Reading Recommendations: Thrilling Twists Vol. 2
A new month means another batch of reading recommendations! November’s theme is Thrilling Twists! the books featured on this list are thrillers that are immersive and will keep you on the edge of your seat. I hope you enjoy these picks! (View the first batch of picks here.)
The View From Here
After eleven years, Nicole Baxter and her husband Truman’s marriage is beginning to fracture. Suddenly, during a scuba diving accident near Catalina Island, Truman is gone. No body. No signs of foul play. Presumed dead.
Clinging to the hope that Truman might still be alive, Nicole is devastated, in denial, and struggling with insomnia, as well as guilt over the secrets she kept from the man she loved—a pregnancy, a miscarriage, and an incautious fling with an attentive neighbor. Then come the strange occurrences putting Nicole further on edge. The scent of Truman’s cologne. The wet footprints in the house. The cryptic texts from his phone. And the message written on her bathroom mirror: I’ll luv u 4ever.
Nicole has never felt so alone, isolated, and paranoid. If she’s losing her mind, then why does it seem so real? If it’s real, how is that possible? As Nicole’s grip on reality slips away, the answers are becoming a matter of life and death.
This was such an engaging read throughout and I felt that even though it’s fast paced the thrills take its time to build up to a climactic ending. Nicole is an unreliable narrator because she blurs the lines of what’s real or not. It made it a challenge to get the answers that the readers and she herself wants answered. I also appreciated how this novel discusses grief and how it’s sectioned up its stages through multiple parts. It displays that no relationship is perfect and that the loss of a loved one can bring up unresolved feelings. I recommend this novel to those who enjoy a good thriller and high-stakes situations! (Review)
Through Our Teeth
Hope Jackson is dead. Everyone is convinced she took her own life, but Liv, one of Hope’s best friends, isn’t so sure. Hope’s boyfriend, Brendan, was always jealous and possessive, and his alibi doesn’t really check out. But in the town’s eyes, Hope was just some nobody who was going to drag down golden boy Brendan.
So with the help of Hope’s other two best friends, Kizzie and Sherie, Liv is determined to bring Brendan’s actions to light. Together, they vow to make him pay.
But as their plans keep escalating, Liv begins to have second thoughts—especially as she’s realizing that Brendan may not be the only one with the motive or opportunity to kill Hope. Is Liv really getting justice for Hope, or is she just helping one of Hope’s so-called friends cover up their lies?
Taking cues from notable literary and movie thrillers (think I Know What You Did Last Summer), this novel promises high stakes, suspense, and building tension that all come to a head in the final part of the novel. This story follows a group of teens trapped in a luxurious house that feels like a claustrophobic maze when plans for vengeance take a dangerous turn. This novel was thrilling from beginning to end and at many points had me on the edge of my seat. Many nail-biting moments added to the suspense and action scenes within the story. The alternating timelines added an even deeper layer of character development and made the mystery intriguing. (Review)
Killing Sadie
Here’s what we do know: there was another infamous barn party at the McClain family farm last night, and things went horribly wrong. By the end of the night, there were two dead bodies in the old barn: seventeen-year-old Sadie Cooper and her killer, Mason Vreeland. The murder was heartbreakingly witnessed by Sadie’s twin sister, Jayne, and Sadie died in her arms. Mason was killed by Sadie’s boyfriend, Ben, in an attempt to save Sadie.
Aside from figuring out Mason’s motive, it should be an open and shut case.
But it’s not.
The story unfolds just after the murders, and Jayne, Ben, and Sadie’s best friend, Liz, are telling the cops what transpired at the party and the events leading up to it. But little details don’t match. And those little details start to add up to big discrepancies. But who’s lying, and why?
The shocking truth is revealed in the third act, when the POV shifts to victim Sadie herself, in the days leading up to the party. Witness exactly what happened—and see if you can piece it all together. Because poor Sadie totally missed what was right in front of her.
Killing Sadie is a YA thriller debut by author Rachel Peterson that follows a story of a tragic murder told through the viewpoints of unreliable narrators. It’s up to the reader to divulge the truth from the shifting point-of-views in order to discover the culprit. An intriguing read from beginning to end, this story promises a wild ride that doesn’t stop until the story reaches its conclusion. While the novel seems like typical high school drama at first glance, Peterson does a great job of giving it depth. The characters feel fleshed out and detailed as we learn about them through their flashbacks and observations of each other. (Review)
Girls Who Play Dead
When Mikky Graves left his small, stifling hometown of Prophets Lake to live with his estranged mother, he thought nothing could ever make him go back.
Until his sister Kyla’s best friend, Erin, is murdered.
Mikky never worried about leaving Kyla behind at their family-owned funeral home so long as she had Erin. But when Mikky heads home, determined to help Kyla grieve, the sister he encounters barely resembles the one he remembers. Mikky decides, then and there, to do the one thing that seems even more impossible than returning: stay.
As Kyla spirals further into her rage and secrets, Mikky realizes the only thing that can help his sister is finding the truth about who killed Erin. But the more he investigates, the further he’s pulled into other ugly mysteries of Prophets Lake and the beauty brand that is its lifeblood. The town’s rot runs deep, and everyone has something to hide. Perhaps no one more than Kyla herself.
Makeup, high school drama, and a murder mystery awaits in the pages of Girls Who Play Dead. The story follows two very different siblings, Kyla and Mikky, who reconnect under tragic circumstances. While some thrillers have likable characters, this novel follows some complicated characters who all have secrets to hide. The main characters for the most part are unlikeable, which puts the readers on alert. You aren’t sure who exactly to trust and it seems like everyone in this unassuming small town has something to hide. This novel can best be described as a medium-paced but reads like a slow burn mystery. I would recommend this novel to readers who enjoy small town mysteries.
A Killing Fire
The first time Raven Burns saw her father kill, the victim was her mother. Afterwards, Floyd “FIRE” Burns set the house on fire, making Raven watch as the flames slithered across the yard like some unknowable language. Then he took her on a multi-state killing spree. She could’ve told or killed him in his sleep. But there were his constant whispers, his wet lips close to her ear saying that little girls who told were sent to hell, and their mothers were called down from heaven to take care of them.
By the time he is executed, Raven has become a cop with the sole purpose of putting men like him away. But she can’t escape Floyd’s terrorizing voice in her head, somehow guiding her steps while reminding her of the horrors he had forced her to witness. And she can’t escape the questions that continue to haunt her: Did witnessing make her complicit? Had the same evil that lived in her father taken residence in her soul?
The town of Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana appears to have made up its mind. The community accepts that Raven had nothing to do with Floyd’s crimes. But when Raven shoots a teenager who points what turns out to be an unloaded weapon at her, stories about Floyd resurface. The whispers begin. No voice is louder than wealthy socialite Hazel Westcott. When Westcott turns up dead in the backyard of her Big Bayou Lake estate, the doubting voices reach a deafening crescendo, and the ghosts of her past rise up to greet her. To catch Westcott’s killer, Raven must come to terms once and for all with who she is. And who she is not.
What I enjoyed the most about this book is though it follows some classic mystery genre tropes it stands out among many other mystery books I’ve read. Snowden lures her readers into a tangled web of lies inviting them to solve the mystery. The characters were diverse and complex which I appreciated. Readers are not sure of who to trust (including our narrator, Raven) and I like the way their backstories are pieced together as the plot progresses. I would love to read more from Snowden in the future! The novel was gripping, intense, and suspenseful-everything I want in a crime fiction novel. (Review)
That concludes my reading recommendations for Thrilling Twists! What books do you recommend or what are your favorites? Comment below!
