The Thing We Do to Our Friends is a great debut novel. Twisty, dark, almost gothic feeling. Clare is looking for a fresh start at university. She’s trying hard to fit in and finally she does—with The Shiver, her affectionate pet name for an interesting cadre led by Tabitha.

The writing was good and I loved the way the story was fed to me (pun intended). It was slowly built up, so there was this delicious tension, and the timeline bounced around a little.

If you liked Gone Girl or other suspense/thriller books, The Things We Do To Our Friends is for you.

The Things We Do to Our Friends gets 4/5 stars from me. Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read and review this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

A complex and interesting story - the characterizations were detailed and thorough, the reader knows just what all the characters are like, except for the protagonist, Clare.
What an unreliable narrator! I wasn't surprised at what she turned out to be, but I didn't like how disjointed the past and present events were. I couldn't figure out for the longest time why Clare's parents wanted nothing to do with her - and who the old guy was from the prologue & what the significance of force feeding him was.
Clare seemed like a lonely college freshman, away from home, in a new environment. Tabitha and Imogen groomed her to be part of their clique. It seemed natural that Clare would form an attachment to them, she wanted to belong and be admired, but her new friends encouraged that side of her which should have been left alone...

The Things We Do to Our Friends starts out with a little cliffhanger and then falls straight off the cliff to no where. Over 20% into the book and the story has gone no where. The characters are unlikeable and the story just wasn't holding my attention. I kept looking to see how much more books I had left. The excerpt of the book must have been all of the good stuff because I was really looking forward to reading this book.

Something about this book just isn’t sitting well for me. I wanted to really like it. I’m not sure if it’s because it read a little bit chaotic and all over the place, or what the reason is. Just not a fan of the storyline.

I really really wanted to love this book. The cover, description, and prologue all screamed that this would be a book for me. Unfortunately, it was not. I didn't enjoy the characters, the story was full of unnecessary descriptive paragraphs, and it didn't feel like a thriller to me. I think if I hadn't read the blurb, I may have enjoyed it more, but overall it fell flat for me. I prefer thrillers to twist, turn, and have plot twists. This seemed to be more of a literary fiction about friends who have dark tendencies.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love dark academia and would have loved to give more stars but the first third of the book was a very, very slow burn. It did pick up and devlop much better later on but it was a struggle getting to that point

First off thank you so much to NetGalley allowing me a copy to read! What drew me to this book was the cover it’s beautiful but also doesn’t necessarily fit this book. The cover looks like some chick lot or a movie you’d see on Lifetime. It’s rated as dark, moody and fast paced, I’m going to say no to all of that. Personally to me this isn’t dark. Are the characters mildly demented yes but no this isn’t a “dark - thrill”. If I want a thrilling read I would pick a mystery thriller book. Also so much of the book is repetitive we GET IT Clare is obsessed with Tabitha love the hell along - 75 chapters of the same nonsense is BOREEEEEE. The whole book was just such a chore to get through and the ending was a major yawn nothing about it was hold your sit it’s a slow burn that’s just that a slow burn about stupid catty girls who love drama.

This was an interesting thriller, although, at times, I felt like it had a lot of filler. The dynamic of the friends needed to be explained, and I understood that. Yet, things like Clare's romance felt...like unneeded noise. I missed out on the moments I wanted more details on, as well, as the entire "honeypot" schemes being minimized to only a few. However, despite these critiques, I could not put this book down. The characters were interesting, their behaviors unique and fully fleshed out. The concept was also really interesting. There were some execution things I would have changed, but all and all, entertaining read.

AS CAWPILE:
Characters: 8 | Atmosphere: 6 | Writing: 5 | Plot: 7 | Intrigue: 7 | Logic: 8 | Enjoyment: 8
Total: 7.00 / 4

This is the first book I ready by Heather Darwent so I didn't know what to expect. I accept it because I totally judge books by their cover, and this one has a gorgeous cover! This book is a little dark, twisty, you want to find out what she did in France, you cannot stop reading....

Thanks NetGalley, Heather Darwent, and Penguin Random House for this ARC.

I'm sorry to say I could not finish this book. At 13% nothing has happened to keep me interested. The prologue had promise, and then nothing. It's like the prologue was used as a trick. "Here is something interesting but you have to read a lot about nothing until there is more action." Good premise and cover, writing wasn't bad either, just boring.

