Five riveting thrillers worth your time

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I frequently go through phases: disposable cameras, Spotify audio dramas, and black coffee, to name a few. In 2020, I spent a few months reading almost exclusively mysteries and psychological thrillers. Though I consume the genre less frequently now, it remains a favorite. 

Today, I’m expanding beyond my four Goodreads friends to bring you a review of five of my favorite thrillers I read during that phase, ranging from middle-school YA to NYT bestsellers, as well as two I didn’t love.

  1. Gone Girl — Gillian Flynn

The definitive plot-twist novel of the decade. 

Gillian Flynn’s breakout hit renders in gritty detail the deterioration of a marriage alongside the escalation of a murder investigation. The two situations are eventually revealed to be inextricably connected, albeit in a way entirely different from anything the reader anticipates. 

Set against a restless post-recession America, the story is centered around the disappearance of the titular Amy Dunne and her marriage to Nick Dunne, opening on the couple’s fifth wedding anniversary. 

Masterfully plotted, the novel’s impact lies in Flynn’s ability to deftly manipulate the reader. The unreliable narration is an especially potent source of tension: on one side is Nick, whose secrets and repressed anger make him difficult to trust, and on the other Amy, initially accessible to the reader only through bubbly diary entries that have all the makings of a perfect victim but hint at subsurface shadows. 

The arrival of the pivotal plot twist is devastating, upending everything we believe to be true and launching a propulsive second half. Flynn never shies away from the brutal; the story is made real by vivid, sometimes viscerally so, details, from a bankrupt Midwestern mall to bruised skin in a roadside motel to the misogynistic litany Nick’s father expels as his memory wanes. 

To me, this is a near-perfect thriller that grounds the breathtaking suspense of its story in unflinchingly realistic themes. You’ll find yourself reeling from the plot twist and thinking about this haunting portrait of marriage and the lies people live long after closing the book. 

2. Sharp Objects — Gillian Flynn

Can you tell I’m a Gillian Flynn fan? Sharp Objects is Flynn’s debut novel, and what I believe to be her tightest storytelling. It doesn’t have the same sprawl and unbelievable twists of Gone Girl, and it may well be better for it: this book is at its core a character study, one executed beautifully. Her writing here is (excuse the pun) razor-sharp. 

The story follows reporter Camille Preaker, assigned to return to her small, insular hometown to cover the recent murder of two girls; beyond that mystery, an even greater source of tension lies in Camille’s strained relationship with her hypochondriac mother and eerie half-sister. This is a quietly sinister story, with an unsettling, immersive atmosphere. 

The story explores themes of motherhood, femininity, and mental health, lending them a complex, darker touch. The characters are twisted and compelling and the protagonist is far from a heroine; at one point, Camille ruminates: “I just think some women aren’t made to be mothers. And some women aren’t made to be daughters.” Sharp Objects is well worth your time. 

3. The One — John Marrs

Great execution of a cool concept. The One poses a hypothetical — what if soulmates existed, and a DNA test was all it took to be matched? — and pushes it to its breaking point, exploring the unforeseen consequences of being “matched” through five stories. 

It’s loaded with tension, well-paced, and features vivid, at times twisted characters. Minor spoiler ahead: if your first thought upon hearing the premise was wondering what having a serial killer as a soulmate would be like, this is the book for you. If it wasn’t, it’s still worth reading; the stories carry a clever subversion of many of the tropes the idea of soulmates might originally carry. It’s fast-paced, clever, and riveting. 

4. The Guest List — Lucy Foley

The Guest List leans more toward a mystery, but the story’s claustrophobic atmosphere ensures that there’s no shortage of suspense and thrill. The setup is reminiscent of a murder mystery movie or a Christie novel: told through five alternating perspectives, The story follows what happens when someone turns up dead at a wedding on a remote island. From the groom to the best man to the bride’s sister, everyone is keeping secrets; the thriller aspect lies in the resentments and underlying tensions that start to bubble to the surface. 

