Darwent’s ‘The Things We Do to Our Friends’ is bordering on the edge of being a dark academia book and feels like it wants to be but just doesn’t quite do enough to make it such. It’s more just a thriller about a group of art history students studying at Edinburgh of whom’s lives revolve solely around one another, and therefore the studying and the city take a backseat. This was fine as the whole story itself was satisfactory and played with obsession, and it also played into the dark academia themes of the entire cast of characters being shitty people, but I feel an opportunity was missed to use the setting as a means to enhance the book. It’s so moody and gothic which works well with the plot but this wasn’t capitalised on at all, all I really note is a single chapter set in Greyfriars Kirkyard and the chapters are very short. 

I mentioned the plot being interesting enough but I feel it weakened in the ending, not because of the final sequence of events themselves but rather that these events felt extremely predictable and that events cumulating in this way was inevitable. I also didn’t really get the grasp of what the groups business adjacent writing and editing was actually for despite it being referenced from time to time alongside their primary economic endeavours and Périgeux remained a bit of a mystery despite how often its teased though I think that was partly intentional.