This is a short review- I couldn’t get into this book, I struggle when I find all characters unlikeable. The setting of the book in Edinburgh was beautifully described but otherwise this book wasn’t for me. Thanks NetGalley for this eARC

You do not want to be friends with these people. Especially Clare.

But it's delicious to read about them.

Delicious may not be the word I want to use, since the story opens with a forced feeding. It will whet your appetite for what's to come.

After the grim opening, I thought Clare was a little dull, a lonely college freshman looking for friends. About 1/3 of the way through the book, those friendships become dark and dangerous. The friendships are not boring, nor are they safe.

A lively but brutal opening, then the pace slows, then the mysteries and darkness speeds up to a point where I stayed up late to finish reading The Things We Do to Our Friends are not things you want your friends to do to you. Reading about these monstrous friends is much more enjoyable than being one of their friends.

Thank you to Bantam Books and Netgalley for allowing me to read and review The Things We Do to Our Friends.

I was not really a fan of this book. It was very dark and intense. I was not a fan of the characters they were unlikeable. It was somewhat relatable with the toxic friendships, to some extent. We all have had friend(s) that are not good for us. Its a dark academia filled with secretes and lies. It was intriguing at the beginning but then things got really weird really fast. It felt like there wasn't really much of a storyline. I was not a fan of the epilogue at all. I would personally not recommend this book.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book for my honest review. Overall it was an interesting book but left many questions unanswered or should I say made you just say why? It was difficult to finish and I had actually had to stop twice to read another book before attempting to move forward with it again. Even the ending left so many questions as to what the book/author’s plot or intentions were. I hand hoped the ending would clear up some of the “oddness” throughout the book but that didn’t happen at all.

This was a thrilling atmospheric novel about a group of deeply flawed students with dark pasts that match their present. The author's development of her characters and understanding of group dynamics was truly the strength of this narrative.

If you're on the fence about this book, just read the intro. If that doesn't hook and intrigue you, are you even a psychological thriller fan? A bang up opener like that requires the rest of the book to follow through, and boy does it ever. You can't do better than Edinburgh for a gothic academic setting (I said what I said, Oxbridge!), and you won't do better than this novel for a dark, twisted, and compelling ride.

*Thank you to the publisher and #NetGalley for the chance to review this ARC in exchange for an unbiased review*

The Things We Do to Our Friends is tailor-made for fans of dark academia who want to repeat the feeling of reading The Secret History for the first time. The author does a great job creating a cast of magnetically compelling characters who are charismatic and also deeply and obviously bad news, and she pulls off the trick of creating a psychopathic narrator that the reader still somehow sympathizes with. I'm not the target audience for this book because I have a bit of a weak stomach (not to make a deeply tasteless foie gras pun), and the plot escalated to include a lot more descriptions of physical violence/body horror than I'd expected from the blurb. But fans of true crime podcasts and documentaries will, I think, be obsessed with this one.

While I enjoyed the book and the ending had a surprising twist I didn’t expect it was hard to read the middle. The middle was a bit slow and some things that were told in the story at the start of the book weren’t tied in until closer to the end which left me confused and at times hard to follow.

The Things We Do To Our Friends is a complex and twisty debut novel by Heather Darwent. The story follows a young woman who is searching for who she is, and trying to recreate a peaceful life. She leaves Paris for Edinburgh, searching for something new and exciting. When she meets hew new friends and they invite her into their inner circle, things take a turn and her new friendships come with a cost.

The setting and atmosphere of the book are characters in themselves. As we follow Clare from France to Scotland and into her daily life, this story hooks you quickly and keeps you intrigued throughout. It's full of twists and turns, events that will keep you guessing and at some points make you questions what you just read. This was a great story that was entertaining with a quick pace. Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!

The Prologue starts with a bang. The rest of this novel is a slow, repulsive, boring whimper. Including the ending and the epilogue.

The main character Clare is very unlikeable. Leaving France for school in Edinburgh, she becomes friends with Ava, Imogen and Tabitha. They, too, are extremely unlikeable with few redeeming qualities. They are the typical 'mean girls', but on steroids. None of them apparently has a conscience, soul or anything resembling empathy.

The more I read, the more I squirmed in my chair. I didn't like these characters and I did't really care to know about their lives or what they did or thought. There is very little action, but there is an abundance of prose telling you all about the action instead of letting you figure it out for yourself.

If you are feeling pretty cheerful about life and in a really good mood overall and want to bring yourself down into a deep depression filled with disgust for humanity, this is the book for you.