped beyond the surface traits. Simply put they are all caricatures of a type and none of them are portrayed as realistic individuals. There were plenty of red flags to avoid this strange, annoying group of people and never any compelling reason presented for Clare to want to join them.

Honestly, I struggled to finish this novel but pushed through hoping the ending would redeem it. Adding to my lack of motivation to finish reading it was the uneven pace and very slow start. Sure, the opening grabs your attention, after which the pace is akin to a leisurely stroll until later in the narrative. When the excitement finally does pick up, it is still uneven. I realize I'm an outlier on this one, but the plot could have been better planned out and tightened up considerably. The twist at the end did not help. Perhaps this is more of a new adult novel and one I should have avoided. Gorgeous cover, though. 2.5 rounded down
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Bantam via NetGalley.
The review will be published on Barnes & Noble, Google Books, Edelweiss, and Amazon.

This book was extremely engaging, suspenseful and hard to put down! Twists and turns kept me on my toes! Highly recommend it!

Clare moves to Edinburgh to attend college, aiming for a fresh start to her life. She is clearly a young woman with a dark past, and she has moved away, changing her name, in the hopes of keeping her personal secrets secret.

Clearly a misfit, and uncomfortable around the other History of Art students, she is eventually drawn to an unusual group of students. Tabitha, Ava, Imogen and Samuel - a very close-knit group with expensive tastes and secrets of their own. Clare becomes a member of the group - the Shiver of sharks as she calls them.

When Tabitha suggests a 'project' for the group to become involved in, Clare is drawn in, unable to resist the call of being part of the group, despite a nagging doubt that things are not as they seem. When it becomes clear that one of the group knows about her past, she is frightened - and yet goes along with the project.

I came away from the book with a sense that all of the main players in this novel were damaged, psychopathic in behavior at times and deeply disturbed. It took me a long time to read the book - which is unusual for me - because while I wanted to know what happened, I really didn't like any of the characters and wasn't particularly invested in them. I found Clare's behavior incredibly naive.

I just don't feel this was the book for me.

I DNFed this book at 51%. The beginning flashed forward to a later event that was so intriguing and a bit disturbing - I wanted to dive in to get to that part of the story! However, the more I read, the less involved I became and the more obvious it became that it would be a long time before I got to the “full circle” moment that made the beginning make sense. The pacing seemed a bit off to me - every time I got excited or more intrigued, the book didn’t keep up that momentum in my opinion.

You may like this book if you like…
- slow burn thrillers
- mysterious characters
- dark academia
- dramatic friend groups
- an odd MC with a hidden past

Thank you Net Galley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!

Edinburgh, Scotland is full of mazes. It’s the perfect place to hide. Clare is all alone and finds that this is the perfect place to hide and reinvent herself. She yearns for a new start and finds it when Tabitha pulls her into her exclusive circle. The cost of being a member of this exclusive group though is much too much. This is a story of obsession, fitting in, finding yourself at the costs you will go to be included.
.
Thank you #bantam and #netgalley for and advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

This suspense novel is a great read for fans of dark academia stories with a side of outsider fiction and a healthy dose of examining the intricacies of toxic female friendships. A slow-burn with a satisfying payoff.

This book has a very sinister and dark vibe. After a slow start I really got in to the storyline, wondering what this quirky group of friends were up to behind the scenes. They are very secretive and keep newcomer Clare guessing where she fits in. Clare has her own dark history and is trying for a new start at school when she meets the elusive friend group and wants to fit in at any cost. The things that this group do are really dark and twisted which leads to a belief that they are all psychopathic and seem to feed off of each other and their leader Tabitha, who they all worship in a strange way. I was expecting more of a surprise at the end, but it was good book!

The writing was great but the writing of the actual story was ineffective. I read multiple books at once and, whenever I put down this book, it was the last book I chose to resume. It's a skimmer after a certain point. It drones on and on.

Interesting premise but another one I couldn’t really get into again. It was well written but not anything unique or super able to draw you in!

The beauty in this story is that what you think is happening in the beginning... is absolutely not what you get in the end. 'The Things We Do To Our Friends' is raw violence written with a poetic magnetism, and I loved every deliciously twisted potentially-psychopathic part of it.

A SHORT PREVIEW:
Reading through the lens of a fractured psyche is always incredibly compelling, and Heather Darwent's debut novel 'The Things We Do To Our Friends' was no different for me. Somewhere between stories like The Talented Mr. Ripley, Gossip Girl and The Roommate (with Leighton Meister), we're presented with the story of a college girl desperate to fit in. Clare finds herself alone and friendly desperate to reinvent herself after a questionable past. But cobblestone streets, fresh faces, and the lure of becoming whoever you want to be aren't enough for Clare. She wants to fit in.. and after meeting the 'right' group of seemingly unspoiled rich girls, she thinks she's found her home. Home, however, means something far scarier than it should.

