Heather Darwent Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Heather Darwent is a published author.

The writer lives somewhere outside of Edinburgh. She was originally from Yorkshire but made her way to Scotland so that she could attend the University of Edinburgh and study the history of art.

Her first novel is titled The Things We Do to Our Friends. It was published in 2023 to positive reviews. Julia Heaberlin, fellow author, called it ‘one of the best suspense debuts’ she has read in years. Julia praised the novel as having ‘startlingly lovely’ prose, delivering one ‘artful’ tease after another.

Catherine House author Elisabeth Thomas called the tale ‘heady, tense, intoxicating,’ noting how it oscillates between obsession and revenge. Madam author Phoebe Wynne also liked the story, calling the heroine ‘intriguing and complex’ and the story ‘compelling’ and ‘surprising’.

The Things We Do to Our Friends has been nominated for several awards. It was nominated for the 2023 Bloody Scotland Debut Prize, the 2023 McIlvanney Prize, and the 2024 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. If you have been looking for something new or have heard the buzz about this book, or you just love darker academia stories like If We Were Villains, this is the perfect pick for you!

This internationally best-selling story features a main character named Clare. Clare’s on the outside and just wants more than anything to belong. However, the price to get in to the inner circle might end up just being her deepest, darkest secret.

This debut tells the story of a group of students who are ambitious to the point of being dangerous. They attend school in Scotland, in the moody city of Edinburgh. There always seems to be a good amount of fog floating around there, as well as deeper history and tons of alleyways.

This is the perfect place for someone to be if they wanted to hide something. For Clare, she thinks that it could be the perfect spot for her too. She’s come here all on her own and she wants to do something fun, like reinvent herself entirely. This could be just the place to do it. She can go to the university at the heart of the Old Town and hide the secrets from her past. In her mind, it is entirely possible.

The last thing that Clare expected was to be able to meet new people and make friends. But that is exactly what appears to be happening when she meets a girl named Tabitha. Tabitha is everything that you thought the popular rich girl would be. She is gorgeous, very rich, and filled with charisma that just seems to ooze out of every tiny and non-visible pore that she has.

From the second that Clare encounters Tabitha, she knows that she’s going to become friends with her and her circle and her life will change for good. The people that make up the exclusive group are a guy named Samuel, a shrewd girl named Ava, and Imogen, who is always pragmatic.

The group belong to a world that Clare has never touched and could likely never dream of. This is a world where they hold dinner parties and bathe in each other’s sophistication, where they go on summer holiday overseas to France and talk about it like it was nothing. The world of easy and casual wealth, where money was never a problem but something that existed to make their life and their world more beautiful.

Clare is very excited because it seems like everything that she was ever hoping for has started to come to fruition. She’s thrilled that the life she has always wanted to have appears to be starting, and she feels like she is on the beginning of a journey that she has always wanted to take. But of course, not all good things can last forever.

Tabitha decides that it is time to show her a project that she has. She’s been working on it, but she’s going to need some help from Clare with it. The only problem is that it would go against everything that Clare has been trying to make up for. Still, the two are such close friends, and the closeness between the group starts to start to appear not just as affection but as being codependent with each other.

Clare is beginning to figure out what her friends can do, but now that she’s on to him, it may be later than she thinks to try and fix it and change things back to the way they were. They’ve gone in now and they’re close to getting so much of what they could want, so they’re not going to turn around. One way or another, this thing is moving forward, and there is no going back for them now.

Can Clare figure out what she is going to do when it comes to Tabitha and what she wants from her? Can she maintain some type of independence while dealing with the group, or will she find out that she is the one that needs major protection from the clique of people that she thought of as her friends?

Wanting to fit in, the desire to have a better life, themes of ambition and obsession twist into this sinister thriller that is going to have readers turning the pages frantically trying to get to what comes next! This is the absolute definition of a page-turner, and you have to just read for a few pages and get into the story before you see why for yourself.

This is the story about a girl who has nothing coming up against a group of girls that has everything that she ever wanted. Will she come out on top or is she about to find out that she got way more than she bargained for while trying to be a part of the cool crowd? Pick up a copy of the amazing debut work from Heather Darwent and explore it for yourself with The Things We Do to Our Friends!