I think 3 stars might be generous for this one but I let it slide because it did keep my interest only because it alluded to something through the whole first half that I held on thinking it would be worth the clunky writing and ridiculous plot. I could not get into this one at all. It seemed like it was trying to be a combination of several other recent books or plotlines and it just did not deliver for me. I will say I do love this cover though!

I was excited to be given the opportunity to read The Things We Do To Our Friends by Heather Darwent. I read the description and it sounded like a book I would enjoy reading. I found it to be a quick read. Unfortunately it was just one that I did not enjoy. I didn’t find it be a thriller or much of a mystery. The characters were just bad people that made me less interested in how their stories played out. They seemed to me to be not very developed characters and found their relationships with each other lacking. Made for gaps in the plot line. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Bantam for the ARC.

A deliciously dark, creepy story. Clare is attempting to reinvent herself and put her past behind her by moving to Edinburgh to study. She is working in a bar to make ends meet. In one of her classes she meets charismatic, enigmatic Tabitha, who is the queen bee of a golden circle of friends. Clare is lured in by their inexplicable offers of friendship only to realize there is a definite downside and she must decide if it is worth being a part of this group.

if you liked the secret history, if we were villains, or bunny, you MIGHT like this?? maybe???
but this book has none of the compelling characters or interesting plot that those three other books have
i was bored. sorry lol. i kept checking how far i was in the e book and every time i thought i was 50 or 75% done i would look to see 30%, 40%, 45% like move the story along please!! it’s a dark academia thriller!!
didn’t care for any of the characters - i know that’s the point - but i didn’t care even for their ‘evil’ actions so what’s the point
the book felt like it was trying too hard to capture the vibe of those dark academia books and ended up w none of the solid plot or messaging
and the epilogue was bad - should’ve been included somewhere in the middle of the book, did nothing except say blatantly ‘hey!! i’m cRazY and a psychopath lol!!’
ALSO THE COVER IS DOOKIE - i thought it was womens lit fic the first time i saw it?? why is the better homes and gardens version of elizabeth holmes on there

First of all we need to define who the friends really are! Why are they friends? I didn't understand why these people were together. Then, I realized they had the same warped needs. Thanks, net galley for an interesting read.

This starts with a strange and gruesome prologue that doesn't seem to fit with the story until later. But once the rest of the story is revealed, it all makes sense.

Clare goes to college in Edinburgh, hoping to make a new life for herself. Part of this new image requires acquiring the right friends. She gets added to a group that is already well established. But who chose whom? And why?

I love a good psychological thriller and this one kept me guessing all of the way to the end. If that is also your jam, I would definitely recommend this.

I had such high hopes for this book. I loved the premise idea, but I just struggled to get into it. The characters were bland and it took 40% of the book to get to a new topic. I ended up DNFing it at 50%.

This cover is so beautiful. The story was a little bit too much of a slow burn for me. I ended up not finishing the whole book because I felt like nothing was really happening and it wasn't holding my interest. This is a rare occurrence for me as I try to finish all books that I start. I was excited to read a creepy, dark academia novel, but this just didn't hit the mark for me.

Thank you for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are completely my own.

Things that worked well in the novel: Clare. I did not see what was coming until about halfway through the book. Either I'm naive, or this author has nailed it in her debut novel.

Things that did not work so well: the "dark academia" format seems to be a cut-and-paste template that has been worked and reworked, and it doesn't seem to be an appropriate place to shelf this book. Clare wants to be friends with the rich and attractive clique at the University of Edinburgh. That's as far as the "academia" extends, really. The group of friends seem to be bound together out of fear of each others' secrets, but as readers we don't get a glimpse of that. We are just as in the dark as Clare. I never had a chance to feel sympathy or empathy for Clare, but maybe that was the point. Everyone is just unlikeable. Except for maybe Finn.

The novel takes on an almost entirely different tone in the last half. It felt like it decided to become a type of thriller/revenge story. I really had to power through the first 30 pages or so before the story started picking up.

The Things We Do to Our Friends is a great first novel--I'll be interested to find out if Darwent hammers out a better outline for her next novel.

Author Darwent leaves tantalizing hints and clues to exactly what went wrong in Clare's life before she moved to Edinburgh to attend University and reinvent herself. Appearing awkward, shy and friendless, there seethes under Clare's skin a desire to hurt and cause pain to others. New friends, Tabitha, Ava, Imogen and Samuel recognized the hidden side of Clare and set about recruiting her for their new business venture; entrapping married men and making them suffer as they lose their wives, houses, jobs and families. But the business isn't always neat and tidy and when a plan goes off the rails and Clare is physically assaulted she decides it is time to move on from the group and try to be a better person. However, someone in the group knows what she did as a young girl and is using that knowledge to keep Clare from leaving. A psychologically based tale of human need and revenge with just enough "bread crumbs" to lead the reader from Clare's bizarre childhood to her seemingly normal adult life. A tale to keep the pages turning.

I was so confused on what was going on for like half the book. It started to pick up for me around the 60% mark. Everything started clicking. Connections were being made and the twist got me. The ending was not what I was expecting.

Be careful what you wish for!

Are you lonely, away at university, feeling unmoored? In need of friends? Maybe some excitement? Maybe you want to be in the “in crowd”?

