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.

There’s just something so spectacular about reading a book from a debut author and getting blown away, which is probably why I still seek them out. For some reason, this phenomenon hits me even harder when the book is a thriller, because it’s often hard for even experienced and lauded thriller writers to write a thriller that will blow your socks off; so when a debut author does it (like in 2023 with Clemence Michallon’s The Quiet Tenant) the feeling is close to literary nirvana.

Nguyen has written a dizzying, creepy, effective psychological thriller about the daughter of a Vietnam War refugee (Annie) who has a form of OCD that runs along with feelings of disgust and contamination. This is in direct contrast from her aging, controlling, and abusive mother, who has the form of OCD that runs along with hoarding behaviors. Very early in the book the mother dies inside the carriage house she lives in on Annie’s family property. This death is only the beginning of the unraveling and fracturing of the life Annie thought she was living and the person she thought she was.

This story is told solely from Annie’s POV, though the timeline skips around a bit. Not to worry about it being lazy storytelling or infodumping: The flashbacks to past events between Annie and her mother help to shine light on both their relationship dynamic and who Annie is today, the cryptic present-day passages are disorienting at first, but once they catch up to present-day events you can see how they fit in, and a certain repetitive half-memory does get explained, eventually.

There’s a lot of commentary about intergenerational trauma, PTSD, the toll mental illness can take on children in families, and culture shock. Is there a twist? Yes. It’s a doozy!

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/AAPI Fiction/Psychological Fiction/Psychological Thriller

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC for review.

I unfortunately had to DNF this one about 30% of the way through. The plot was not holding my interest, nor were the characters. They were all terrible people, especially the daughter who treated her mom terribly. By the time a bad thing happened to a dog, I was done.

You Know What You Did is an enjoyable and unputdownable thriller.
Annie Shaw nee Anh Lee grew up poor. Her mother immigrated from the Vietnam War with her son and unborn daughter. Their life growing up was hard as Anh’s mother suffered trauma and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. But Anh, now christened Annie, escapes to college From there she marries a loving and wealthy journalist and has become a painter of some esteem. When her mother dies, Annie, who has also developed OCD, finds her mental state slipping. Her symptoms, which were once in remission, of OCD rear their ugly heads. Then her art patron disappears, and her husband leaves for an assignment overseas. Annie starts having trouble telling fact from fiction. But she knows something is going on.
While author K.T. Nguuyen doesn’t share a personality with the main character, she also is recovering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This gives readers a unique and realistic view into disgust-driven, contamination-based OCD. Because of this, the book is heart-wrenching. You worry so much for Anh who also suffers generational trauma. The kind that is usual for immigrants fleeing violence. You just want to wrap a warm blanket around her and give her hot cocoa even when she makes bad decisions. It was hard to put down the book because you didn’t want to leave Annie.
That being said, I personally feel that mental illness is used unwisely in this book especially when trying to bring knowledge and understanding about OCD. I can’t reveal how this happens as I do not want to spoil the book. While I didn’t see the mental health aspect of the ending, I did see the big twist. (NOTE: I have read a lot of books and can see the ending to a lot of stories so that doesn’t mean that the author telegraphed the twist,) It was a bold move, and I liked most of how it went down.
Thriller fans will love I Know What You Did and get an education from it.

K.T. Nguyen's debut novel, YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID is a solid and fun thriller/suspense novel that deals with heavy topics, such as death of a family member and coming to America as a refugee. Thank you netgalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for a review.

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

I’m backlogged with my ARC’s but working diligently to get caught up. This book was intriguing because I don’t see many psychological thrillers based around the asian culture and the effects on immigrants. Much of the story was eye opening and closely mirrored some of the PTSD stories I’ve heard from people in my life. I really enjoyed the writing but wasn’t too impressed with the ending as it felt very predictable, and I didn’t feel that way about the rest of the book. If you like psychological thrillers with an unreliable narrator vibe, check this book out!

A complex mother-daughter story is always intriguing, and this one spans multiple generations. Annie deals with the challenges of an upbringing by her Vietnamese refugee mother and how she balances the differences of now being a modern mom to her own teenage daughter.

Because of how the book started - with her mom found dead in the very first pages - I thought this story was going to focus on unraveling that mystery. Instead, it skips over that pretty quickly and changes direction into further exploration of Annie’s place in the world.

There are several flashbacks to her own childhood and inner rumblings of her mind which is fueled by her OCD. This serves as one of the main drivers of the increasing tension and anxiety as the story builds to its second and third acts.

Different major plot points felt disjointed, and the musings and memories were difficult to follow at times. Plus, with every character being morally corrupt, it was tough to distinguish if they were lying on purpose or wholeheartedly believed in their version of the truth.