A bit of a disappointment after The Night Shift.

I was super excited to be granted an ARC of Alex Finlay's newest novel. The Night Shift caught me totally off guard and I really loved it. So I was super excited to jump into What Have We Done. I was thrown off right at the beginning of the novel where multiple characters and story lines are introduced and I had no idea how they related to one another. The writing was a bit disjointed for me as well. I struggled to get into the plot and to relate to the characters. The novel did pick up by the end and I was surprised on what had happened both in the past and present.

Thank you to Netgallery and St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A stay-at-home mom with a past.

A has-been rock star with a habit.

A reality TV producer with a debt.
T
hree disparate lives.

One deadly secret.


Author, Alex Finlay, writes this story from the perspective of three point-of-view characters which lends to a fast-paced thriller and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat throughout the book, with a wonderful plot twist at the end.
I thought Finally did a nice job of keeping the reader intrigued, with well-developed characters. The short chapters kept me engaged and the pages turning quickly. The red hearings and plot twists a reader comes to expect in a book of this nature were well-done and well-placed, and kept me off guard and guessing until the very end.
What Have We Done is a story about the lives we leave behind and the secrets we carry with us forever.
Finlay’s previous novel, Every Last Fear, was one of the best books I read in 2021. While, What Have We Done, is nothing like the previous novel, I really enjoyed the new work from Finlay, and highly recommend.
Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martins Press and Minotour Books for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

What Have We Done by Alex Finlay starts full throttle and doesn’t slow down! Several kids were raised in a group home many years ago. They had a tight bond. They were not treated very well and all of them had trauma of some sort in their pasts. Present day they are all adults and someone is trying to kill them one by one. Why? What happened back in their group home days that made them targets?
This book was great fun to read! I enjoyed the back stories of all the characters and trying to figure out what happened in the past. The author does a wonderful job at giving his characters life and making them believable. I look forward to many more books by Alex Finlay!
Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

This is my second book written by Alex Finlay but I found this one to be vastly different from his other book Every Last Fear. I found that this book was a little more scattered when compared to his other book. I unfortunately did not enjoy this one as much as I did his other book.

The premise of this book was that Twenty five years ago, Jenna, Donnie, and Nico were the best of friendswho all attended Savior House. This was a foster home for teens who had no parents and coem from troubled families. When this building closed down, these three were seperated. The three are reunited two decades later with the commonality that they are all being hunted by someone at the same time. Their reunion is not sweet and they work together to determine who is trying to kill them and why. Can they solve the case and stop the hunter before one of all of them are hunted down?

Overall I found this book hard to follow and couldn't get invested in it. It was too unbelievable and far fetched. I wish that this book included Aganet Keller like his other books.

Ahhh I love the short chapters and multiple perspectives in this book! Jenna, Donnie, Nico, Benny and Artemis did something 25 years ago that seems to be coming back to enact revenge or even the score … but did they get it all wrong in the first place?!

From the perspectives of Jenna, Donnie and Nico (with a few others thrown in - Artemis & “The Twins”), I was gladly able to follow along with each story and each perspective bouncing back and forth from past to present. This could’ve been a tough read for those reasons but it flowed effortlessly, for me. I was on the edge of my seat rolling around possibilities for where the story was headed but never could’ve guessed how it would all play out. The characters were likable and even when one didn’t deserve it, I found myself rooting for them all the same. Such a great thriller read! I liked it a lot and definitely recommend.

Thank you to Minotaur Books for giving me the E-ARC through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review!

While I have enjoyed Alex FInlay's books in the past, this one took me a little longer to get caught up in. The story starts out very disjointed and was a bit confusing. But once you get past the initial few chapters you get caught up in the characters and start to piece together what is happening. I love the way that Finlay writes. The book flows nicely after that beginning bump and I flew through the rest of the book. Get past the first 50 pages and you will be in for a ride.

This book follows a a group of adults that all were in the same group home as kids. They are all linked together by a secret that no one can share. When one of them ends up dead, and the rest of them are fighting for their lives they have to go back to that night all those years ago and figure out why this is happening to them now.

I really liked this book, it kept me guessing until the very end.

I received this book as an ARC and this is my review. This story jumps out of the chute and never lets up on the action. I loved it and the cast of misfit characters. The turns and twists left me breathless and the book just gets better and better. I totally recommend this book to readers who enjoy psychological drama and suspense that grabs you by the throat.

While the storytelling was fairly straightforward (and slightly clichéd), there were some good twists that salvaged this from being a typical mystery/Thriller. Between the crazy Bond-like villains, the maniacal masterminds and a few dozen plot holes, though, it just fell a bit flat.

My thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Having loved Alex Finlay's previous books, I had high hopes for this one! I can honestly say this is a fast paced, at times action-packed thriller from start to finish.

Told from multiple perspectives, three seemingly random people share one combined dark secret from their past. Living their daily lives as usual, none of them expected a twist and three two their lives suddenly. In a race to justify the past before the present comes crashing down, the truth is slowly revealed.

This was a fun read, with multiple layers in both timeline and from the multiple perspectives. I couldn't put it down at times, racing to the next chapter to see what happens. With the quick chapters this was easy to do, and overall a quick and engaging read.

At times, I did get confused. Not only were there dual perspectives, but then suddenly the person known to be dead was in the story and I realized I was probably in the past. There wasn't much to delineate this, so it did slow me down in trying to figure that out or wondering if I missed something. In addition, I'm not much of an action fan overall. This did read like an intense action movie for much of the book, which I know some will LOVE but this was not my thing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for my DRC in exchange for an honest review! Will be featured on my IG closer to pub day!

