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A review by callikat
The Things We Do to Our Friends by Heather Darwent
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
3.75
Part creepy girl gang, a hint of dark academia, and a lot of rich people doing bad things. "The Things We Do to Our Friends" is about a girl named Clare, who is attending university in Edinburgh and is immediately enamored by her fellow art history student Tabitha. She is welcomed into Tabitha's group (dubbed the Shiver - like a group of sharks) and it just gets more interesting from there. The group itself is very cryptic and mysterious, and Clare never exactly knows what's going on, even when she's introduced to their secret "project."
I will say, I was hoping for a more dramatic "project." I won't give any spoilers because it's still interesting, but the characters are so interesting and I was expecting the secret project to be really wild (like The Secret History, for example). I think another cool element would have been more connections to art history. I was so excited to see that they were all art history majors -- and while there are some connections to art/instances where the characters discuss art, it is only a few times. I would have loved it to be just fully baked into the plot. I sometimes forgot they were even students, so I think more balance would have been nice. Related, the setting also feels kind of disjointed - they are either at Tabitha's flat, Clare's bar, or some random location, and it's hard to picture what it all looks like.
It's definitely worth the read - it is intriguing throughout, and the foreshadowing is not too heavy-handed. I love how you can't even trust Clare, as you can tell something is wrong with her right from the beginning. She has a lot of secrets, and her mannerisms and thought patterns are just straight up weird (practicing smiling in the mirror, always trying to think of the right thing to say, her obsessive drive to belong). I think each of the other characters are also really well-written; you can hear each one's unique voice. Finally, the prose is extremely well done - you can really sense how Clare is feeling throughout the novel (which is excellent foreshadowing in itself). If you enjoy books where you never really know what's going to happen next, I definitely recommend!
Thank-you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I will say, I was hoping for a more dramatic "project." I won't give any spoilers because it's still interesting, but the characters are so interesting and I was expecting the secret project to be really wild (like The Secret History, for example). I think another cool element would have been more connections to art history. I was so excited to see that they were all art history majors -- and while there are some connections to art/instances where the characters discuss art, it is only a few times. I would have loved it to be just fully baked into the plot. I sometimes forgot they were even students, so I think more balance would have been nice. Related, the setting also feels kind of disjointed - they are either at Tabitha's flat, Clare's bar, or some random location, and it's hard to picture what it all looks like.
It's definitely worth the read - it is intriguing throughout, and the foreshadowing is not too heavy-handed. I love how you can't even trust Clare, as you can tell something is wrong with her right from the beginning. She has a lot of secrets, and her mannerisms and thought patterns are just straight up weird (practicing smiling in the mirror, always trying to think of the right thing to say, her obsessive drive to belong). I think each of the other characters are also really well-written; you can hear each one's unique voice. Finally, the prose is extremely well done - you can really sense how Clare is feeling throughout the novel (which is excellent foreshadowing in itself). If you enjoy books where you never really know what's going to happen next, I definitely recommend!
Thank-you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity, Sexual assault, Toxic friendship, and Toxic relationship