Absolutely raced through this book! Well thought out plot and characters.
Loved the writing style of Claire McGowan, easy to picture the settings and get a sense of the surroundings.
Have now purchased other titles by the author as this was so enjoyable!

I was so excited about the idea of friends gathering 20 years after college. For some reason friend reunions always seem interesting.  Well this one starts off interesting enough. After twenty years a lot has changed, now a couple of them have children, one couple is pregnant with their first child and one single man is still in the group that never married. So two couples, one single bachelor and one single mom with the only thing in common now being their history together. They all get drunk like they are in high school and one starts screaming she was attacked in the middle of the night by the other’s husband. The story unfolds with years of lies being peeled away. All I could think was no one needs enemies when these people are their friends. I would have enjoyed it better had the ending not been so rushed. Perfect for the fan of family drama, friendship drama, teenage issues and a little mystery tossed in. 

Thank you Netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

What You Did by Claire McGowan is an enjoyable read about a crime that threatens to tear a group of friends apart.

Ali and husband Mike are hosting a twenty-fifth reunion weekend for a small group of their friends from Oxford.  But when Ali's best friend, Karen accuses Mike of rape, things fall apart. Not only is the act, and the following accusation, horrific, but secrets from their university years start to come up and everyone begins to question what they truly know about the past and present and each other.  

While it felt long at parts, especially in the middle, I enjoyed the read and the ending was fantastic. I liked the combination of the mysteries surrounding the old uni friends and the lives of Ali and Mike's kids . I look forward to reading more from Claire McGowan!

Thank you to Netgalley and Thomas & Mercer for the arc in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Thank you NetGalley and Amazon Publishing for the advanced copy of this book. 
I liked the story, I liked the characters, I liked the fact it kept you guessing and did enjoy the book, the only downside was I found it slow and struggled at times to keep going, but am glad I persevered.

well, better late than never!

I would say that I really wish I would have been given a trigger warning with this one!
BUt i was sucked in and really into this read.

Thank you for the ARC!

In  my opinion this book took a long time to get going. I guessed the ending about half way through. Otherwise an enjoyable read.

What if your best friend accuses your husband of raping her?
This is not going to be pretty. In more areas than one.

I find this a very interesting mystery novel! The premise is very catchy and the novel definitely delivers in the suspense and the psychology angle, even if it shows shallowness, selfishness and one-dimensional characters - but this might be verily said about many people. So I am going to be honest here - while I do find the main character, Ali, to be realistically written one, I also do not like her. Not because of her naivity and and the strong unwillingness to see the reality (because this can happen to the best of us), but because of her selfishness and shallow kindness (which simply stops when something collides with her interests). But - this is the reality of people, and I am really not here because I want to like the characters, but because I want to enjoy the mystery. And the mystery IS interesting here. What has really happened in the garden during the night? And is there a connection to the crime some twenty years ago? 
Who we truly are, how well we know ourselves - and how well we know the others? 
Do we even truly care about them? 

The answers to these questions are a key to the mystery here - and in life. And for this trueness to life I go for the 4-star review.

Fabulous! Gripping story about a group of old university friends who reunite for a weekend house party a couple of decades years later. There’s sex, lies, jealousy, competition, envy and a good dose of unfulfilled sexual attraction simmering away in the background. Plenty of twists to keep the reader guessing.

Really impressed with this thriller! Found myself not wanting to put it down and torn between what I thought what's going to happen oh, who done it, what I wanted to happen, etc

Wow! What an explosive book. How would we All cope believing  our friend  or our husband? Very well written with the hint of did he didn’t he kept you guessing til the very end.  Highly recommended

Ehhh this book was super tough for me to read. It deals with a lot of serious issues like rape. I struggle with reading book with this type of topic. Also it is more of a domestic thriller than a psychological thriller. The writing was good but I couldn’t connect with the character. Unfortunately that’s what ruined the book for me. She made too many “dumb” choices that it just turned me off. I hoping plan to read more of Claire’s books in the future, maybe they will be a better fit for me.

Ali and Mike host a college reunion with four Oxford University friends when one of their friends, Karen, staggers into the host's house in a mess, claiming that Mike had raped her -the host's husband. 

This books switches between the present and 1996 when the group were at University together. Something happened party that they want to forget. But the past won't go away. 

Ali is desperate to support her husband and cling on to the life she has created, but soon finds out that it is founded on lies and secrets.

These are not the most likeable group of very privileged people who used to be friends but the sequence of flashbacks and revelations keeps the story alive.

This novel covers several domestic issues but at no point was I uncomfortable.  This was an enjoyable read and I recommend this book to others who enjoy this genre.

