We’ve all lived through those turbulent years of adolescence. The joy, the pain, first love, the zits, the crushes, the insecurity, the tears and the laughter, and those chaotic years have provided no shortage of subject matter for many classic novels and memoirs like The Catcher in the Rye, Little Women and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Most traditional coming-of-age stories celebrate the triumphs of youth and self-discovery and the often-painful process of coming to terms with the realities of a new adult world. But in the genre of psychological suspense, this emotionally-charged journey becomes as treacherous as navigating a minefield. And, rather than celebrating the power of familial bonds, the genre offers an unflinching reflection of the darker undercurrents of family dynamics, laying bare the emotional manipulation and abuse that can linger within seemingly ordinary households. Writers of psychological suspense go beyond the closed doors and into the shadows to reveal the chilling details of homes that have become battlegrounds where power dynamics are warped, morality blurs and survival is all that counts.
The young protagonists in these stories may be caught in a cycle of familial abuse or grappling with the weight of dark family secrets, emotional manipulation, and the hidden scars of past traumas that threaten to define them. This kind of toxic legacy then shapes and distorts identities, relationships, and destinies, providing the perfect recipe for a tense and compelling psychological thriller.
Thankfully, my novel The Night Side, the story of a toxic mother-daughter relationship, is not based on personal experience! It was inspired by an article about psychic scam artists, and one in particular who used her teenage daughter as bait to lure in potential customers. Once these vulnerable people were hooked, the mother proceeded to drain them of their life savings by manipulating them into a series of costly “treatments” for “curse removal”. I was struck by the young girl in this situation and wondered if she was a willing participant or had been coerced into it by her mother. I wondered how this experience would shape the adult that she’d ultimately become. That’s how the character of Ruby was born.
Ruby’s mother, Ida, is a liar, a narcissist and a cruel manipulator who coaches her daughter into becoming a child-medium in her seances. From an early age, Ruby is forced to play-act in front of grieving and susceptible victims so that Ida can drain her targets of money. She’s placed in disturbing situations where secrets no child should know about are revealed in grisly detail. It’s no wonder she wants to escape from her mother’s clutches before her own life becomes so enmeshed with Ida’s grim legacy that she’s trapped forever. Fortunately, Ruby has an ally. Aidan, a loner like herself, who becomes a loyal friend and high-school sweetheart, helping her through the difficult teen years and ultimately to escape at eighteen, from her home in Stoneybrook, Montana though not without the scars from her traumatic childhood.
Here are some other gripping stories of psychological suspense that feature young protagonists struggling with the legacy of growing up in the chaos of a toxic family.
The Turnout by Megan Abbott
This sinister Gothic drama digs deep into the seemingly pink and perfect facade of ballet to reveal the gory truth behind it: mangled feet, blackened toenails and injured joints. Darkness also lingers in the lives of Dara and Marie Durant who have been dancers since they can remember. Growing up, they were homeschooled and trained by their glamorous but unstable mother, founder of the Durant School of Dance. After their parents’ death in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago, the sisters began running the school together, along with Charlie, Dara’s husband. As the story progresses, the twisted truth about their childhood and adolescence surfaces; memories of parents, constantly at war with each other, of the unrelenting mother who drove them to view pain as their friend, and who forced them to live a sheltered life in which nothing but dance mattered. Who groomed her beautiful and prized student Charlie, then introduced him into Dara and Marie’s sexually-charged adolescent world. As adults, Dara and Marie are still emotional adolescents, shaped by their mother’s twisted legacy. It’s no wonder this fragile façade can’t hold together when a cunning and determined outsider infiltrates their flimsy gingerbread house of a life and threatens to expose the truth and destroy it all.
Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone
Cat, the main character, and one of two ‘mirror’ twins ran far away from Edinburgh and all the trauma of her childhood, but now returns to the brooding, Gothic house she lived in as a child, upon learning that her twin is missing after a suspicious boating accident. Her sister El’s husband, Ross, is still living there and grieving the loss of his wife.
Cat finds herself drawn back into Mirrorland, the strange make-believe world under the pantry stairs, where the two sisters invented an imaginary world of pirates, clowns and witches among the dark, twisty passageways. Mirrorland was a safe place. A sanctuary where they could hide from the nameless but brutal presence that dominated their lives.
