'Cause This is (Psychological) Thriller

by Meredith

I'm a huge fan of books that have more twists than an amusement park roller coaster. Here are some of the latest psychological thriller titles I've discovered, and devoured (but not literally because this is suspense, not horror), in the Library's collection.

All the missing girls : a novel

Megan Miranda

FICTION Miranda Megan
Suspense

I downloaded this book from Overdrive on a whim. I was going to be painting my kitchen and needed something to listen to. Best whim ever! This book sucked me in from the first chapter and the way it was told, nearly all of it backwards, was so unusual, but it worked!
- Meredith

The One : a novel

John (Freelance journalist) Marrs

FICTION Marrs John
Fiction

"How far would you go to find The One? A simple DNA test is all it takes. Just a quick mouth swab and soon you'll be matched with your perfect partner--the one you're genetically made for. That's the promise made by Match Your DNA. A decade ago, the company announced that they had found the gene that pairs each of us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance and love. Now five very different people have received the notification that they've been "Matched." They're each about to meet their one true love. But "happily ever after" isn't guaranteed for everyone. Because even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking than others ... A word-of-mouth hit in the United Kingdom, The One is a fascinating novel that shows how even the simplest discoveries can have complicated consequences."--Provided by publisher.

I have no words for how much I love this book! I wanted to finish it fast because I needed to know how everyone’s story ended, but I also never wanted the book to end because it was THAT good!
- Meredith

Final girls : a novel

Riley Sager

FICTION Sager Riley
Suspense

Emerging as the lone survivor of a serial killer's massacre a decade earlier, Quincy Carpenter struggles to ignore traumatic memories and move on as one of a group of other survivors who look to her for answers when one of them is found dead in a suspicious suicide.

This was one of those book that grabbed me from the beginning and never let go. Every time I thought I had things figured out, there was a twist and my plan to stop reading and do something else would be tossed aside “for just one more chapter."
- Meredith

The wife between us

Greer Hendricks

FICTION Hendricks, Greer
Suspense

A tangle of lies binds together a divorced man, his new fiancée, and his ex-wife.

There’s no way to review this book without accidentally giving details away, so I’ll just say reading it was like being on a roller coaster with tons of twists and turns! I loved it!
- Meredith

What was mine : a novel

Helen Klein Ross

FICTION Ross Helen
Suspense

"Simply told but deeply affecting, this urgent novel unravels the heartrending yet unsentimental tale of a woman who kidnaps a baby in a superstore--and gets away with it for twenty-one years"--

Twenty-one years ago, Lucy did the unthinkable. She took a baby that was not hers and raised the baby as her own. The baby, Mia, had a great childhood. But what about the family she was taken from? What about their lives? Lucy’s actions affected more than her, they affected her more than Mia, and this book tells their stories. I could not stop reading!
- Meredith

Behind closed doors

B. A. Paris

FICTION Paris B. A.
Fiction, Thriller, Suspense

A psychological thriller that goes beyond what you expect from books described as such.
- Meredith

Everything you want me to be : a novel

Mindy Mejia

FICTION Mejia Mindy
Fiction, Suspense

I don't really know what I can say without being all spoil-ey, but I started this as an audio and had to check out the actual book because it wasn't being read fast enough.
- Meredith

The most dangerous place on earth : a novel

Lindsey Lee Johnson

FICTION Johnson Lindsey
Fiction

I read several reviews in which people complained about the ambiguity of the book's ending. I think that's the point. We got to peek in on each character after the tragedy of 8th grade but we didn't get their full story because their stories aren't finished. And as much as they think they've moved beyond middle school, all remain impacted by the events, just some more than others.
- Meredith

The bunker diary

Kevin Brooks

YOUNG ADULT FICTION Brooks Kevin
Young Adult

Sixteen-year-old Linus Weems, a street person since leaving his wealthy father's home, is kidnapped and taken to an underground bunker where he is soon joined by five others, ranging in age from nine to seventy, who are alternately cared for and tortured by their unseen captor.

I finished this book in two days and that's only because I had to take a break to sleep. And eat. And go to work. It will grab you from the first page.
- Meredith

Still missing

Chevy Stevens

FICTION Stevens, Chevy
Suspense

When I started this book, I tweeted that I might not accomplish anything else because I heard it was that good. I was right. I finished this book in less than 24 hours. Worth it! This book had a twist I did NOT see coming!
- Meredith

All the beautiful lies : a novel

Peter Swanson

FICTION Swanson Peter
Suspense

Harry Ackerson has always considered his stepmother Alice to be sexy and beautiful. She has always been kind and attentive, if a little aloof in the last few years. Days before his college graduation, Alice calls with shocking news. His father is dead and the police think it's suicide. Returning home to Maine, Harry and Alice will help each other pick up of the pieces of their lives and uncover what happened to his father. Grace McGowan claims to be new to the area, but Harry suspects she is not a complete stranger to his family. Alice begins to come on to him in a clearly sexual way. Soon Harris fears that both women are hiding dangerous secrets... and that neither one is telling the truth. -- adapted from jacket.