A vicious assault. A devastating accusation. Who should she trust, her husband or her best friend?

Karen staggers in claiming she has been assaulted by Mike who is her best friends husband. Who should she believe?

This was such a unique and enthralling novel. I was hooked from the first page and could not put it down. 

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy for an honest review.

I was immediately hooked by this book. The writer cleverly creates a non-linear narrative that means we, as readers, do not follow the chronological sequence of events on that fateful night that Ali's best friend, Karen, accuses Ali's husband, Mike, of rape. It's a nightmare for Ali and this is the catalyst of her seemingly perfect life beginning to fall apart. McGowan provides different perspectives on that night in question and this enriched the narrative as it felt like I was part of the police, and Ali's, investigations. Ali is determined to find the truth about her husband and is torn apart by loyalty to her husband and loyalty to her friend. Indeed, as the plot progresses, readers discover that there is more to this reunion of university friends on that disastrous evening; "friends" are not what they seem and there are hidden secrets, including one pivotal moment back from university. Accordingly, McGowan treats readers to not only the mystery of Karen's attack, but also the events leading up the murder of a student at university, during the Summer Ball - the night that Ali and all of her friends attended.

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for this arc. I adore Claire McGowan as a human being; I've been to her Masterclasses a few times and she's a brilliant speaker and seems lovely. I wanted to like this book more than I actually did for a number of reasons I'll discuss below. 
This follows 43-year Ali, who is the quintessential suburban housewife. She's married to her university boyfriend, Mike, who is a corporate lawyer, and they are parents to 15-year old Cassie and 10-year Benji. One night they are hosting a celebration dinner with their Oxford University friends to mark their 25th anniversary. We meet Callum and Jodi, who are trying for IVF are finally having their first baby; Benji, who's broken up with his Swedish girlfriend and still holds a soft spot for Ali; and Karen, who didn't graduate and is mother to 18-year old Jake. Their friends are staying over for the weekend. It was supposed to be the perfect get-together. Until Ali wakes up in the middle of the night and comes downstairs to find Karen bleeding and covered in bruises. She's been raped...by Ali's husband, Mike. Who will Ali believe?...
The premise was a strong one and I enjoyed the first half of this which had lots of twists and turns. Unfortunately the problem for me was that the second half got repetitive with the flashbacks, as it was easy to piece together what had happened, and the plot became predictable. Additionally there was too many sub-plots, yet ultimately the problem for me was that the characters weren't developed enough. I feel like the book would've benefited from having more POVs. There was a lot of gaps and questions. For example, why was Karen living in such awful living conditions? Why didn't Karen graduate? Why did she remain quiet about the secrets involving Mike? Why was Ali's relationship with her mother suffering and what had happened at her dad's funeral? Also how did Ali not realise the things that were happening, especially as it was so obvious? Overall I felt the characters were just there to serve the plot, which wasn't bad by any means; it needed more developing.  Its 3/5 from me.

I received What You Did by Claire McGowan as an ARC from NetGalley. What You Did tells the story of 6 university friends who gather together after 20 years for a reunion at Ali & Mike's house. The story begins as Karen, Ali's best friend, come into the house bleeding and accuses Mike of raping her.  Secrets from that time at the university are revealed and they learn the truth of what happened to a friend who was murdered when they were at the university. The friends have to determine who is telling the truth and who has been lying for years to their friends.  I enjoyed the twists and turns in this book and am going to read Claire McGowan's previous novels.

This book is loaded with sensitive issues so please do your homework before picking it up. 

For me this was not my favorite read. The premise for What You Did sounded interesting, the execution was not. Billed as a psychological thriller What You Did felt like neither. The book started great, a party, a reunion of sorts between 6 friends who haven't seen each other in a long time. It started to go off the rails when I felt as if on every other page there was a new plot twist. It was too much. None of the characters were fully developed either. I am supposed to care about them but I just didn't, there was nothing there. This was a 2 star read for me.

The story centres around a group of friends catching up for a 25 year anniversary. All is going well until one of the women stumbles in after being raped. What ensues are lies, deceit and friends turning on each other. Thanks to the publisher for the arc.

The plot was easy to follow, although quite obvious. I really feel like there was so much more that could have been done with the story line and the full book felt quite rushed. 
I disliked the characters, Alison, the main character, was judgmental and pretentious. When it stated what brands she was wearing, we really didn’t need prices thrown in as well. Alison’s job as a woman’s activist and her husbands rape allegation could have been a really interesting main part of the storyline, but it was kind of just thrown to the side and made her sound completely incompetent at her job.
All of the friends were awful and really unbelievable that they were supposed to have known each other for 25 years.