What follows is a dark, twisty and truly chilling ‘treasure hunt’ as Cat tries to uncover the truth about her sister through a mysterious series of messages that keep appearing. This atmospheric and chilling novel delves deep into the haunting nightmares of childhood and the real and imaginary fears that we, as adults, repress and hide in the deepest parts of our subconscious. It’s also a haunting story about family sacrifice, deception and subterfuge and breaking free from the iron shackles of the past.
The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
Kitchen designer, Libby learns on her 25th birthday that she’s inherited a grand house in London’s swanky Chelsea neighborhood. This life-changing news is complicated by the mystery of her abandonment when she was found at that house alone in a crib, with three dead bodies downstairs—her birth parents and another unidentified person. All apparent cult members and victims of a murder-suicide pact. Libby takes it upon herself to visit the house and search for the truth, with the help of an investigative journalist who wrote the original article on the deaths. The story is told from three points of view: Libby’s, that of Lucy, a young mother of two living homeless in France while she tries to escape her abusive husband, and that of an unnamed mystery voice who gradually tells the true story of what really happened in the house when Lucy’s mother invites a pop star and a charismatic man and his family into their house. Thomsen, the infiltrator, gradually reveals his cruel and authoritarian nature as he tightens his hold on the household and the lives of those who reside there descend into horror and a nightmarish hell.
This is a disturbing but gripping novel in which a menacing insanity takes hold of the lives of the children in Cheyne Walk, culminating in their broken, traumatized, and emotionally damaged psyches.
On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel
Inspired by the real-life unsolved murders of The Chillicothe Six—mothers, daughters, sisters—who went missing and were later found floating in the river. This haunting literary thriller tells the story of twin sisters, Arc and Daffodil, both of whom could be the next victims.
The story digs deep into its main characters, tracing the course of their lives right from childhood when they still believed, with the help of their incredible grandmother, Mamma Milkweed, that “there are things that not even fire can destroy. And one of these things is the strength of a woman.” Also, that the savage side of life can always be mended and made beautiful.
But later, when the grim reality of living with an addicted mother, gradually chips away at their hopes and dreams, their armor slowly falls away, as they become vulnerable to the ugliness and dark underbelly of drug addiction and prostitution. Eventually they find themselves on the same path as their mom and Aunt Clover. They lose their hope, but never their closeness with each other, nor that with their friends in the community.
McDaniel’s breathtaking, lyrical prose gives humanity to these women who fight to hold onto something magical amidst the brutality; always, in the background, is the knowledge that the murderer is close and any one of them could be the next victim.
Girl A by Abigail Dean
Abigail Dean has taken the kind of story we wonder at with horrified fascination when it comes up in the news; a child survives a house of horrors, and triumphs after enduring inconceivable cruelty, abuse and neglect at the hands of their cowardly, mad or monstrous parents. The novel explores the metamorphosis of the terrible situation, but tells it from the point of view of Lexie, the brave one who rescued the others from the hellish house. The story goes back and forth in time from Lexie’s present life as an affluent corporate lawyer, visiting each one of her siblings and trying to make sense of how they have dealt with the trauma, to the past and the gradual revelation of the horrors they endured. To the author’s credit, the abuse is never gratuitously described but hinted at with sparing detail that makes it even more unspeakable. A not-to-be-missed novel about strength, resilience and survival.
The Bad Sister by J.A. Corrigan
This story of three tightly-knit sisters caught in a dysfunctional family is made more compelling by the author’s skilled use of multiple points of view, enabling the reader to experience the unsettling events at their luxurious riverside home, near the ominous Raven Island, from very different viewpoints. The Bad Sister begins with the tragic death of Hope after her fall from a tree on Raven Island, leaving her three sisters Jess, Teresa, and Natalie to deal with the aftermath, minus the help of their increasingly alcoholic mother who drinks to escape the secrets and lies that are part of their seemingly privileged and perfect existence. The events leading up to Hope’s death as well as major occurrences in the lives of each of the remaining sisters are then interwoven into a twisty narrative that compels you to read on to discover who really is ‘the bad sister.’
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