Originally published on Nov. 11, 2022.
Have you ever been reading a thriller in bed at, say, 11 PM, and you promise yourself you’re going to go to sleep in five minutes, but then a truly devastating, blow-your-hair-back twist goes down and suddenly it’s two AM and you’re sobbing/screaming/waking your fiancé up to tell them all about it? No? Just me? OK, WELL. Whether you want to or not, I figured it’s high-time to celebrate some of the books that left me the most mentally scarred. Because after surviving the pandemic, what ELSE would I want to dwell on, y’know?
Ever since the rampant success of novels like Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window, and Gone Girl, thrillers have been in a never-ending twist-off competition, constantly trying to out-do each other with jaw-dropping, out-of-nowhere plot explosions that don’t even necessarily make sense, most of the time. So this list is reserved solely for the novels that seamlessly slipped in twists that felt satisfying, earned, and of course, truly f*cking shocking. (And no, Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window, and Gone Girl are not included — they’re great and we all know it by now.)
