Two fun thriller novels I read over the weekend
I told my friends that I read two novels between 5 p.m. on Saturday and 11 a.m. on Sunday and they were like, “Kat, you can’t ALSO add reading novels faster than should be humanly possible to all the other stuff you consume.” And yet here we are. I promise I’m not trying to brag about this; it only happened because when it comes to thriller fiction, I have the exact same problem I have with “Kat movies”: I want to know what happens and I can’t stop until I find out.
Anyway, I enjoyed them both! And you may want to consider reading them yourself!
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
There’s also an Apple TV+ show called Home Before Dark, but there’s no relation. The novel follows a woman named Maggie Holt; when she was five years old, she and her parents moved into an old house, and only three weeks later, they fled the house, claiming it was haunted and they’d seen unimaginable horrors. Her dad ended up writing a massively successful book about the haunting, which followed Maggie her whole life — which she hates, because even though she doesn’t remember any of it, she thinks the story is complete bullshit. On his deathbed, Maggie’s dad makes her promise she’ll never go back to the house, but after inheriting everything, she discovers that he never actually sold the house. So Maggie decides to go back to flip the house for sale and also try to figure out what actually happened lo those many years ago.
The novel is broken up into equal parts Maggie’s dad’s book and grown-up Maggie’s spooky experiences back in the house — it’s both a scary haunted house story and a well-plotted mystery. A good number of twists, a good number of red herrings that I absolutely fell for, and enough mystery to last until nearly the very last page. I plowed right through it on Saturday evening and then immediately went to buy more books from Sager.
The Wives by Tarryn Fisher
Although this novel isn’t as good Home Before Dark (in my opinion), it was still an enjoyable read! This one follows a woman who is in a polygamist marriage with a man she adores, but as per his rules, she doesn’t know the identities of the other two wives. She sees her husband two days a week and is both desperate to make him love her and also jealous of the other women who occupy his attention. But when she accidentally discovers information about the other wives, she begins to suspect that her husband is keeping an even darker secret than his multiple wives.
It’s a pulpy novel, sure, but it still has a lot to say about how women are often pressured to be perfect in their marriages and relationships. Around the mid-way point of the novel, it’s kinda easy to figure out generally what’s going on, but I still needed to know the specifics — and it also becomes a bit less about the mystery and more about the main character’s experience. And I thought the final chapter was a great way to end the story.
I started this one at, like, 11 p.m. on Saturday and only stopped reading when I was too sleepy to continue; I picked it up right away in the morning and finished it before that day’s IHIBILI recording session with Jocelyn.
Also I heard about these books from this BuzzFeed post by Allie Hayes about books with great plot twists so go check it out if you want more thrilling, twist-y book suggestions.
That’s all for me today, gorgeous! Talk to you soon.
Love,
Kat
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Have you read Paul Tremblay? The description of "Home before dark" (which I'm defo going to read, btw) reminds me a little of Tremblay's "Head full of ghosts," which I super-enjoyed.