You Know What You Did is a unique thriller that combines a mental health breakdown from the perspective of an OCD character with a hint of intergenerational trauma carried from a Vietnam War refugee. Annie “Anh Le” Shaw grew up poor but on paper she has made it now. However her life begins to unravel as she loses her mom and her patron in rapid succession. Her obsessive-compulsive disorder, which she thought she’d vanquished years ago, comes roaring back—but this time, the disturbing fixations swirling around in Annie’s brain might actually be coming true. As Annie’s mind is fracturing she finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation, and she doesn’t know if she has the right answers.

A lot is happening in You Know What You Did. While a lot of these are interwoven, broadly the topics are OCD & mental health, intergenerational trauma & refugee experience, mother/daughter relationships & mystery/thriller elements. While the plot progression for a thriller is often more important, the strength of this novel was definitely the well-realized character of Annie and her mind. There are a lot of parallels between the author’s life and Annie’s and the author has said that this novel was a way of bringing her own nightmares stemming from her OCD to life. Even without added murder to the story, the disgust-driven and contamination-based OCD symptoms Annie was experiencing were hard to experience. So it’s no wonder that all the added stressing events Annie experienced turned her into the ultimate unreliable narrator.

OCD is often portrayed as a quirk in mainstream media and I would recommend this one to anyone interested in exploring the effects of it further in a unique thriller setting.

Thank you so much to Dutton for the ARC of this one.

You know what you did is one of the buzzy thrillers of the spring season. -Annie, who has been in remission after battling ocd, finds herself spiraling after her mother’s death. When people close to Annie start to turn up dead, those around her begin to wonder how stable Annie is. Annie’s worst fears start to wrekck havoc on her mind and she begins to question herself, as paranoid and hallucinations set in. What is real and what is in Annie’s mind? And is the danger she is facing coming from external threats or is she the danger she needs to be afraid of the most?

While this plot is familiar, Nyguyen sets the book apart by including cultural elements and a deeper dive into mental health, specifically anxiety and ocd. The first half of the book does plod and seems disorienting and slow, but by the second half of the book, I found myself more engaged and invested as the plot picks up. A solid thriller read!

Thanks to the publisher for providing the arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Well written but I found myself struggling to engage through the whole first half of the book. It did pick up after that but the ending was predictable.

3.5 Stars!!

This was a very eerie thriller that had me on the edge of my seat for most of it. I really liked that I couldn't decide if Annie was reliable or not. I would second guess myself whenever she would start to second guess herself. There were some very creepy scenes in this one, but I enjoyed them! It was the type where you were scared reading it but couldn't stop anyway. Overall, I really enjoyed this one, but the ending was a little bit of a letdown for me. I look forward to reading another book soon!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This book has a slow start but will eventually pull you in with its unreliable narrator. When Annie's mom dies, her OCD which has been in remission is triggered and everything starts to spiral.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Dutton for the eARC.

This book is a twisty ride. I was so intrigued to find out what on earth was going on with Annie. I wish Annie had made some better choices throughout but, really enjoyable.

If you’re looking for a domestic thriller full of secrets and issues, this one may be right up your alley! I’m thankful for an early ARC from Penguin Random House.

Annie was the daughter of a Vietnam refugee, struggled with OCD and wanted to be successful at all costs. Her husband was entirely too nice to their teenage daughter and it was making Annie feel out of control.

Things began to unravel as her husband took on an out of country assignment, Annie’s mother passed, and her daughter continued to undermine her.

The book was crazy and Annie’s life spiraled out of control. The part that kind of bugged me was that I didn’t understand the choices Annie made in the first place that led up to her at the beginning of the book. Why would your therapist be a friend of your husband? That’s a red flag. Why would you continue to let your husband undermine you and make you the bad guy with your daughter? For years? Like… I get the spiral I just didn’t get the starting point.