Ha!

Again, be careful what you wish for.

Clare finds herself just there…alone, lonely, feeling unliked and “weird”, cast off from her university peers until one day fate delivers the change.

Tabitha, the wealthy queen bee comes in to a bar with her underling, Imogene. An unlikely friendship follows.

Clare finds herself in the mix with Tabitha and her wealthy cohort: Imogene, Samuel and Ava. She longs to shed her former self, become someone new.

Again…and again…be careful what you wish for.

Clare has some dark secrets herself and as the group embarks on a risky side business entrapping wealthy man with their own marital infidelities, the game Clare finds herself playing suddenly changes.

Dark. Atmospheric. Disorienting. And twisty. Readers will find familiarity here with works like The Heathers and A Secret History, where what we wish for collides with everything we are desperate to hide.

4⭐️

Wow! Definitely was not expecting this book to be a big thrill! It was suspenseful and definitely had a good amount of drama in it to keep you guessing how the ending was going to be. Excellent writing and cool cover!

Thank you NetGalley, Heather Darwent and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC of The Things We Do to Our Friends. This is my personal review.
I was looking forward to reading this book. I like a good suspenseful book to put a mixture on my reading list. I read this and just could not find much suspense as I read.
The book was a bumpy read and I read it but did not enjoy reading it. I found Clare annoying, and I did not really care what happened to her in the story. I finished the book and almost immediately forgot almost everything in the book.

This is a very Disturbing dark novel that never seem to get off the ground. I keep waiting for something to happen, and it never did. The whole novel just felt way too long, I did not like the characters. Not one of my favorites

Thank you to #NetGalley for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book read so slowly, that I thought I was almost finished I was only a quarter of the way in! It left me with a lot of questions, and this was a very difficult read for me. I rarely give up on reading a book. I kept waiting for the real meat of the story to come out. There were pacing issues, and the first part felt a bit like pulling teeth.

Clare is a university student in Scotland studying Art and some people at school find her weird but she is able to fool people and make friends. We find out early in the book that she has a very dark secret in her past but for some reason, I was still not interested. I feel the author had a good plot, but the writing just dragged on and on.
It’s a dark academia thriller! I didn’t care for or about any of the characters and I felt as if they fell flat.

I was so excited for this book. The cover is stunning, and the synopsis was enticing. Maybe I'm just not a dark academia person, but this story fell flat for me. I found the main character to be annoying, and I couldn't relate or connect with any of the other girls. As I kept reading, it seemed like the plot wasn't developing deeply enough to make this book phenomenal. Everything felt very surface level, and when I finally got to the end, I was like, "Really? All of that for this?" It reminded me a bit of The Maidens, which I also despised and had a very similiar reaction to.

This is a very dark, twisted book about dark, twisted friends. I had a hard time getting in to it.
The writing is good, but the characters are all so damaged and unlikeable. The story doesn’t really start until about half way, which is a long time to not know what is going on.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC. When I read the premise and saw the comp was The Secret History, I was immediately intrigued and the book did not disappoint.

The MC is a girl, Clare, who had something dark happen when she was younger in France, and her parents wanted nothing to do with her so she ends up living with her granny. A bit later she moves to Edinburg for college to reinvent herself. She falls in with this group that calls themselves "The Shivers," led by a girl name Tabitha, the type of girl that everyone loves but also secretly kind of hates. Tabitha has convinced Clare and the others to begin working on a project together, but the more they work on the project, the more dark things become.

I really enjoyed this book and honestly couldn't put it down. The story is going to stay with me a long time. The writing was gorgeous and I'm convinced this is going to be such a hit. I can't wait to read the author's next book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the DRC!

Vivid, brutal, and chilling. Clare's trying to get a fresh start at uni in Edinburgh after a troubled upbringing in France, when she falls into the schemes by a group of students she's named The Shiver: Samuel, who calls in favors to get their business off the ground; Imogen, who's intelligent but too willing to go along with plans if it means being included; Ava, organized and manipulative to keep the wheels turning; and then Tabitha, a kind of manic pixie nightmare girl whose eyes for vengeance are too big for everyone else's stomachs. The four of them rope Clare into their business--of luring rich men to commit acts of infidelity and provide the proof to their wives who are looking for an exit plan.

Told in a clear, compelling voice from a compulsively readable narrator, I was entranced by the fictions these characters created throughout the story. The story gradually leads the reader down increasingly worrisome acts of subterfuge, almost daring the reader to get off the train before it goes off the rails. Clare is a sympathetic protagonist, but one who challenges the reader's capacity for empathy in ways that are subtle and thought-provoking. I was really interested in the frame of the story; Clare is recounting these events in the retrospective, when she's married to some wealthy, nondescript man she feels she's on the verge of leaving. However, the details of this frame are too vague to contain the explosive story of the schemes themselves. It makes sense to keep things vague to maintain the intrigue of the ending, but this was one place where I wanted more detail.

I can imagine teaching this book in the context of teaching a full class on college literature--books about the university experience. While not everyone going to college gets involved in a series of scandals that are just on the edge of international in scope, the book does examine the sensitive period where one is not quite a fully-fledged adult, vulnerable and impressionable, and violently shaped by external forces.