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abbie_ 's review for:
The Things We Do To Our Friends
by Heather Darwent
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
The Things We Do To Our Friends is the last of the physical books I bought to take on holiday with me, and I have to admit I was suckered into all the comparisons to The Secret History and If We Were Villains and, unsurprisingly, it did not live up to those books. There is an academic setting, sure, and unlikeable 18 year olds cavorting about committing crime and causing chaos, but it lacks the dark magic of the two comparisons. Also, a lot of the appeal of dark academia for me is in the academia portions, and the characters in TTWDTOF may well have not been attending uni at all. I did love the depiction of Edinburgh as the setting though, absolutely gorgeous city.
I both want to give this book points and detract them for being so blindsided by one of the twists. Like cool that I didn’t see it coming, but also, where did that come from? it didn’t quite fit with the story and character as we’d got to know them for the last 200 pages. It felt like two different books mashed together. I did like the ending, but overall I was left feeling somewhat underwhelmed.