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Honestly, it is very readable and I did fly through it hoping for those dark secrets and unexpected twists. Set in an old school orphanage, our characters set out to investigate why girls are going missing. When they are certain they have their answer they take action. Decades pass and they have no contact with each other until each faces a very strange and life threatening experience. Should be some great plot twists and “what just happened” for the reader. Instead we plod on as the story is told by three characters so the overlap and repetition slows the story. Also, if they have access to great technology and are so wily, why are the twins winning the war? Too many instances of asking the reader to suspend belief and a very weak ending take this book from a must read to a read it if you want.

Wowowoww! I loved this edge of your seat thriller! A few teens who grew up together in a teen group home end up having a reunion of sorts because someone is after them. This was 25 years ago that they lived together. Why would someone be trying to kill them and who? Pick this one up in March 2023!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martins press Minotaur Books for the ARC review copy! This book will be published March 7, 2023.

What have we done tells the story of three friends who met at a group home for homeless teens. The trio was split up when the group home was shut down due to the disappearance of kids. They are reunited unexpectedly during adulthood because someone is trying to kill them. In this thriller, the reunited friends must fight for their lives.

This was a very fast paced read, and it was fun to guess what was happening. It switched pov between the three main characters. I liked Jenna’s chapters the most, but most of the storyline kept my interest. It was a little bit confusing at times, but I think it would be cool to see this book made into a movie!

This story encompasses multiple distinctive POVs while executing a well thought out plot. Every character felt real and distinctive. I enjoyed the story very much, but I think it could have dived slightly deeper into the past and rehashed some key moments more actively.

Thank you to Alex Finlay, Netgalley and Minotaur Books for the ARC.

Hmm, this was not really what I was expecting. If I didn’t know this was Alex Finlay I never would have guessed, as it was completely different than his first two books - books which I really enjoyed. This book was just way different and didn’t work for me.

First, it took me a very long time to get into, and I had to sit down and say to myself I was just going to finish. I didn’t really connect with any of the characters… by the end I was still trying to figure out who some of them even were. Second, this was way too much assassin, crime killer, shooting for me. I’m not really into action movies and this was just like an action movie as a book. Third, Finlay jumped around from past to present in the same chapter, sometimes within the same paragraph so it got confusing at times .

Overall, this was just a pass for me. I will still give Alex Finlay another shot as I really liked his first two books, and just hope he goes back to that kind of book instead of whatever this was trying to be.

A twisty coming of age psychological thriller. Jumps around a lot which some people do not enjoy but my ADHD riddled brain loves. Developed great characters and had a very unexpected twist. Sort of like a real life Jason Borne, teenage style. A bit unbelievable at times but well written. It was a quick read that was fast paced and enjoyable!

In What Have We Done, author Alex Finlay attempts to tell the story in individual chapters about each character. Thus it is a long time before the reader can get a real sense of the story. I can see where some might give up. But, for those of us persevering, the story turns out to be interesting if not entirely believable. Thus I think it rates 3.5 stars rounded up.
Thanks NetGalley for the ARC.

Thank you Alex Finlay, Minotaur Books, and Netgalley for a digital ARC of WHAT HAVE WE DONE.

I usually open reviews by providing a brief synopsis in my own words, but this time I will have to use the publisher's own materials. From the Kindle Store:

"Twenty five years ago, Jenna, Donnie, and Nico were the best of friends, having forged a bond through the abuse and neglect they endured as residents of Savior House, a group home for parentless teens. When the home was shut down—after the disappearance of several kids—the three were split up.

Though the trauma of their childhood has never left them, each went on to live accomplished—if troubled—lives. They haven’t seen one another since they were teens but now are reunited for a single haunting reason: someone is trying to kill them.

To survive, the group will have to revisit the nightmares of their childhoods and confront their shared past—a past that holds the secret to why someone wants them dead.

It’s a reunion none of them asked for . . . or wanted. But it may be the only way to save all their lives."

The reason I can't describe this myself is because I was never clear at any point of my read what was going on. The form this book takes is jumbled, both in perspective and time frame. Perhaps the plot in the description above is the one Finley tells in this book, but not in this order, and certainly not with this focus. 40% of the way through, I was hopelessly lost, so I just tossed it in.

I take my responsibility as an arc reader for Netgalley seriously, so in all the time I've read for them, I've never DNFed a book... until now. This is my first. I've heard from Alex Finlay fans that this is *their* least favorite, so I'm going to try her again. I just know it will go better.

It's got to.

Recommend: no

There seems to be a trend amount thriller writers of late, one or more of the characters have done something bad when they were younger which comes back to haunt them when they are older. This is one of those books, though good, I found the character development was a little thin, there was a lot of talking among the characters and the action moves along at a brisk pace. Jenna, Donnie, Nico, Arty and Ben all grew up in the same foster home for a period of time. They all left and made their own way in the world, some more successful than others. Jenna gets instructions to take out a famous very wealthy individual, she used to be a contract killer after leaving the foster home, but she's done with that or so she thought, with the threat of her family as motivation she takes the job but something seems off and she takes off. The story is told from the point of view of each person and each of them, except for Ben who passed, has an incident happen that appears to be an attempt to off them. They eventually all get together to try to determine who and why they are being targeted. I would recommend this book it was good, and it was a very quick read, though not as good as the previous two by this author, I will still look forward to the next. Thanks to #Netgalley and #Minotaur Books for the ARC.

I was super excited to get approved to read this on NetGalley because I loved The Night Shift! I really enjoyed this one, but not quite as much as his last book. It was really interesting how the narrators would recall their memories instead of the book switching timelines. The first three chapters were quite shocking. I remember thinking “what am I reading??!” But it all made sense quickly. This was a very action packed and unpredictable book. I feel like there wasn’t a whole lot of “mystery” going on, but it was thrilling to say the least. There was definitely a twist at the end and the surprises just kept coming! Overall, it was an engaging and wild ride!