You Know What You Did - K.T. Nguyen

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID

K.T. NGUYEN

****

Annie 'Anh Le' Shaw has everything she once dreamed of: a thriving art career, a beautiful home, a loving husband and daughter. But when her mother – a Vietnam War refugee – dies suddenly, the fragile balance of her life shatters. Her obsessive-compulsive disorder, dormant for years, resurfaces with terrifying force. Only this time, her intrusive thoughts seem to be coming true.

When a powerful art patron disappears, suspicion turns towards Annie. Then she wakes in a hotel room, naked, beside a dead body, with no memory of how she got there. As the investigation tightens and her mind fractures, Annie is forced to confront the ghosts of her childhood and the legacy of her mother’s trauma.

MY REVIEW

****

The idea of a thriller set around a main character with obsessive compulsive disorder really intrigued me and I couldn’t wait to get started.

Annie has the perfect life; a rich husband, a teenage daughter, a lovely home and a career as an artist. But after her mother dies, her OCD disorder starts to manifest in odd ways – there are gaps in her memory, and the police want to speak to her regarding a missing person…

I love books with unreliable narrators and Annie is set up as unreliable straight away. Her recollection of events sometimes contain time jumps and gaps, so we are never 100% certain of what is truly happening. There are also flashbacks, both to Annie’s childhood with her mother and her honeymoon with her husband in Hong Kong, as well as odd dreams and the repetition of certain phrases which always end with ‘You know what you did’. There are also a few paragraphs scattered throughout in second person as well. This sets an edge of unease throughout, and I spent a lot of time switching backwards and forwards between ideas of what I thought was happening as her life begins to unravel. It worked to keep the pace high and the reader engaged throughout.

The portrayal of a character with OCD was done well and didn’t feel too much like a caricature. Particularly as we see how the disorder affected her mother, and in turn influenced her childhood, we have sympathy with her throughout. The repetition is mainly around washing her hands and excessive showering, as well as disturbed thoughts around driving and fixation on disgusting imagery.

I don’t want to spoil too much about the ending, but I thought the direction it finally settled on felt a bit too over the top. I wasn’t expecting it – which meant it worked well as a twist, but it also felt quite unrealistic for anything we had been told up until that point.

Overall, You Know What You Did is an obsessive and compulsive thriller which kept me hooked, although the ending may divide readers. Thank you to NetGalley & Bedford Square Publishers – No Exit for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

LINKS TO BUY

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