Release Day Review! They Did Bad Things: A Thriller by Lauren A. Forry

They Did Bad Things: A Thriller by Lauren A. Forry
Genre: Adult Fiction (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
Date Published: June 2, 2020
Publisher: Arcade Crimewise

And Then There Were None meets The Last Time I Lied in this dark and twisty psychological thriller.

In 1995, six university students moved into the house at 215 Caldwell Street. Months later, one of them was found dead on the sofa the morning after their end-of-year party. His death was ruled an accident by the police. The remaining five all knew it wasn’t, and though they went on with their lives, the truth of what happened to their sixth housemate couldn’t stay buried forever.

Twenty years later, all five of them arrive—lured separately under various pretenses—at Wolfheather House, a crumbling, secluded mansion on the Scottish isle of Doon. Trapped inside with no way out and no signal to the outside world, the now forty-somethings fight each other—and the unknown mastermind behind their gathering—as they confront the role they played in their housemate’s death. They are given one choice: confess to their crimes or die. 

They Did Bad Things is a deviously clever psychological thriller about the banality of evil and the human capacity for committing horror.

They Did Bad Things by Lauren A. Forrey is a mystery thriller that kept making me think of I Know What Did Last Summer, except it was more like I know what you did twenty plus years ago. I enjoyed the twists and the overall story line, but what kept me from really getting into it was the characters themselves. These are some selfish, horrible people. There's a lot of flashbacks jumping back and forth. From present to 20ish years ago, yesterday, last year, this morning. It character jumped too, making it quite a bit choppy all around. You get to know each of them quite well through. The only likeable one was dead the whole time. That fact alone, made it very hard to feel invested in their stories, but that didn't stop me from wanting to know what was going to happen next. 

The ARC of They Did Bad Things by Lauren A. Forrey was kindly provided to me by the publisher through Net Galley for review. The opinions are my own.

Lauren A. Forry was brought up in the woods of Bucks County, Pennsylvania where her FBI agent father and book-loving mother raised her on a diet of The X-Files and RL Stine. After earning her BA in Cinema Studies from New York University, she spent some time in film production before moving to London where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Kingston University. There she was awarded the Faber and Faber Creative Writing MA Prize for her first horror novel, The Compulsion. Her short stories have since been published by Brick Moon Fiction, Lamplight Magazine, and in multiple sci-fi and horror anthologies. She currently resides in the woods but can, on occasion, be found in the quieter parts of London.

To learn more about Lauren A. Forry and her books, visit her on Goodreads.

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