WHAT I LOVED:
- The seduction of this story. So much about each section of this book is written to seduce the reader. Your senses are lulled because of how characters are portrayed.. and then all of a sudden.. you read that someone is slipping the thinnest piece of glass out of their pasta that had been intentionally placed there... its beautifully grotesque and almost bordering on horror. (That's one of my favorite ways to read about violence by the way. Nothing flashy, nothing loud. Just malice for the sheer malice of destruction and the symphony of impending collapse. It's poetic really.)
- The way the author wrote about struggles to fit in. I don't think there is a person between the ages of 8-25 out there who doesn't, on some level, feel that they're just not doing life quite right. Having it written out on paper - what it feels like to be friends but just a step away from all the others.. if you're that person, Darwent's writing is a balm to the soul.
- If you read psychological thrillers, you'll notice that a common literary device is seamless equivocation for misdeeds on the part of the deranged. Not all authors accomplish this with the same level of finesse? I think Darwent did an exceptional job settling us into the madness just short of accepting the motivations of the main characters! I think that's truly what I enjoyed the most -- just how close I found myself to rationalizing psychotic behavior?!

FAVORITE QUOTES:
- "When I was allowed out, I’d always go back downstairs and watch them edge around me like I was about to explode. A week later I would slip a piece of glass into my mother’s food. A long and slender shard, glistening in the sauce around her pasta. Not to hurt her, just so she had to fish it out.". - WHAT?! The burgeoning violence of a psychopathic child is so seamlessly written here!!! *chefs kiss*
- "I needed to find friends who were going to make me the best version of myself, and they already had that ease with each other that felt so natural. I slotted in." - Looking for a specific type of person to surround yourself with is a marker of immaturity that many of us can relate to - especially in those highschool/college years.

NOTES:
- If you like any kind of obsession story - this is a great read!!
- Character-driven
- Jumping Timeline
- Psychological thriller
- Partly a Coming-of-Age read
- Single POV / First person narration --- later leading into the unreliable psychopathic narration that I didn't realize I was reading at first. (Reminds me of the psychopathic narration in Liars Annonymous that I read earlier this year!)
- TWs: Abusive parents ( It's incredibly difficult to fit in with one's peers when the influences one was raised with weren't conventionally normal, pretty, etc. Fill in whatever adjectives you want, but this book will cause you to be highly introspective!!)

**I received this book as an advanced reader copy, but all reviews are my own. - SLR

Clare moves to a new city to start over. She needs to make friends there, so when she meets Tabitha in an art class, she is introduced to Tabitha's friends and begins to feel like she has found her new beginning. Then Tabitha tells Clare about a project she is working on and although it is something Clare does not feel comfortable with, she goes along with it to keep the new friends she has made.
This mystery book has an interesting plot.
I thank the author, publisher and Netgalley for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

DNF at 25%. There just wasn’t enough happening to keep my interest and it felt like by that point the story should’ve picked up more and it just didn’t.

Less a university novel-although set at the University of Edinburgh- than a tale of secrets, lies, and toxic friendships, This starts with a pow and then wiggles a bit toward the end which is also dynamic, Clare has a secret- she's relocated from Paris to Scotland and is trying to remake her life. When she meets Tabitha, she thinks she's found a friend but what she's found is a manipulator. Clare's past becomes known, the group engages in bad behavior, and, well, no spoilers. Claire comes off as naive, especially given her background, but that hypes up the tension. for the reader who can guess what's coming, Thanks to netgalley for the ARC, A good read.

I wanted to love this book so much. The cover and the synopsis sold me. It was a slow burn and it was rather boring even after it picked up. I know for sure I was not the audience for it, I know a lot of others liked this book, and I was all for what these friends were plotting, it was seriously interesting up to a point, I was expecting more. Thanks Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

After reading the description of this book, I was looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately, once I started, instead of finding a seductive thriller set in a brooding city, what I found was a dull and plodding story about boring college students. After 30% I simply couldn’t take any more. That far into the story I needed a reason to continue and there simply wasn’t one. There was whining and obscure hints but nothing that made me want to keep reading.

My thanks to the the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and honestly review this book.

"Things We Do to Our Friends" by Heather Darwent hasso many twists and turns I was completely turned inside out! It's rare that I enjoy a novel whose characters are all thoroughly unlikable, but this impressive debut won me over with its character development, elements of surprise, and intriguing plot.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the privilege of reading an advanced digital copy of this book, in exchange for my honest review.

I feel like a bit of a [redacted] dumping all my “I don’t really know how to articulate my feelings” reviews onto here in the same day.

But oof. This book was boring. I say that coming off the heels of quite a few dark academia novels (and let’s be honest fics) this year, and even though I don’t compare as a rule, I couldn’t help but spend the whole book thinking “I’d rather just re-read Bunny” and I didn’t even like Bunny all that much if I’m being honest.

Thanks bantam & Netgalley for the ARC. I’m sorry I didn’t get more into it