Still, I think a lot of thriller fans will enjoy this one. It was full of twists and I wasn’t sure who was responsible for the crimes in the book. Was it Annie? Someone setting her up? Who? It was fun to see how it would all unfold.

Good for fans of:
Jennifer Hillier
Lisa Jewell
Gillian Flynn

This is excellent, especially for a debut. This book follows Annie, whose OCD re-emerges after the sudden death of her mother, a Vietnam War refugee with whom she had a tortured relationship. There were multiple threads in this story: in the present, we see how Annie’s delusions and rituals take over her life and make her doubt her reality; through flashbacks, we see Annie’s difficult and abusive childhood, as well as her mother’s heartbreaking experiences fleeing Vietnam; and then there is the mysterious hotel where Annie wakes up next to a body.

In the hands of less skilled writer, this story would quickly get unwieldy and too difficult to follow. But Nguyen deftly weaves a tapestry from all of these threads and the result is a thriller that pulls you in and doesn’t let go until the final page. While reading, I felt Annie’s stress and discomfort viscerally. To me, that’s a hallmark of a great writer. I also enjoyed reading a story set in the northern Virginia suburbs of DC. That added a fun extra layer to my reading experience.

There is dark subject matter here and I recommend looking up content warnings - especially if child death and/or animal death are your triggers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton Books for an early copy in exchange for my honest review.

First off, I apologize for this review being as late as it is, life got in the way and I wasn't able to get to this book as soon as I wanted to.

Anyways, on with the review!
This book was a solid thriller. It's pretty slow but I love a slow burn so that's far from a problem.
I wanted to love this book, really I did, but it just didn't hit as hard as I wanted it to. The depiction of immigrant families and dynamics and generational trauma was really well done. The depiction of OCD was also really well done, a bit hard to read at points, but still really good. It wasn't used as a cheap excuse to make the narrator unreliable or a cheap plot twist, it was just a part of Annie and her struggles. As someone who's mentally ill themselves, I appreciate seeing genuine representation instead of bad rep.
However, the characters really frustrated me. I didn't hate them they just annoyed me. So many bad decisions were made in this book man.

Overall 3.5 stars. I'd recommend this book
Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

I really wanted to love this, and was so looking forward to reading a fictional account of ocd, but unfortunately it wasn’t my favorite.

I really enjoyed this and as an avid thriller reader not much surprises me.. the twist in this completely caught me by surprise. Loved the accurate mental health rep and discussion about trauma passed down from mother to daughter.

Thank you NetGallery for the ARC

This book had a very intriguing main character who teeter from likable to unlikable throughout the book. I liked the way the author wrote about immigrant lives and mother daughter relationships. I appreciate how the ending was not rushed and it was not the expected.

You Know What You Did is kind of a stressful book - if you enjoy thrillers where you can't trust the narrator, this may be for you. I found it kind of hard to get through. I thought the book would be more about the main character, Ahn/Annie's relationship with her mother Me, a Vietnamese refugee who has died at the beginning of the book. As Ahn's OCD symptoms become more serious, and she starts losing her memory, she doesn't know whether she can trust herself.

I can’t believe that YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID by K. T. Nguyen is a debut! This one was crazy good!

‘Annie’ Shaw has it all; a devoted husband, a sometimes troubling tween-age daughter, a beautiful home and her Vietnamese refugee mother living in her carriage house. Annie has overcome so much in that she grew up very poor and suffered severe OCD due to an earlier trauma. She thought it was all behind her until her mother suddenly passes away and Annie is left to spiral out of control with her OCD returning. She wakes up in strange places not knowing what she has done for hours at a time. When one of her clients goes missing, the police begin to suspect that Annie had something to do with it. As the police dig into Annie‘s past she leans more heavily on sweet, loving husband, Duncan who is always willing to lend a hand and encourages her to return to therapy with her previous doctor who just happens to have been more involved in Duncan’s life than he previously let on.

As Annie grows more frustrated, she has the added stress of a rift between she and her best friend and teenage angst problems with 14-year-old Tabby. Where can she turned and what of the strange thoughts and situations in which she finds herself?