The Guest List is an especially fun read because of how it weaves together storylines from the past and present, slowly leading to the truth. The twists are surprising, the character dynamics have an intriguing drama to them, and the ultimate reveal is unique. A great rainy-day read. 

5. Sadie – Courtney Summers

I believe Sadie actually falls into the category of YA; I read it around eighth grade, but it’s stayed with me. Propulsive and gritty to an almost uncomfortable extent, Sadie tells the story of its eponymous heroine, who disappears on a journey of revenge after her younger sister is killed, alongside the podcast of a radio personality who follows in her path months later to try and find her. 

The framing of the story is really creative; there’s a compelling juxtaposition drawn between Sadie’s raw and desperate narration and the more composed, detached podcast transcripts, the format of which is recognizable to anyone familiar with the medium. I have mixed feelings about true crime; I think it can often feel exploitative or irreverent, and Sadie addresses those ideas, tackling trauma without sensationalizing. I do consider this a thriller; as Sadie’s road trip takes her into dangerous, ugly territory, she does what is necessary with a visceral determination that grows increasingly stressful to watch. Haunting, intense, and emotional, Sadie rounds out this list. 

BONUS: Two thrillers I disliked

  • The Silent Patient
    • A controversial take: The Silent Patient is a Goodreads darling, winning the 2019 Reader’s Choice award in the thriller/mystery category, and can be found at the top of several lists ranking thrillers from the 2010s. Its premise is solid: the narrator is a criminal psychotherapist hired to work with a famous painter who has refused to speak since killing her husband. Something about it, though, just did not click with me. I found the mystery convoluted and forced rather than complex, and the characters fell flat, failing to reach me in any interesting way. I know other people have read and loved this, but the ultimate reveal felt shaky to me; I might try revisiting it sometime in the future.
  •  Final Girls
    • I sort of have a bone to pick with Riley Sager. Take a look at his bibliography, and you’ll find a pattern: lurid neon covers and stories about women being threatened by anonymous killers (I’ll say that The Last Time I Lied was alright). Final Girls has an interesting enough concept, exploring the archetype of the “final girl” left standing after a horror-movie-esque massacre, but the actual book falls short. The pacing is awkward and especially slow for a majority of the book, the twists are predictable or disappointing, and the characters feel sort of one-dimensional; it feels in some ways like an extension of the very trope it wants to subvert.

I’ll always have a soft spot for thrillers; I love the genre’s potential to support complex, layered plots, characters that hide devastating secrets, and an immersive, adrenaline-filled reading experience. If you’re reading this, drop me any recommendations 🙂

Literacy Narrative: Goodnight Moon, James Merrill, and Me

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One of my earliest reading memories.

One of my earliest memories — so early I’m not sure if I truly remember or if it was formed from my parents recounting the story to me — is my father sitting in a chair, reading to me before bed each night. The recurring favorites were picture books, the likes of Goodnight Moon and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. 

My parents are avid readers, always in the audio form. Narration forms the comforting, familiar background noise of my dad’s car or the kitchen as he prepares dinner, usually a British-accented biography of some important, long-dead historical figure. My mom attributes the several miles she runs every morning to listening to podcasts or books; she recommends to me collections of essays and the types of books whose authors are interviewed on NPR. I can’t quite emulate her running habits, but I have picked up parts of her taste.

I grew up a constant reader, a tall stack of books braced against my chin on weekly trips home from the public library and an ever-present paperback propped open against my bowl during lunch in the summers. I read indiscriminately; I remember working my way through a shelf in the children’s section, books of varying quality about characters that ranged from ballerinas to mutated superheroes, petty drama and conflicts on an epic-scale. The trilogies that were popular at the time — often set in some manufactured dystopia — and long series were my particular favorites, the ability to immerse myself in an extensive world: books like Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games.