I listened to the audiobook of the novel and could not stop, finishing the story in one day. An entertaining story with a satisfying conclusion!
- Meredith

The perfect stranger

Megan Miranda

FICTION Miranda Megan
Suspense

"In the masterful follow-up to the runaway hit All the Missing Girls--a "fiendishly plotted thriller" (Publishers Weekly)--a journalist sets out to find a missing friend, a friend who may never have existed at all. Confronted by a restraining order and the threat of a lawsuit, failed journalist Leah Stevens needs to get out of Boston when she runs into an old friend, Emmy Grey, who has just left a troubled relationship. Emmy proposes they move to rural Pennsylvania, where Leah can get a teaching position and both women can start again. But their new start is threatened when a woman with an eerie resemblance to Leah is assaulted by the lake, and Emmy disappears days later. Determined to find Emmy, Leah cooperates with Kyle Donovan, a handsome young police officer on the case. As they investigate her friend's life for clues, Leah begins to wonder: did she ever really know Emmy at all? With no friends, family, or a digital footprint, the police begin to suspect that there is no Emmy Grey. Soon Leah's credibility is at stake, and she is forced to revisit her past: the article that ruined her career. To save herself, Leah must uncover the truth about Emmy Grey--and along the way, confront her old demons, find out who she can really trust, and clear her own name. Everyone in this rural Pennsylvanian town has something to hide--including Leah herself. How do you uncover the truth when you are busy hiding your own?"--

This was a bit Single White Female mixed with Thelma and Louise. It took a little bit to get into, but once it grabbed me, I was hooked!
- Meredith

The breakdown

B. A. Paris

FICTION Paris B. A.
Fiction, Thriller, Suspense

"Named One of the Most Anticipated Thriller Novels Of 2017 by Bustle! THE NEW CHILLING, PROPULSIVE NOVEL FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? Cass is having a hard time since the night she saw the car in the woods, on the winding rural road, in the middle of a downpour, with the woman sitting inside--the woman who was killed. She's been trying to put the crime out of her mind; what could she have done, really? It's a dangerous road to be on in the middle of a storm. Her husband would be furious if he knew she'd broken her promise not to take that shortcut home. And she probably would only have been hurt herself if she'd stopped. But since then, she's been forgetting every little thing: where she left the car, if she took her pills, the alarm code, why she ordered a pram when she doesn't have a baby. The only thing she can't forget is that woman, the woman she might have saved, and the terrible nagging guilt. Or the silent calls she's receiving, or the feeling that someone's watching her ... You won't be able to put down B.A. Paris's The Breakdown, the next chilling, propulsive novel from the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Behind Closed Doors"--

A strong start to a story in which the reader knows something isn't right, but can't quite put their finger on why.
- Meredith

The last time I lied : a novel

Riley Sager

FICTION Sager Riley
Suspense

"In the new novel from the bestselling author of Final Girls, The Last Time I Lied follows a young woman as she returns to her childhood summer camp to uncover the truth about a tragedy that happened there fifteen years ago. Two Truths and a Lie. The girls played it all the time in their tiny cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis, the youngest of the group. The games ended when Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out of the cabin in the dead of night. The last she--or anyone--saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips. Now a rising star in the New York art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings--massive canvases filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches that cover ghostly shapes in white dresses. The paintings catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale. When Francesca implores her to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor, Emma sees an opportunity to try to find out what really happened to her friends. Yet it's immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by memories from fifteen years ago, Emma discovers a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian left behind about the camp's twisted origins. As she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past while facing threats from both man and nature in the present. And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale, the more she realizes it may come at a deadly price"--

I could not stop reading this book! That's all truth, no lies!
- Meredith

Only daughter

Anna Snoekstra

FICTION Snoekstr Anna
Suspense

In 2003, sixteen-year-old Rebecca Winter disappeared. She'd been enjoying her teenage summer break: working at a fast-food restaurant, crushing on an older boy and shoplifting with her best friend. Mysteriously ominous things began to happen—blood in the bed, periods of blackouts, a feeling of being watched—though Bec remained oblivious of what was to come. Eleven years later she is replaced. A young woman, desperate after being arrested, claims to be the decade-missing Bec. Soon the imposter is living Bec's life. Sleeping in her bed. Hugging her mother and father. Learning her best friends' names. Playing with her twin brothers. But Bec's welcoming family and enthusiastic friends are not quite as they seem. As the imposter dodges the detective investigating her case, she begins to delve into the life of the real Bec Winter—and soon realizes that whoever took Bec is still at large, and that she is in imminent danger.

An imposter takes over a missing girl's life, It's the biggest mistake she ever made.
- Meredith

The chalk man : a novel

C. J. Tudor

FICTION Tudor, C. J.
Suspense

1986: Eddie and his friends spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages. When a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, nothing is ever the same. 2016: Eddie thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. His friends got the same message, and they think it's a prank... until one of them turns up dead. What really happened all those years ago?

The summer of 1986 changes the lives of five friends in ways they don't realize until 30 years later when it seems like nothing is forgotten.
- Meredith

When you disappeared

John (Freelance journalist) Marrs

FICTION Marrs John
Suspense

"Catherine's cosy life as a housewife and mum-of-three is quickly thrown into disarray when husband Simon disappears without explanation. She is convinced he hasn't left by choice as confusion and spiraling debts threaten to tear her family apart. Meanwhile Simon has begun a carefree new life travelling the world. And he's determined not to disclose his past to all he meets, even if it means resorting to extreme and violent measures. But why did he leave? Catherine only gets her answer 25 years later when Simon suddenly reappears on her doorstep. During their furious final confrontation, they discover the secrets, lies and misunderstandings that tore them apart, then brought them face-to-face one last time"--Publisher's description.

A great story that kept me on my toes from start to finish! You’ll have questions and it may seem like things move slowly in your quest for answers, but don’t give up! It’s worth reading until the end.
- Meredith