This one had me on the edge of my seat. The author expertly weaves clues into the storyline and made me feel that I was living in Annie‘s skin. Issues of class, race, privilege, mental health and experiences of Vietnamese refugees are all present in this story. Sounds like a lot but Ms. Nguyen deftly moves through the topics with ease. Her writing style is smooth and concise leading me to believe that she is definitely an author to watch.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton Books for this ARC opportunity. All opinions are my own and given voluntarily.

I can't lie... it took me about halfway through this book before I felt like I was at risk of not finishing. But once the pace started picking up and the pieces started coming together, I was bought in. The second half has all the fun of a conventional thriller, but there's so much depth here too-- mental illness, generational trauma, first generation immigrants' struggle to find "home"-- really, quite a lot of depth. I'd recommend sticking with it!

3.5⭐ There is so much to process with this story and honestly I keep thinking "what the f*** did I just read?"...but in a good way. There's a lot of disturbing details and scenarios and it felt like I wanted to look away, but I just couldn't.

A lot of this book highlights OCD throughout and truly intrusive the disorder is. It was a little triggering for me at times, although I respect the way it was written in a very disturbingly honest way.

The last 80% for me was where things got really intense and I didn't want to stop reading. I felt like this portion of the book really got into more of the "thriller" vibe in my opinion. I wasn't expecting how dark things got towards the end and my emotions were running wild.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity for review. All opinions are my own.

I recommend this book, but also caution to look up the trigger warnings. I feel like it's a more uniquely written thriller that's full of disturbing details and suspenseful, surprising twists.

Annie has it all from an outsiders POV. She’s an up and coming artist, has a lovely home outside of DC with a very successful husband and a beautiful daughter. When her mother passes, it seems she isn’t handling her death well but no one knows all the secrets. This book deals with mental health issues. Annie is unreliable. She has dealt with trauma from her mother who has had her own traumas her entire life. When things start to unravel, you won’t know who to trust.

I usually love an unreliable narrator story but this one was somewhat frustrating. The author does a good job of wrapping it all up in the end but you have to work for it.

* I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this book. All thoughts are my own.

I reallyyyy struggled with this book. It was so slow to start and I was just very confused. The story didnt actually pick up until about halfway through and by then I had already lost interest. I also struggled with some of the timelines. A large majority of this book is marriage trouble and I honestly try to avoid those types of books because I know I don’t like them. There was nothing in the description about their issues otherwise I would not have read this book. The ending also just was not it for me.

Overall, this book was too slow and not something I was interested in once the plot started moving.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC. I enjoyed this debut thriller and will read more of K.T. Nguyen's books. This storyline keeps you guessing what is going to happen next but you just can't put it down until you read it all and find out what actually happens. Very enjoyable.

This book had me with the first line in the book description, “…(a) heart-pounding debut thriller for fans of Lisa Jewell and Celeste Ng.” Enough said, right?

We follow Annie in this story where we get a glimpse into her picturesque life at the start of this book. Everything starts to unravel after the passing of her mom. Odd things start to happen around Annie, she starts to question things she’s doing or not doing and that in turn made it very difficult as a reader to really figure out too.

Overall, Nguyen’s debut was a great. I went into this book without expectations which I think helped my engagement. This first part was a bit slow moving which isn’t something I typically stick with and rate well, but Nguyen did so well with telling this story. Kept me guessing as to what was to unfold the whole time.

I split this read between audio and my Kindle. If I were to recommend one option over the other for this one, I’d suggest sticking with a physical copy/Kindle.

🎧 Kim Mai Guest did a fair job narrating this book. There were moments when I disconnected from her narration which is far from a typical experience for me. Otherwise, I feel she captured Annie's demure and timid characteristics just fine.

Thank you #NetGalley and the publisher for an arc of #YouKnowWhatYouDid in exchange for an honest review.