My parents always encouraged the habit. With English as their second language and my first, the audiobooks that for them were easier to process formed a background for the physical copies I tore through. Growing up, I thought that they spoke unaccented English; even now, it’s hard for me to fully pick out, though I’ve begun to hear how the “l” and “n” consonant sounds are occasionally swapped. My mom was a university professor for several years when I was very young. She told me later that the teaching element was difficult for her because English was not her first language; the planning for lessons that might have been a negligible amount of work for a native speaker was time-consuming for her.

Baby picture.

In both their languages, though, my parents are extremely literate; they discuss things they’ve learned at dinner, recommend me articles or books to read. I appreciate now more than ever the value they have always placed on stories and seeking out new knowledge, and their efforts to help cultivate my relationship with reading. 

Writing was something I liked a lot when I was younger. I could feel the hundreds of thousands of pages I’d read behind me, helping sentences to fall into place. Their contents might have been unoriginal, but the process was fun. The summer after sixth grade, my parents sent me off to a two-week camp where I produced two twenty-page short stories — to this day the longest pieces of writing I have ever created. In retrospect, one was a generic rags-to-riches story and the other bore a concerning resemblance to Big Hero Six, but I remember finding shaping the narratives enjoyable. As time went on, though, I pulled away from writing, partially because I was busy with school and partially because I felt that I didn’t have much to write about. Curiously, what drew me back in was a medium I’d long disliked. 

I resented poetry until I was sixteen. The eighth-grade poetry unit was a personal point of contention, something I dreaded during those weeks. I hated writing about myself; I thought the line breaks were arbitrary, the poems we studied pretentious, the symbols forced; I found the medium overwhelmingly open-ended.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Bruegel; one of my favorite poems, Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts, responds to this painting.

While at home in 2020, I got back into reading, something I’d neglected for several years. I started by rereading the series I’d loved as a child, flew through thrillers that ranged from masterful to pulpy, developed an interest in the classics. I started delving into works by Hemingway, Murakami, Didion; I learned to treasure the power of language and story. I also happened across a couple of poems whose simple, deft language and startling observations were striking to me. 

A 2018 piece by Angie Sijun Lou: “I / ask Jessica what drowning / feels like and she says / not everything feels like / something else” and a 1939 one by W. H. Auden, responding to Brueghel’s painting The Fall of Icarus: “how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster.”

I started to gain an appreciation for the change in meaning line breaks could provide, the freedom of form that came with poetry; I fell in love with the potential of the medium to convey devastating emotion, clever observations, human experience. I read Yeats and Ginsberg, Vuong and Oliver. 

There’s an acclaimed poet named James Merill, who has some really beautiful work. The critic David Kalstone writes for Poetry Foundation: “He [James] has not led the kind of outwardly dramatic life which would make external changes the centre of his poetry. Instead, poetry itself has been one of the changes, something which continually happens to him, and Merrill’s subject proves to be the subject of the great Romantics: the constant revisions of the self that come through writing verse.” 

I really loved that quote — I’m not a particularly inspired writer or a brilliant poet, but I rediscovered the more creative side of writing last year as a sort of personal passion, filling dozens of documents that will never see the light of day. It became something I did for myself, to toy with language and compelling ideas, and, like Kalstone said, to almost act upon myself, to be something that changed me. On a whim, I submitted a couple of pieces and ended up winning a competition with a sizable cash prize.

My bookshelf: currently reading Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin and Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney.

When I told my dad, he was really happy — I learned that he wrote poems in Chinese when he was younger, almost surprising from someone who now seemingly eschews fiction and almost exclusively reads nonfiction. His father, my paternal grandfather, wrote me a poem on a card mailed from China for my birthday, albeit one I needed my parents’ help reading; writing for me has also come to be connected with my family. 

Reading and writing have been transformative forces in my life, carrying important values of empathy, dynamic growth, and learning. I’ve come to take a great deal of joy in the impact of a story, the beauty and power of language used well; these are values I hope to keep with me throughout my life.